Cutting Through the Rhetoric

“We’re So Stupid Following Our Politicians” – Charles Barkley Unleashes One Minute Of Truth On America

by Tyler Durden
Monday, Apr 05, 2021 – 05:44 AM

Forget Orwell’s “Two Minutes Hate.” NBA legend Charles Barkley unleashed ‘One Minute Truth’ on NCAA-Final-Four-watchers last night, telling viewers that:

“I truly believe in my heart most white people and black people are awesome people, but we’re so stupid following our politicians, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats.”

Barkley was responding to a feature that detailed how on April 4, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy broke the news about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to a crowd in Indianapolis, urging people to seek compassion and justice rather than anger and revenge, saying the vast majority of Americans, both black and white, want to live in peace with each other.

As a reminder, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated two months later.

This was the same message Barkley offered, as he warned:

“I think our system is set up where our politicians, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, are designed to make us not like each other so they can keep their grasp of money and power.”

Furthermore, he described what he believes to be the thinking behind the divide-and-conquer strategy:

 “Hey, let’s make these people not like each other. We don’t live in their neighborhoods, we all got money, let’s make the whites and blacks not like each other, let’s make rich people and poor people not like each other, let’s scramble the middle class.”

Watch the full clip here:

This is not the first time Barkley has unleashed uncomfortable truths. In September of last year he dared to speak common sense against the left’s calls to defund the police, arguing that poor black communities would be hit hardest by a spike in crime if there is less policing. “Who are black people supposed to call, Ghostbusters, when we have crime in our neighborhood?”

How long will it be before the outrage mob comes for Barkley for taking such a “bothist” common-sense and honest view and refusing to be drawn, like weak CEOs or pandering politicians to one side or the other in our ever more divisive society?

It’s already begun…

…sigh

from:    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/were-so-stupid-following-our-politicians-charles-barkley-unleashes-one-minute-truth?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter

I Wonder Who’s Kissinger Now

For the past 54 years, one man has served as a prime example of why the presidential office means little to nothing: Henry Kissinger.

People who understand the left-right paradigm is a false dichotomy often cite the fact that the same oligarchical power players pay both sides, despite the complexity of different power cliques and alliances that we don’t always get to see.

But for people who won’t believe it, what evidence will you show them? If they’re determined to not understand there’s nothing anyone can do, but if someone cares to understand, here is one of the most solid pieces of evidence to cite.

Cite this when trying to show people the left-right paradigm is false: Henry Kissinger has advised the last 10 presidents, for 54 years, while being a protege of David Rockefeller. He’s the middleman from a different level of the elite, to the politicians who get what they want done.

Who was the last president to not be advised by Kissinger? John F. Kennedy. I don’t know the story to why that is, we can only imagine.

Other people of influence who have come close to the presidential office are uncomfortably close to Henry Kissinger.

Image credit:  doomsteaddiner

Here is Henry Kissinger with every last US president for the past 54 years.

1. Kissinger with Donald Trump

This is a photo of Trump meeting with Kissinger shortly after becoming president. They meet all the time, and the latest meeting was reported a few weeks ago.

2. Kissinger with Barack Obama

Barack Obama’s administration gave Kissinger a distinguished award a couple years ago. Obama has met with Kissinger on multiple occasions, and even the mainstream has no problem recognizing this in some cases. According to the Daily Kos:

“If you measure “public service” as being responsible for more deaths than any other living American in the effort to spread the influence of American empire over the globe, Kissinger was surely deserving.

It is not news that Kissinger has been embraced by this White House. The Obama administration use of this criminal has been open since the first days of the Obama presidency. The Kissinger issue, if I may call it that, surfaced again during the Clinton-Sanders debates, when Sanders decried Clinton’s reliance on the advice and counseling of Kissinger.”

3. Kissinger with George Bush

George Bush and his father both worked with Kissinger like all the other presidents. Bush put Kissinger on the committee to investigate 9/11: we all know how suspicious that sounds.

4. Kissinger with Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton are both very close with Henry Kissinger, and it was the same way during Clinton’s administration. Some financial ties can be found between Kissinger and Bill Clinton. According to Wikipedia:

“In 1982, with the help of a loan from the international banking firm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus and Company, Kissinger founded a consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, and is a partner in affiliate Kissinger McLarty Associates with Mack McLarty, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. He also serves on the board of directors of Hollinger International, a Chicago-based newspaper group, and as of March 1999, was a director of Gulfstream Aerospace.”

Image credit: Zambio

5. Kissinger with George H.W. Bush

George H.W. Bush has said a few negative things about Kissinger since his time in office, but his influence was nonetheless fully present in his administration. Both of them are members of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bohemian Club at the occult Northern California Bohemian Grove.

Image credit: randomhouse

6. Kissinger with Ronald Reagan

This is Henry Kissinger in the residence of Ronald Reagan, having a very intimate meeting. While being a consultant for Goldman Sachs and a power player financially during the 1980’s, Reagan appointed Henry Kissinger to be a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

During all this in the 1980’s, Kissinger was quietly building up his power even further. According to Democratic Underground:

“Kissinger founded the New York-based consulting firm Kissinger Associates in 1982, a year before accepting the position as head of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America. And, beginning in 1986, Kissinger Associates became entangled with the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

BCCI was a Pakistani-managed, Middle East-financed bank with branches in 70 countries. In a nutshell, BCCI’s purpose was “stealing very large amounts of money and using it for a multitude of illegal purposes, perverting governments, corrupting politicians, corrupting regulators, corrupting bank regulators,” according to Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Truell.

In 1986-1989, BCCI initiated a series of contacts with Kissinger Associates. Over several months, representatives of BCCI and representatives of Kissinger Associates explored the possibilities for joint projects. Following BCCI’s indictment in 1988, representatives continued to meet to discuss how Kissinger Associates might help BCCI respond to the indictment. Kissinger ended these discussions in 1989, according to Kissinger.”

7. Kissinger with Jimmy Carter

Even before Carter became president, articles were being written about his communication with Henry Kissinger. According to a 1976 New York Times article:

“Former Governor Jimmy Carter, fleshing out his key theme of promoting closer cooperation among industrial democracies, invited comparison yesterday with Secretary of Slate Henry

A. Kissinger. to emphasize his News promise of an open Analysis administration, Mr. Carter moved step closer to making the Secretary a campaign issue. Without citing Mr. Kissinger by name, he referred to a “secretive ‘Lone Range:’ foreign policy.””

8. Kissinger with Gerald Ford

Gerald Ford became president after Nixon’s administration started to fall apart, and Kissinger was of course Secretary of State during Nixon’s administration.

Guess who got in as Vice President after Gerald got in, and Nixon got out? A well connected, powerful Rockefeller named Nelson Rockefeller. He was David Rockefeller’s brother.

Kissinger always represented the Rockefeller agenda in his moves, and way back in the mid 1970’s, he got the brother of David Rockefeller in as the Vice President of the United States.

9. Kissinger with Richard Nixon

It’s obvious that Kissinger would be photographed with Nixon, being his Secretary of State. What people may not know, is some of the atrocious things that happened as a result of Kissinger’s decisions. According to Democratic Underground:

However, let’s not forget that Kissinger and Nixon were responsible for widening the Vietnam War into Cambodia.

Let’s not forget the covert actions that led to the overthrow of socialist President Salvador Allende of Chile and the ascension of the oppressive Augusto Pinochet.

Let’s not forget East Timor. During a state visit to Jakarta in 1975, Kissinger gave a “green light” to the Indonesian dictator Suharto to invade East Timor. Less than a day after Kissinger and President Gerald Ford left Jakarta, Suharto’s troops began their assault. According to Christopher Hitchens, a quarter of a million Timorese died as a result of the occupation by Indonesia.

Kissinger left government service at the end of the Ford Administration, but was called upon by Ronald Reagan in 1983 to head the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, just in time for the Iran-Contra scheme. From 1984-1990 he served as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.”

10. Kissinger with Lyndon B. Johnson

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, who immediately became president and held that position until nearly the end of the 1960’s? Lyndon B. Johnson, who opened the gates for Kissinger to enter the political arena.

The story here is much more than can fit into this article. A little bit of research will bring you a long way.

Henry Kissinger with David Rockefeller

This is the type of man who Henry Kissinger truly worked for. He got David’s brother Nelson in as Vice President (or at least had a significant influence on that), and he has been tapped into the agenda of these people for his entire life following that era.

In conclusion, always remember to look for the higher echelons of power, beyond the fake left-right paradigm.

They claim Henry Kissinger is a Republican, yet he’s close enough with Hillary Clinton to, insert metaphor here: the point is, don’t trust the left or the right and look higher up the ladder. You’ll find people like this, and they are tapped into people who prefer to stay out of the public spotlight.

from:    https://themindunleashed.com/2018/07/in-54-years-1-advisor-has-influenced-every-single-us-president-photos.html

Towards Decentralization

Is This The Century of Secession?

By Jon Rappoport

Here is the political question of our time: Will it be one future for all, or many futures side by side? Read on.

—Any movement toward secession is a good thing, no matter how ill-conceived. It puts a different idea in minds: defect, decentralize, opt out, strive to become more self-sufficient. This idea can spawn many new strategies, over the long run.

For example, there is a lot of noise about California seceding from the Union.

One plan would split the state up into three parts. This is currently the strongest initiative, because those three parts wouldn’t actually secede; they would become new states.

However, Congress has to OK the formation of new states, and it will never do so.

All this interesting and fertile chaos obscures something else that is happening in California. The Mercury News reports (4/24/18):

“At least 14 Southern California cities and two counties have passed ordinances, and in some cases filed lawsuits, against the state’s controversial sanctuary laws that largely prohibit local and state authorities from cooperating with federal immigration officers [who want to deport illegal immigrants].”

“While the anti-sanctuary wave is rolling across some of California’s most Republican strongholds [Orange and San Diego counties], they aren’t an aftershock from the 2016 election: Democrat Hillary Clinton trounced Trump in Orange County by 8 percentage points and San Diego County by 20 percentage points [if you believe the legitimacy of the vote count].”

According to the Mercury News, here are the local entities that have rebelled against California sanctuary-immigration policy:

Orange County Board of Supervisors
San Diego County Board of Supervisors
Beaumont — Riverside County
Dana Point — Orange County
Ripon — San Joaquin County
Los Alamitos — Orange County
Laguna Niguel — Orange County
San Juan Capistrano — Orange County
Aliso Viejo — Orange County
Mission Viejo — Orange County
Yorba Linda — Orange County
Newport Beach — Orange County
Westminster — Orange County
Huntington Beach — Orange County
Orange — Orange, County
Fountain Valley — Orange County
Escondido –San Diego County

This is where the action is. This movement has legs. It could spread even further.

For example, suppose these rebelling communities get together? Suppose a few leaders have working imaginations? Who knows what they might come up with?

Suppose a few communities in CA decide they don’t like the state’s mandatory child-vaccine law, and they want to refuse its provisions?

One idea (even an unworkable one) gives birth to other ideas. A contagion begins. For example, people consider the original notion of limited government and a Constitutional Republic. Unconscionable government meddlers are seen as meddlers and criminals. A wave builds. People experience glimpses of freedom. They hunger for more. They feel something new stirring in their bones.

They contemplate the possibility that doom is not inevitable.

What would 1776 look like, and how might it play out, today, in a state (California) that once celebrated cutting-edge innovation, before an elite fungal infection rolled in?

The best estimate of the 13 colonies’ population in 1776 is 2.5 million. A federal Republic was designed for a small group, not 325 million people. Jefferson envisioned a ladder of independent Republics—from village to ward to county to state to federal—each emphasizing freedom of the individual, each hamstringing the power of government to the strictest degree possible.

He was not alone. The whole freedom movement of the time was conscious of the danger of unchecked government and corporate control.

It fell to state legislatures to limit corporations by chartering them to do business. If a corporation harmed the public good, the legislature could, without a trial, exile it from the state. This was in line with the prevailing concept (eventually overturned by corrupt judges and business monopolists) that a corporation was not a person, and did not have the rights of an individual.

Any effort in the direction of DECENTRALIZATION is a good thing. We are long overdue in that regard.

And as far Europe is concerned—the countries who birthed the idea of individual freedom after centuries of struggle—from whom the American Founders took their political innovations—the present European Union is a lurching monster—it is a direct contradiction to the profound concept of liberty. It should be repealed on every front and summarily dumped and left at the side of the road—a relic of fascism that once posed as a purveyor of the public good.

DECENTRALIZATION really becomes fascinating when you consider the formation of intentional communities based on political ideas of every stripe. The inhabitants themselves decide the principles that apply. Some version of share and care and equality for all? A Constitutional Republic? A monarchy? Experiments proliferate and stand and fall on their own. With the advance of technology, it’s possible to outfit a local community with its own power supply, its own digital platforms, etc., on behalf of increased self-sufficiency.

The octopoid reach of overweening central governments loses strength. New cultures evolve, side by side. Whatever shapes the political structures of communities take, the underlying effort is pro-independence.

That would be authentic secession.

The vector moves toward the individual and away from the collective.

On the education front, this is already happening, as parents, disgusted with the crime, drugs, social indoctrination, and political correctness in public brainwashing centers, are opting for home schooling.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the so-called Health Freedom movement has been expanding for many decades. It is based on the concept that every person has the right to manage his own health and seek out unconventional treatments. Despite government efforts to corral the population into Big Pharma medicine, citizens have broken out of that mold. In a big way.

Then there is “alternative news.” Untold numbers of decentralized outlets have bloomed across the world. Of course, they are labeled “fake news,” because the mainstream monopolists are terrified they are losing their grip on the minds of populations. In 2001, when I launched my site, nomorefakenews.com, I was acutely aware of mainstream brainwashing in the arena of information. I defected from print journalism and went out on my own. Seventeen years later, I’m still here.

Decentralization on every front is occurring. It isn’t always pretty, and it isn’t always on target, but that’s what you get when you get freedom. Life pushes through worn ground and explores new possibilities.

It all comes back to the individual mind. Is that mind free and wide-ranging or is it programmed? When free minds cooperate, the choices are extensive, and success is possible in many directions.

DECENTRALIZATION IS ALL ABOUT IMAGINATION. That is the key. When individuals conceive the futures they want, by imagining and projecting them, doors and windows into the future open. Not one future for all—but many futures side by side.

One future for all is the totalitarian nightmare. The Globalist nightmare.

Cracking that monolith is the job of this century.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

from:    https://www.activistpost.com/2018/06/is-this-the-century-of-secession.html

September Beacons of Light fr/The Group

Beacons of Light
September 2015
Presented Live 08/29/2015

Get On With It
The Great Frustration

Greetings from Home, Dear Ones.

You are magic. Each of you holds a special form of magic, something that you specifically brought from Home. You intended to focus your entire life on bringing it to Earth, and you are starting to re-member that in new ways. This is a magical time on Earth, dear ones, where each of you can start to re-member your true power and step into it even the tiniest bit. Your actions and commitment are what creates your world in front of you, for these are new times. We will share a little bit of what lies before you right now so that you can view it from our perspective. When you do this, dear ones, you fall in love with humanity. There are times when you turn on your television sets and see that the world according to your belief systems is a mess. It appears everyone is going in different directions. Although you cannot see what is truly taking place, we do so we will share that with you. These are amazing times that may also a little bit challenging for many of you. You do not quite understand what is taking place. These changes are happening in many different areas simultaneously, but we will only share with you one that is making a difference in your own reality.

Many Governments Do Not Represent the Collective Heart of Humanity

You have this wonderful thing taking place in the United States called your presidential elections. Oh my goodness, we cannot wait to watch all of this mayhem that you are preparing. This is a massive journey into what we are not quite sure. In the beginning you used these elections to choose the best person for the job. Of course, over many decades it has turned into something entirely different. So, let us take you back quite a few years to when this change started to take place. It was actually during the early 1960s when you had a presidential election between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. This election was actually decided for the simple reason that one was able to present himself better on television than the other. That experience had a huge effect for the first time in the collective. Most of the people you have chosen to run your governments are lawyers. They have a history of all this understanding behind them. Why would it be that one must be a lawyer to run your countries? That would simply indicate that everything must go through the legal system. What has happened, dear ones, is that in many places in the world your governments no longer represent the collective heart of humanity. As we have very simply shared with you before, it is the collective heart of humanity that will run and rule. Now what you are seeing is your governments are trying to scamper to get in front of this. Your presidential elections in the United States are a very simple example of this happening.   All these people are jumping in front of the camera presenting themselves very well and confidently what they are saying does not always make sense. Why are so many people backing and encouraging them? Because they are channeling the frustration. It is very simple. They are the only ones that have even addressed this frustration. There is a gap in the middle of your economic system, where your middle class should be but quite simply is not. Why are your governments not representing you in that way? You have turned this into a capitalistic system and, therefore, the money speaks louder than the collective. That is in the process of changing.

Money Speaking Louder Than the Collective

Exactly how this change takes place we will have to wait and see. It could possibly result be a complete collapse of the system then rebuilding it on solid ground, which in our estimation is not a bad thing at all. We wish you would just get on with it! Or, you can continue to prop things up and pretend everything is okay, and actually make small changes along the way to evolve it in that way. We tell you, dear ones, the earlier method is currently underway but we will have to wait and see where this goes.  What about this frustration and why is it there? Quite simply, you have turned everything—especially in this area—into something based everything on capitalism. Capitalism was the most important piece and you have brought it into your government, In truth, through your systems, those that speak the loudest tend to get elected. Well, you are about to see how loud people can speak. In fact, you will actually end up voting most of the time by turning the channel because it will get pretty crazy over the next year. When you turn the channel, most of the time they actually know it. Yes, your voice can be heard in different ways, dear ones. Right now, it is a circus but it is fun and interesting to watch. Does it represent what is taking place? It represents the frustration that is still not being addressed.

The People’s Frustration

Why is there so much frustration? A person can see very clearly where the frustrations come from. You had an election at one point where your entire collective decided on one person, but another person became president. You can feel that your government does not actually represent you; it has more to do with those who are paid by these companies to be lobbyists. Those are the people that fill these gaps and move your government one way or the other with corporate money. Now you are at a point where you are going to make some important decisions. We are specifically talking about the United States at this time, but as you know all of your energies are connected especially through your economic systems. So, what is good for one is actually good for all countries. The whole world is watching these changes as they are evolving, because everyone will affect another one. We can hardly wait to see where you go with this. We see none of this as bad and it might help you to keep that in mind, because our vision is further than yours. We can see what you build on the other side and that is why we hope you just get on with it and take that next step. Above all we hope that your governments are able to adjust  quickly enough, because currently they are not listening.

Let Your Collective Voice Be Heard

Now you have a fresh energy of new people coming in. The good part about that, at least in the United States, is that your collective voice is being heard right now. That is fascinating, for all of this is bringing attention to something that has vanished. Many people have felt like, “Oh, that is just them. They will go do their thing anyway. They do not need me to participate.” Dear ones, they do need you. You are part of the collective in more ways than you can imagine. To express your voice in that collective is going to be one of the greatest possibilities that you have. You will create your world on a small scale, as well as on a large one where you will interact with the others. It is how you all come together at these magical times. Dare to dream. Dare to bring back your hopes. Look into the future and dare to plant the greatest possibilities for yourself at that moment. Treat yourself well knowing that you are a creature carrying all the energy of what you call god. Each of you can start using those abilities to create your world around you. When you reach that highest level to where you have created something that fully supports you, that is the time you become the highest use to the universe.  are Those times are happening right now.

It Is Time to Get On With It

So, we will ask you, what will it take in your life to get on with it and take that next step? Are you waiting for an election or for some door to magically open? We tell you, dear ones, you have that opportunity now…very clearly. Step into it. Claim it. Step forward. Each of you has brought a part of the blueprints for the New Earth from Home. Now you may call it your internal truth, but it only fits together when you can speak it in such a way that it fits together with the other truths around you. How do you do that? Very simple. Practice. That is all there is. Keep trying and step forward in love, then you will start to fill some of these gaps where this frustration is. How can this frustration about this middle level be solved? Through creativity, and through giving them a voice. Giving them the power to re-create. Of course when we speak of them, many of them are you. Channel it and do so in a very positive way. Look for change, absolutely. There are many shifts and rapid changes that need to take place in your systems in order to transition from one area to the next. We see those about to begin, though not yet beginning. The beautiful part is that the collective vibration is making a noise that cannot be misunderstood on this Earth. People are starting to step forward very carefully, knowing that every movement they make affects others around them. Your own vagus nerve is starting to evolve so you can feel that compassion even more throughout all humans. This is part of the lightbody returning that humans are now experiencing. You can hold more of your own light.  What we ask you to do dear ones, is get on with it. Step forward. Step up. Here it comes. Deal with it the best you can and do not wait for the perfect opportunity, for it is here, now. You have so much that is taking place, yet what you may not understand is that you are in charge of all of it. The collective vibration now decides. That means if you choose to be quiet, you give up your power. It is time to speak, and step forward, to claim your willingness and your wisdom. Not that it is always perfect, but unless it is offered up there is no possibility of reaching harmony.

A Critical Date

Bring it forward. In these times, dear ones, you will be well guided. Sometimes you will open your mouth with a clear intent of your heart to speak something, but you will not quite know where the words are in your head. So you will start to channel from the heart in a new way, which is the opportunity for spirit to speak clearly through you. As you devise and develop this new way of working together in the new planet Earth, we can hardly wait to see what you do next. We tell you specifically that we have given you a date to watch for, the second week in November was to be a critical tilting point. At the time we gave you that date it had to do with the Federal Reserve making a specific move at the end of October. Now, we tell you that has already passed and you have already moved that critical date. Not out of trouble but moving in the right direction. Yes, you had a little dip in the energies in the meantime, showing some of the weaknesses in the global economies in the world and China has a big part of that. Work together with it, dear ones. Send them energy and wish them the best. Know that you are all connected. Stop pointing fingers and calling yourselves separate and claim responsibility for all of it. That is the way of the new Earth, knowing that you are part of every piece of it. Claim your failures as well as your success because that is how you grow and just enjoy playing the game. It is time to get on with it.

It is with the greatest of honor that we ask you to treat each other with respect. Nurture one another at every opportunity. Play the new game well together.

Espavo, dear ones

The group.

The word Espavo is an early Lemurian greeting : “Thank You for Taking Your Power”

– See more at: http://www.lightworker.com/beacons/2015/2015_09-Get_On_With_It.php#sthash.W0ZGQ2t4.dpuf

Sanders and Trump – Wild Cards

America

The refreshing surge of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump: America tires of the same old insider corruption and idiocy offered by Clinton and Bush

(NaturalNews) I don’t usually cover pure politics here on Natural News, but watching the surge of Bernie Sanders (on the left) and Donald Trump (on the right) is so refreshing that I had to share it with you. It turns out these two have a lot more in common than you might expect.

They’re both independent-minded individuals who aren’t afraid to buck the system… or even to threaten it! Sanders openly talks about obliterating Wall Street capitalist cronies while Donald Trump openly threatens to build a giant wall on the border to block illegal immigration. These aren’t cowardly, mainstream ideas; they’re bold, controversial positions that simply aren’t designed to appease the middle ground.

Both of these ideas are, of course, viciously attacked by the corporate-controlled lamestream media. Yet despite the attacks, both Sanders and Trump are surging in popularity. In fact, both are now leading the pack for their respective parties, according to some polls. See Donald Trump Leads The Pack as GOP Frontrunner at Breitbart.com.

Compare the bold, striking words of Sanders and Trump to the banal speeches and relentless lies of Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush — two lifelong politicians whose only goal is to appease everyone at all times, even if it means making different promises to different crowds in different cities on different days. Hillary Clinton, in particular, is a pathological liar who, if elected, would run the White House like a mafia don.

Clinton and Bush are the very faces of government corruption, deception and tyranny. If either one of these gets elected in 2016, America is finished. Only a new face and a new direction have any hope of rescuing America from the disastrous economic death spiral it’s currently experiencing.

Why America needs bold leadership

Bernie Sanders calls himself a “democratic socialist.” He’s pro-people, anti-corporate-corruption and pro-Big Government. Donald Trump calls himself a Republican, but he’s really more of an economic libertarian. Egoistic and forthright, he might actually be the perfect “in your face” kind of leader to go up against the likes of Russian President Putin, who thinks of politicians like Obama as being wussified wimps.

In a time of global turmoil in the Ukraine and the Middle East, an economic implosion unraveling in the EU, and Iran being on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons — which the Obama administration has actually encouraged — America needs somebody BOLD… somebody with a spine who won’t pander to the politically correct media.

America can’t survive another status quo corrupt politician that betrays the People to the insane corporations and war mongers who currently run the show. Every vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for Monsanto, and every vote for Jeb Bush is a vote for endless war and the continued rise of the Orwellian police state. (It’s all for your “national security,” didn’t you know?)

The only people who currently support Jeb Bush are the politically clueless lifelong Republican ticket voters who are totally ignorant of what Bush actually stands for. And the only people who would vote for Hillary Clinton are totally clueless, low-information voters who are so cognitively impaired that they couldn’t even spell “Clinton” if you asked them.

How Bernie Sanders may topple Clinton

In an article entitled “This Is How Hillary Loses the Primary,” Stuart Stevens writes:

Something remarkable is happening in American politics. For the first time in our history, a socialist is running a close second and gaining ground on the front-runner in a presidential race.

Anyway you look at it, Senator Bernie Sanders is making history and may very well play a deciding role in who will be the next president.

As Stevens explains, Bernie Sanders is now looking likely to beat out Hillary Clinton for the democratic primary. But Sanders himself is very unlikely to win against any Republican contender, meaning Sanders could play the role of a “Clinton spoiler.”

Bernie Sanders, in other words, is the Democrats’ Ross Perot. Except Ross Perot was absolutely correct about so-called “free trade” gutting the U.S. economy. Bernie Sanders’ economic policies are far more “Big Government” oriented and likely to push America even more aggressively toward economic implosion.

Then again, perhaps America’s left-wing political leaders can simply invoke China’s stock market genius of threatening to arrest anyone who SELLS stocks, thereby propping up delusional valuations at gunpoint.

Curious 2015 Cover of Economist

The Economist 2015 Cover is Filled With Cryptic Symbols and Dire Predictions

Jan 8th, 2015

The magazine The Economist published an issue named “The World in 2015″. On the cover are odd images :  A mushroom cloud, the Federal Reserve in a game called “Panic” and much more.

leadeconomist

I wouldn’t normally dedicate an entire article analyzing the cover of a publication, but this isn’t any publication. It is The Economist and it is directly related to the world elite. It is partly owned by the Rothschild banking family of England and its editor-in-chief, John Micklethwait, attended several times to the Bilderberg Conference – the secretive meeting where the world’s most powerful figures from the world of politics, finance business and media discuss global policies. The outcome of those meetings is totally secret. It is therefore safe to say that the people at The Economist know things that most people don’t. For this reason, its “2015 prediction” cover is rather puzzling.

The bleak and sinister cover features political figures, fictional characters and pop culture icons that will surely make the news in 2015. However, most importantly, it also includes several drawings that are extremely symbolic and allude to important elements of the elite’s Agenda. Here’s the cover :

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(You can view a larger version of the cover here).

At first glance, we see political figures like Obama and Putin, references to the Rugby cup and the new Spider-Man movie. But a closer look reveals a plethora of disturbing elements. Here are some of them.

Two-Faced Globe

world

One side of the globe gazes stoically towards the West while the other side appears irate. Does this represent a confrontation between the East and the West? The cover features a few other symbols referring to the “rise of the East”. What’s more unsettling is that, immediately under that angry globe, are pictured a mushroom cloud (the kind that happens after a nuclear bomb goes off) and a spy satellite launching into space.

High tech surveillance and nuclear warfare. The Economist is not very optimistic.

The Color of the Faces

Take a closer look at the faces of the personalities featured on the cover. Some of them are in full color while others are in black and white. Why is that?

faces

Among those in black in white are Putin, Merkel, Obama, Hilary Clinton and David Cameron. Among those in color are David Blaine, a young person holding a “Singapore” banner (Singapore is the host of the 2015 SEA games) and a random guy wearing virtual reality equipment. A quick compilation of this data reveals that those in black and white appear to be part of the elite (including the ISIS guy who probably works for them) and those in color are “outsiders”. Is this how the elite perceives the world?

Pied Piper

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The presence of the Pied Piper on this 2015-themed cover is downright unsettling. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a German legend about a man who used his magical flute to lure away the children of the city of Hamelin, never to be seen again.

The Pied Piper leads the children out of Hamelin. Illustration by Kate Greenaway for Robert Browning's "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"

This folkloric figure dating from the Middle-Ages is said to represent either massive death by plague or catastrophe, or a movement of massive immigration. It also perfectly represents today’s youth being “lured” and mystified by the “music” of mass media. Conveniently enough, there’s a small boy right under the Piper’s flute.

Clueless Boy

boy

Right under the Pied Piper we see a young boy with dumbfounded look on his face. He is watching a game called “Panic”. The words “Federal Reserve” and “Chi” (which probably stands for China) are on top while the words “Green light!” and “sis!” (which probably stands for “Isis!” or “Crisis!”) are at the bottom. The little boy watches as this twisted game of Plinko unfolds the same way the clueless masses watch powerlessly while various events unfold on mass media. As the name of the game states, the ultimate goal is to cause Panic around the world as crises are almost randomly generated by those who control the game. And that’s on a magazine cover owned by the Rothschilds.

Crop-O-Dust

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In front of Putin is a small aircraft on which is written Crop-O-Dust. This refers to the concept of crop dusting which is “the process of spraying crops with powdered insecticides or fungicides from an aircraft.” Right under the helicopter is a kid … eating something. Unsettling.

kid

China

china

A panda bear wearing a China-flag Speedo while flexing its muscles is a rather clear way of portraying the fact that China is gaining power. Next to it is a sumo wrestler holding a big battery on which the polarities (+ and -) are clearly indicated. Are they alluding to a switch in polarity in world power from the West to the East?

Ghost

ghost

Emerging from behind Obama’s leg is a ghost reading a magazine entitled “Holiday”. Why is this ghost, which represents a dead person, planning a vacation? Does it represent the fact that the masses will be so impoverished that the only time they’ll be on a holiday is when they’re dead? Does it relate to the countless people who died while traveling in the past months? Creepy.

Turtle

turtle

Standing in front of everything else, gazing right into our souls is a turtle with emphasis lines around its shell. What does it represent? Will turtles make a huge comeback in 2015? Probably not.

An angry tortoise is the symbol of the Fabian Society, an extremely powerful organization that has been working for over a century towards to formation of a single world government.

when i strike i strike hard.jpg

The philosophy behind Fabian socialism is basically the blueprint of what we call today the New World Order.

The Fabian Society is a very old group originating in England in 1884, with the purpose of forming a single, global socialist state. They get their name from the Roman general Fabius, who used carefully planned strategies to slowly wear down his enemies over a long period of time to obtain victory. “Fabian Socialism” uses incremental change over a long period of time to slowly transform a state as opposed to using violent revolution for change. It is essentially socialism by stealth. Their original emblem was a shield with a wolf in sheep’s clothing holding a flag with the letters F.S. Today the international symbol of the Fabian Society is a turtle, with the motto below: “When I strike, I strike hard.”
– The Fabian Society, The Weather Eye

The Fabian Society used to openly advocate a scientifically planned society and supported eugenics by way of sterilization. Its original logo was a wolf in sheep’s clothing … But I guess that was not the best way to conceal the wolf from the masses.

The original logo of the Fabian Society was a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Bringing forth a global system through small incremental changes is exactly what the world elite is currently doing. This is probably why there’s an angry tortoise on the cover of this Bilderberg-connected publication – standing in front of the chaos behind it.

11.3 and 11.5

dirt

The lower right side of the cover features some more cryptic symbols. There’s a pile of dirt on the ground and two arrows on which are inscribed 11.5 and 11.3. Are those dates to remember? Why are they next to a pile of dirt? If you look up these figures as coordinates, they point to somewhere in Nigeria. Displaying numbers that can only be truly understood by “those in the know” is one of the occult elite’s favorite hobbies.

Standing in front of the dirt is Alice in Wonderland looking upwards towards the Cheshire Cat.

cat

This iconic cat is known for disappearing entirely, leaving only visible its creepy grin. We therefore see another allusion to a world of fantasy, illusion and deceit as perceived by Alice – a representative of the masses. Along with the somewhat unnecessary inclusion of David Blaine – a magician – the cover mixes real world events with illusions.

Other notable symbols on this cover include a piggy bank flying from James Cameron’s pockets;  A model wearing an Alexander McQueen creation (the elite’s favorite designer who died in strange circumstances) and an Asian officer wearing a facemask to protect him from a deadly disease.

2015 seems great, doesn’t it?

In Conclusion

The Economist is not a random newspaper that publishes quirky 2015 predictions to sell a few additional copies. It is directly connected to those who shape global policies and who make sure that they are applied. The publication is partly owned by the Rothschild banking family of England and its editor regularly attends Bilderberg meetings. In other words, The Economist is connected to those who have the means and the power to make “predictions” a reality.

The 2015-themed cover basically reflects the overall Agenda of the elite and is peppered with cryptic symbols that appear to be included for “those in the know”. And the masses, like Alice watching the Cheshire Cat disappear, will focus on illusions while the wolf in sheep’s clothing will strike … and strike hard.

from:    http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/economist-2015-cover-filled-cryptic-symbols-dire-predictions/

Obamacare = Nightmare?

 

Why is Obamacare so unaffordable? Because it was conceived as a political weapon of mass economic destruction

Wednesday, September 25, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) Right now, all across America, employees are receiving notices that their insurance coverage is being dropped because it isn’t “compliant” with Obamacare. Simultaneously, employers everywhere are slashing jobs, cutting hours and downsizing their operations just to stay afloat by avoiding the most punishing requirements of Obamacare. Across the economy, Obamacare is devastating American workers and casting tens of millions of people into a state of despair.

Why is Obamacare — the “Affordable Care Act” — so unaffordable? Why is it causing jobs, hours and insurance policies to be gutted all across America? Because it was designed as a political weapon to destroy private sector jobs so that more people would become dependent on government entitlements, food stamps and welfare programs.

Mass victimization is a political strategy, and Obamacare is the weapon

It’s time you learned the truth about Obamacare and how victimization is a political “weapon of mass destruction.” The Democratic party thrives primarily on victimization. The more destitute workers become, the more they demand handouts from politicians, and no party is more willing to widely distribute handouts than the Democratic party. Ensnaring people in a cycle of poverty and dependence is the democrats’ long-term re-election strategy. The more people who live in poverty, in other words, the more powerful the Democrats become.

(In fairness, the Republicans’ long-term re-election strategy is to ensnare nations in endless wars, conflict and engineered terrorism. But that’s another article altogether. For the record, I endorse the platform of the Canary Party.)

Because of this dynamic, the Democratic party is terrified by individuals who can take care of themselves. Self-empowered people quickly learn they don’t need as much government in their lives, and they tend to vote for smaller government. But people who are in a state of constant crisis from losing their job, getting their hours cut or losing their health insurance automatically turn to big government for help. They demand more government and more assistance programs, and this reliably translates into more democrats getting voted into office on election day.

From the very start, the Obamacare plan was to thrust American workers into a state of despair and panic by making health insurance all but unaffordable to employers. To top off the scheme, the entire charade was named the “Affordable Care Act” to fool the masses into initially supporting it. (Beware of the name of any 1,000-page act passed by Congress. They are almost universally named the opposite of what they actually accomplish…)

The ploy succeeded, and now millions of American workers are just beginning to wake up and realize, “Hey! We’ve been lied to!”

The real disaster begins October 1

Just how bad is Obamacare, really? It’s so bad that Congress recently conspired with the White House to make sure all members of Congress are exempted from its core mandates. This means Congress won’t be using the same health care system they have forced upon everyone else. How’s that for integrity?

In just a few days, the nation is going to find out just what a mess Obamacare really is. October 1 is the day the so-called “Obamacare exchanges” are supposed to be open for business. It’s also the day when the train wreck really begins, so expect all sorts of glitches, failures, privacy breaches and other electronic problems to appear.

In the exchanges that do work, you’re going to find sky-high prices for coverage that, in many cases, double or triple what you’ve been paying. How’s that for “affordable care?”

In an effort to cover up the reality of all this, the Obama administration has been cherry picking numbers from selected examples and publicizing those to try to deceive the country into thinking those are the rates everyone else will be paying, too. In reality, health insurance rates are going to shock the nation in a week or so, and at that point the false cover-up can no longer be maintained. Expect the mainstream media to pull another Orwellian sleight-of-mind trick and try to convince people that their doubled or triples health insurance rates are somehow “lower.” (This trick might actually work, since most voters are utterly unable to do math anyway. Concepts of “higher” or “lower” may no longer be comprehended by the average American worker / voter.)

As I write this, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz is engaged in an all-night action in the U.S. Senate that looks a lot like a filibuster. He’s demanding that Obamacare be de-funded as a condition for passing a higher debt ceiling for federal spending. The House has already voted to de-fund Obamacare, and it looks like Republicans and Democrats are once again playing chicken to see who will take the blame if the government really does get shut down.

The correct answer is that Republicans will be blamed because the mainstream media is still in Obama’s back pocket even as he has pushed America’s national debt way past $16 trillion. But because mainstream reporters can’t do math and have no idea what a “trillion” really is, these mathematical realities don’t compute with them, and the brush off the whole concept of national debt as if the laws of economics could be selectively ignored at will.

Obamacare is only the first wave of economic destruction headed our way

The bottom line in all this comes down to the following:

1) Obamacare is unleashing an economic nightmare across America. Workers are being punished across the board, losing their jobs, their work hours and their insurance policies. This is happening precisely because Obamacare makes it unaffordable for many employers to cover all the required health care costs. Welcome to the “part-time society!”

2) For most people — but not everyone — Obamacare insurance rates will be much higher than what they’ve been paying. Why is this the case? Because the Obamacare system preserves and protects the Big Pharma monopoly, shoveling billions of dollars into drug companies each year under the guise of “medical treatment.” Instead of reducing health care costs, the Obamacare system is actually focused on helping Big Pharma profit from a sick-care system of ongoing chronic disease.

3) Ultimately, the financial end of America grows ever closer with each passing day. This system of unlimited debt, unlimited entitlements and unlimited spending will, of course, come to a catastrophic end. How do I know this? Because it is a simple fact of reality that all things which are unsustainable must, at some point, end. And when it comes to debt, the longer the denial, the more devastating the wake-up call.

Today, the federal government’s out-of-control debt spending is, by all accounts, unsustainable. The only real question is how long they can keep the faith-based Ponzi scheme running before the world’s central banks decide to start dumping U.S. treasury debt on the open market, at which point the house of cards implodes almost overnight.

4) Because of point #3, above, the final fact on all this is that Obamacare won’t really matter in the long run anyway because the entire federal government is headed for a debt implosion which will very likely end in some sort of wholesale downsizing of government. The insanity you are witnessing right now is indicative of the final chapter of a failed government on the verge of collapsing into ruin. When that day arrives, expect short-term social chaos followed by long-term abundance as principles of economic liberty are finally restored.

Have a backup plan

Please understand there is no turning back for America now. Power-hungry politicians and a brain-dead mainstream media have held us all hostage to an agenda of planned economic destruction. At this point, there is no reform that can halt the inevitable implosion. The dominoes are falling and cannot be stopped. As much as I admire the backbone of real constitutional leaders in Washington like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, they are nonetheless too little, too late.

As I’ve said for the past year or so, the real focus for the rest of us should be how to survive the day that the federal food stamp program is turned off. The day the food stamp benefit cards stop working is the day a countdown is initiated that will end in riots rolling out across every major U.S. city. That countdown might be somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 – 9 days, give or take. It all depends on how hungry people get and whether the weather is hot or cold. (Hot weather leads to far more riots. Cold weather tends to keep people inside. The most dangerous scenario is economic collapse during the summer months.)

I urge you to realize that America is quite literally one database away from collapsing into social chaos. (The SNAP food stamp database.) When the funds are turned off from that database, and tens of millions of SNAP debit cards stop working across America, that’s the day you’ll understand just how much damage Obama and others like him have done to our nation.

Prepare now and be safe, folks. The insanity has only just begun. It’s gonna get a whole lot crazier before things turn around.

On the Importance of Women Voters

Lisa Belkin

Senior Columnist on Life/Work/Family, The Huffington Post

Women Voters Won Last Night — But Did Anyone Get The Message?

Posted: 11/07/2012 12:31 pm
Women voters were the prize in the 2012 campaign. They turn out in higher numbers than men and it has long been impossible to win an election without

And yet, for far too long, candidates seemed to think women’s votes could be gotten with good looks (most recently the Wisconsin ad urging women to “Vote for the cute one,” before that the selection of Dan Quayle because, as one prominent Republican noted at the time “I can’t believe a guy that handsome wouldn’t have some impact”) or a pandering placement on the ticket (hello, Sarah Palin), or by spending a lot of time calling us Mom.

Perhaps last night they finally gotten the message. Or, messages:

You don’t win if you dismiss us. Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” struck a chord because it felt like a rare moment of candor. He seemed to see us as a box to be checked. A former governor who appointed competent, talented women to his cabinet because he saw them as integral and intrinsic to governing rather than tokens of their gender would never have used those words.

You don’t win if you think you know more about our bodies than we do. Especially if you are horrifyingly wrong. Todd Akin proved that when Missouri voters rebuked him for saying that pregnancy rarely results from “legitimate rape” because a woman’s body “has ways to shut the whole thing down.”  (It didn’t help that he later explained he was confident he would win because opponent Claire McCaskill did not appear “ladylike” during their September debate, and went on to compare her to a dog.)

You don’t win if you equate rape with anything other than the evil that it is.  Defeated Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock knows that now, after saying that pregnancies resulting from rape are  “something that God intended to happen.”

You probably shouldn’t joke about birth control, either. We take it very, very seriously. We made that clear during the primaries when Foster Friess, the wealthy Rick Santorum supporter, tried to distract us from his candidate’s archaic stance on contraception, saying “back in my days, they’d use Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.” (It wasn’t just women, of course, who joined the firestorm of response on Facebook and Twitter. Men made it clear that they care about birth control, too.)

It should go without saying, but you don’t win just because you are a woman. Linda McMahon learned that in Connecticut, as did Heather Wilson in New Mexico and Shelley Berkley in Nevada. Tellingly, when women ran against women, it was the candidates who were championed women’s rights who tended to win: pro-choice women, supported by such organizations as Emily’s List, beat Republican women for Senate in California, New York and Hawaii.

We are not single issue voters and don’t respond well to being viewed as such. Policies about our bodies are not the only questions we take to the voting booth. But even if what tipped us was the economy, or the war, or climate change, our world view as women — or, more accurately, how the political world viewed us as women — seeped into how we processed this campaign. There were candidates who respected us and others who insulted us. With few exceptions (Michele Bachmann comes to mind), respect won.

Partly because many candidates failed to hear or heed the messages above, this newly elected 113th Congress will include 19 women senators, the largest number in history. (Yes, it is still absurdly low in a country where half the population is female — equally baffling is why so many states had no women candidates in any race — but it’s a start.)

New Hampshire, in turn, will be represented at the highest levels entirely by women — Democrat Maggie Hassan is governor elect, and two congresswomen will join the two female senators who already represent the state.

And President Obama arguably owes his re-election to women. He won with an 18-point gender gap nationwide, making victory possible in several key swing states  including Ohio (where he led by 12 percent among women) and Pennsylvania (where women preferred him by 16 percent).

Heady stuff, right? The ultimate proof of the power of women? Perhaps. We certainly got their attention over the past year, when women’s issues took center stage more than any campaign in history. But attention from a candidate is not the same as action from an elected representative, and the real test will be what happens next.

Politicians talked to women, about women and at women when they wanted our vote. Now they have to talk with women if they want to keep our support

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-belkin/women-voters-won-candidates-listening_b_2088705.html

FACTS RIP 4.18.2012

Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012

In memoriam: After years of health problems, Facts has finally died.

By Rex W. Huppke, Chicago Tribune reporter

April 19, 2012

A quick review of the long and illustrious career of Facts reveals some of the world’s most cherished absolutes: Gravity makes things fall down; 2 + 2 = 4; the sky is blue.

But for many, Facts’ most memorable moments came in simple day-to-day realities, from a child’s certainty of its mother’s love to the comforting knowledge that a favorite television show would start promptly at 8 p.m.

Over the centuries, Facts became such a prevalent part of most people’s lives that Irish philosopher Edmund Burke once said: “Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.”

To the shock of most sentient beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet. Though few expected Facts to pull out of its years-long downward spiral, the official cause of death was from injuries suffered last week when Florida Republican Rep. Allen West steadfastly declared that as many as 81 of his fellow members of theU.S. House of Representatives are communists.

Facts held on for several days after that assault — brought on without a scrap of evidence or reason — before expiring peacefully at its home in a high school physics book. Facts was 2,372.

“It’s very depressing,” said Mary Poovey, a professor of English at New York University and author of “A History of the Modern Fact.” “I think the thing Americans ought to miss most about facts is the lack of agreement that there are facts. This means we will never reach consensus about anything. Tax policies, presidential candidates. We’ll never agree on anything.”

Facts was born in ancient Greece, the brainchild of famed philosopher Aristotle. Poovey said that in its youth, Facts was viewed as “universal principles that everybody agrees on” or “shared assumptions.”

But in the late 16th century, English philosopher and scientist Sir Francis Bacon took Facts under his wing and began to develop a new way of thinking.

“There was a shift of the word ‘fact’ to refer to empirical observations,” Poovey said.

Facts became concrete observations based on evidence. It was growing up.

Through the 19th and 20th centuries, Facts reached adulthood as the world underwent a shift toward proving things true through the principles of physics and mathematical modeling. There was respect for scientists as arbiters of the truth, and Facts itself reached the peak of its power.

But those halcyon days would not last.

People unable to understand how science works began to question Facts. And at the same time there was a rise in political partisanship and a growth in the number of media outlets that would disseminate information, rarely relying on feedback from Facts.

“There was an erosion of any kind of collective sense of what’s true or how you would go about verifying any truth claims,” Poovey said. “Opinion has become the new truth. And many people who already have opinions see in the ‘news’ an affirmation of the opinion they already had, and that confirms their opinion as fact.”

Though weakened, Facts managed to persevere through the last two decades, despite historic setbacks that included President Bill Clinton‘s affair with Monica Lewinsky, the justification for PresidentGeorge W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and the debate over President Barack Obama’s American citizenship.

Facts was wounded repeatedly throughout the recent GOP primary campaign, near fatally when Michele Bachmann claimed a vaccine for a sexually transmitted diseas ecauses mental retardation. In December, Facts was briefly hospitalized after MSNBC’serroneous report that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney‘s campaign was using an expression once used by the Ku Klux Klan.

But friends and relatives of Facts said Rep. West’s claim that dozens of Democratic politicians are communists was simply too much for the aging concept to overcome.

As the world mourned Wednesday, some were unwilling to believe Facts was actually gone.

Gary Alan Fine, the John Evans Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University, said: “Facts aren’t dead. If anything, there are too many of them out there. There has been a population explosion.”

Fine pointed to one of Facts’ greatest battles, the debate over global warming.

“There are all kinds of studies out there,” he said. “There is more than enough information to make any case you want to make. There may be a preponderance of evidence and there are communities that decide something is a fact, but there are enough facts that people who are opposed to that claim have their own facts to rely on.”

To some, Fine’s insistence on Facts’ survival may seem reminiscent of the belief that rock stars like Jim Morrison are still alive.

“How do I know if Jim Morrison is dead?” Fine asked. “How do I know he’s dead except that somebody told me that?”

Poovey, however, who knew Facts as well as anyone, said Facts’ demise is undoubtedly factual.

“American society has lost confidence that there’s a single alternative,” she said. “Anybody can express an opinion on a blog or any other outlet and there’s no system of verification or double-checking, you just say whatever you want to and it gets magnified. It’s just kind of a bizarre world in which one person’s opinion counts as much as anybody else’s.”

Facts is survived by two brothers, Rumor and Innuendo, and a sister, Emphatic Assertion.

Services are alleged to be private. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that mourners make a donation to their favorite super PAC.

Copyright © 2012, Chicago Tribune

Victor Stenger on Science & Religion

Victor Stenger

Physicist, PhD, bestselling author

The Fall of Foolish Faith

Posted: 03/ 9/2012 1:12 pm
 From a talk on March 4, 2012 at the CFI Meeting, “Moving Secularism Forward,” Orlando.

I want to talk about a particular group of secularists — scientists — and their interaction with religion. Most scientists prefer to stay out of any conflicts with religion. They don’t want to endanger their sources of research funding and generally just don’t want to be bothered. They have better things to do, or at least they think they do.

I want to urge those of you who are not scientists to try to convince those who are to stop pussyfooting around with religion and confront the reality of what it is and always has been — a blight on humanity that has hindered our progress for millennia and now threatens our very existence.

Scientists have to help the rest of the secular community to work toward reducing the influence of religion to the point where it has negligible effect on society. I don’t believe this is impossible. Astrology and the reading of sheep entrails are no longer used to decide on courses of events, such as going to war. Why can’t we expect the same for the imagined dialogues with an ancient tribal sky god that at least one recent president has used to justify his actions?

Let’s look at some of the places where scientists have been slow to recognize the negative impact that religion is having on important scientific matters. Since the 1850s, human population has exploded causing an unsustainable exploitation of Earth’s resources. This growth cannot continue indefinitely. Only by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and leveling population can we expect to survive.

Rather than helping, religion hinders these efforts by discouraging birth control and other absolutely essential measures needed to achieve these goals.

Already, three million people die every year from the pollution caused by fossil fuels and biomass. And this will only increase if we continue on the present path.

However, a livable future is not out of our reach. Liquid thorium nuclear reactors could provide the world with all the energy it needs for a thousand years, safely, with minimal environmental impact, and no application to nuclear weapons. If they had thorium reactors, there would have been no Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima disasters. The only reason uranium and plutonium are used in nuclear reactors is you can build bombs with them. You can’t build bombs with thorium.

Solar power would already be economically competitive with oil, if the economy were to properly price oil to include the costs of its damage to the environment, human health, and the military needed to defend sources and transport. Imagine a world without oil. I can.

So why don’t we move in these directions already clearly marked out by science? Because since the late nineteenth century we have lived in a plutocracy in which petroleum and other fossil energies dominate almost every sector of our economy by virtue of the enormous wealth they bring to their producers and distributers.

Now, what does this have to do with religion? Since prehistoric times religion has served as the handmaiden to those in power, helping them to maintain that power. Tribal chiefs, kings, and emperors always had shamans and priests at their sides to assure their subjects that they led by divine right.

In America today, petro-dollars fuel a giant Christian propaganda machine that works to undermine the efforts of scientists to find solutions to the problems that face us with overpopulation, pollution, and climate change. They use techniques that were pioneered 30 years ago by the tobacco industry to suppress the evidence that smoking causes cancer and heart disease. And these techniques exploit the antiscience that is inherent in religious belief.

A new technique that in recent years has been added to the arsenal of global warming denialism is to frame climate change as a theological issue. Global warming deniers say that God would never allow life on Earth to be destroyed. After all, he gave humans dominion over the planet. Besides, the world is coming to an end soon anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

Republican politicians are in the forefront of the battle over climate change. John Shimkus, Republican of Illinois, has said that climate change is a myth because God told Noah he would never again destroy Earth by flood. All the current Republican presidential candidates have either always said climate change was a hoax or have backed off previous statements in which they agreed that warming is taking place.

The Cornwall Alliance for The Stewardship of Creation has issued what it calls “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming.” The statement asserts that Earth and its ecosystems are “robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying the glory of God.” The statement denies that Earth and its ecosystems are the “fragile and unstable products of chance,” and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of what they call “minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry.” The Cornwall statement claims that there is no convincing scientific evidence that greenhouse gases produced by human activity are causing dangerous global warming. It also denies that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and claims that reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures

Approximately 500 people, including a large number of non-expert scientists and other academics, endorsed this statement. This is not simply the view of a small fringe group but that of the large majority of Evangelical Christians, who wield far more influence than their actual numbers justify.

While the petrocrats use science in every aspect of their businesses, they hypocritically exploit the antiscience that is inherent in religion in order to undermine any scientific findings that threaten their power and fortunes.

Most scientists do not realize that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. This is not because they have thought about it. It is because they prefer not to think about it.

Fundamentalists know science and religion are incompatible, since science disputes so much of what is in the Bible, which they take as the literal word of God. To them, science is simply wrong and must be Christianized. A well-funded effort exists to do just that, while most scientists sit on the sidelines because they prefer not to get involved.

But science and religion have always been at war, and always will be. One of yesterday’s speakers said that he did not like to use the word “religion” but rather called it a “belief system.” Well, there are different kinds of belief systems. Science is a belief system based on reason and evidence. Religion is a belief system based on bullshit.

Moderate Christians claim they support science, but they still hold to beliefs that have no empirical basis. Moderates will tell you that they accept evolution, but then they insist it is still guided by God. This is not Darwinian evolution. This is intelligent design. There is no guidance, divine or otherwise, in Darwinian evolution.

A recent phenomenon is the joining of forces between the climate change deniers and evolution deniers, who have no link other than a common motivation based on religion. Several legislatures have passed bills requiring teachers to present “all sides” of the evidence on evolution and global warming. Now, that would be no problem if the arguments on all sides were presented accurately and honestly. But we know that’s unlikely to happen, since the only purpose of these bills is to create the illusion of scientific controversy on topics where, in truth, a strong consensus within the scientific community exists. It’s like demanding equal time for flat-earth geology.

Christopher Hitchens once said that he was not just opposed to organized religion, but also to religious belief. Religion would not be such a negative force in society if it were just about going to church socials and celebrating rites of passage. However, the magical thinking that becomes deeply ingrained whenever faith rules over facts warps all areas of life. It instills superficial beliefs which, having been adopted without reason, cannot be displaced by reason. Magical thinking ignores evidence and favors whatever opinion is the most convenient or socially acceptable. While scientists also tend to follow the crowd, at least they can be convinced to change their minds when the data warrant it.

Magical beliefs are not just limited to religion, but extend to economics, politics, and health. It’s not that the public lacks information. Today we’re all inundated with information, especially on the Internet. However, much of that data is untrustworthy and it takes a trained thinker to filter out the good from the bad. Magical thinking and blind faith are the worst conceivable mental system we can apply under these circumstances. They allow the most outrageous lies and stupidities to be accepted as facts.

Nowhere is this more evident than in America today where the large majority of the public hold on to a whole set of religious and pseudoscientific beliefs despite the total lack of evidence to support these beliefs, and indeed, in the face of strong evidence that denies them. This is the folly of faith and demonstrates why it must be fought. Relying on blind faith is no way to run a world.

As I have noted, religious believers are being manipulated to work against their own best interests in health and economic well-being in order to cast doubt on well-established scientific findings. This would not be possible except for the diametrically opposed world-views of science and religion.

Science and religion are fundamentally incompatible because of the opposing assumptions they make concerning what we can know about the world. Every human alive is aware of a world that seems to exist outside the body, the world of sensory experience we call the natural. Science is the systematic study of the observations made of the natural world with our senses and scientific instruments. The knowledge gained in this manner has proved effective when applied to human needs.

By contrast, all major religions, including Buddhism, teach that humans possess an additional “inner” sense that allows us to access a realm lying beyond the visible world–a divine, transcendent reality we call the supernatural. If it does not involve the transcendent, it is not religion. Religion is a set of practices intended to communicate with that invisible world and use its forces to affect things here on Earth.

The working hypothesis of science is that careful observation is our only reliable source of knowledge about the world. Natural theology accepts empirical science and views it as a means to learn about God’s creation. But religion, in general, goes much further than science in giving credence to other claimed sources of knowledge such as scriptures, revelation, and spiritual experiences.

No doubt, science has its limits. However, the fact that science is limited doesn’t mean that religion or any alternative system of thought can or does provide insight into what lies beyond those limits. For example, science cannot yet show precisely how the universe originated naturally, although many plausible scenarios exist. But the fact that science does not–at present–have a definitive answer to this question does not mean that ancient creation myths such as those in Genesis have any substance, any chance of eventually being verified.

The scientific community in general goes along with the notion that science has nothing to say about the supernatural because the methods of science, as they are currently practiced, exclude supernatural causes. I strongly disagree with this position. If we truly possess an inner sense telling us about an unobservable reality that matters to us and influences our lives, then we should be able to observe the effects of that reality by scientific means.

If someone’s inner sense were to warn of an impending earthquake unpredicted by science, which then occurred on schedule, we would have evidence for an extrasensory source of knowledge.So far we see no evidence that the feelings people experience when they perceive themselves to be in touch with the supernatural correspond to anything outside their heads, and we have no reason to rely on those feelings when they occur. However, if such evidence or reason should show up, then scientists will have to consider it whether they like it or not.

We cannot sweep under the rug the many serious problems brought about by the scientific revolution and the exponential burst in humanity’s ability to exploit Earth’s resources made possible by the accompanying technology. There would be no problems with overpopulation, pollution, global warming, or the threat of nuclear holocaust if science had not made them possible. The growing distrust of science found now in America can be at least partially understood by observing the disgraceful examples of scientists employed by oil, food, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies who have contributed to the unnecessary deaths of millions by allowing products to be marketed that these scientists knew full well were unsafe.

But does anyone want to return to the prescientific age when human life was nasty, brutish, and short? Even fire was once a new technology, and through the ages a lot of people have died in fires. But we don’t stop lighting them. Unsafe products are more than overshadowed by drugs, foods, medical knowledge, and technologies, which have made all our lives immeasurably better than those of humans in the not-too-distant past. At least in developed countries, women now rarely die in childbirth and most children grow to adulthood. This was not the case even just a few generations ago. Unlike our ancestors, most of us lead long, fulfilling lives largely free of pain and drudgery. The aged are so numerous that they are becoming a social problem. All this is the result of scientific developments.

We can only solve the problems brought about by the misuse of science by adhering to the scientific method, and by more rational behavior on the part of scientists, politicians, corporations, and citizens in all walks of life. Religion, as it is currently practiced with its continued focus on closed thinking and ancient mythology, is not doing anything to support the goal of a better, safer world. In fact, religion actively and vigorously opposes that goal.

Religion has destroyed our trust by its repeated failure. Using the empirical method, science has eliminated smallpox, flown men to the moon, and discovered DNA. If science didn’t work, we wouldn’t do it. Relying on faith, religion has brought us inquisitions, holy wars, and intolerance. Religion doesn’t work, but we still do it.

Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings.

Science is not going to change its commitment to the truth. And religion is not going to change its commitment to nonsense. And that is why I call upon scientists and all thinking people to focus their attention on reducing the influence of religion in the world, with the goal of the eventual fall of foolish faith. The future depends on it.

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-fall-of-foolish-faith_b_1333412.html?ref=religion-science