On Finding Community

Posted on February 15, 2015 by marcia

Connecting with Your Tribe: 10 Essential Keys to Calling in Your ‘People’

14th February 2015

In this era of new earth consciousness, people are ‘waking up’ at an exponential rate. If you’re one of these newly awakened souls, well, chances are you’ve outgrown your life.

Suddenly jobs, living situations, romantic relationships and even entire friendship circles seem foreign, so it’s an understatement to say you probably feel a little isolated. Especially when, as you are deep in the abyss of the big questions like ‘Why am I here?’, ‘Where did we actually come from?’, ‘What is my higher calling?’ and hey while we’re down the rabbit hole, ‘Just who the hell AM I anyway!?’, people around you are discussing who won X-Factor, which royal married what celebrity, or how much they hate their boss!

Rest assured, if you’re embarking on a spiritual journey, you are right where you are supposed to be, and finding your tribe is as fundamental a piece of the awakening journey puzzle as finding your calling.

The great thing is, it is not only possible to be a conscious creator in this realm, but to accelerate how this happens, who with and how to catalyse your growth, your visions and each other.

So today, I offer my top ten tips to consciously calling in ‘your people’ – the ones that fit with and will support you on this new journey.

10 Essential Keys to Calling in Your ‘People’

1. Be Authentic

Quite simply ‘You gotta be real!’ Before you can create a soul community you must know who you really are and be living a life in alignment with your truth. Until YOU are clear on who you really are and act congruently with who that is, you ARE attracting like-minds – just ones who are matching what you are projecting out to the world about who you are. So if that’s a mask, you’re relationships are likely to be circumstantial at best.

2. Take Responsibility

Understand the roles that people in your life up until now, have played in your greater understanding and experience of self, spiritual growth and personal evolution from a place of personal empowerment and self-responsibility. Often blame justifies our current shitty situation and can be a wonderful excuse for not having or creating what we want in our lives. When we take full responsibility for our lives, the part we played in our past relationships and the role we are playing now in our current relationships we create a gateway for the authentic level of connection required to truly connect with our tribe – tribe won’t put up with your B.S – they’ll hold you accountable to being the best version of you, call you on your stuff and inspire you to evolve and expand or bring into being what you are here in this life-time to create.

3. Consciously Decide

Make a conscious decision about who you want to be for yourself and where you are headed in life, what you want and don’t want for your future, and create a life and people around you who support that – many times you know what you don’t want because you’ve experienced it, but we continue to complain about the experience rather than just focus on what we are now clear we desire.

4. Evaluate Relationships

Recognise old relationships that no longer serve who you wish to be for yourself – this doesn’t mean they are ‘bad’ or what they are choosing to do with their lives is wrong – it just doesn’t support who you want to be for yourself now. This takes a commitment to yourself to know what fosters the best version of you and what doesn’t and to create personal boundaries around who you chose to allow into your circle of influence.

5. Cultivate Relationships

Identify the kindred spirits already in your life that support your highest evolution and consciously cultivate those relationships.

6. Cut the Ties That Bind

Cut energetic ties that bind you to the past and to old ideas about who you think you are, and who others think you are. Allow yourself to be who you want to be from this moment forward and only create and sustain relationships that nourish and support this.

7. Shine and Evolve

Shift blockages that lower your vibration and keep you attracting people into your life who mirror any negative beliefs around expectations of what you deserve. Give yourself permission to shine. This one may require re-educating some people about who you are as you evolve.

8. Raise Your Vibration

Call in your soul people by becoming a vibrational match for who and what you want to attract into your life. For instance, where are you not honouring your truth or fulfilling your potentiality? If I want creative people who respect me and share an aligned vision, ask: Am I expressing my creativity? Do I respect myself and am I clearly living my own vision?

9. Seek Higher Guidance

Ask for guidance from your ethereal wayshowers to connect you with people your soul-tribe. The law of non-interference or ‘free will’ means that unless we invite celestial help, everything in the universe is what we create for ourselves (or co-create with others), and since every person involved in co-creation has already given their consent to what is happening to them there is no need to mess with it. However, if you ask to be connected with your soul people with the caveat of it being for the highest good for all, it’s likely that the connection will be accelerated.

10. Recognize Your People When You Find Them

Understand how to recognise your soul people when you connect with them. Be brave, notice if someone feels good to you energetically and take action to follow up the connection. Hint – If someone keeps on coming into your consciousness, chances are there’s a reason.

Connecting with Your Tribe

See a lot of people feel they want like-minded people in their life and that they don’t have that.

The thing is though, generally they do – it’s just that what they are really seeking are their ‘soul people’, but who they are attracting is more consistent with the mask they have been wearing.

So if what you desire are kindred spirits who understand who you ‘really’ are; who are in ‘your conversation’; light you up, inspire you to be a better person; restore your faith in humanity and make you believe again that we are all connected in oneness; and help you feel alive, important, appreciated, valued, and deeply understood… get real – drop the veil, follow the tips above and your people will be waiting on the other side – promise!

from: http://wakeup-world.com/2015/02/14/connecting-with-your-tribe-10-essential-keys-to-calling-in-your-people/

On Hollywood & The CIA

Posted on February 15, 2015 by marcia

As always, do your research:

Hollywood and The CIA: A Dark Marriage Revealed

13th February 2015

By Jay Dyer

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

One of the more fanciful, or thought to be fanciful, topics I’ve been covering for a good while now is the subject of the relationship of the CIA to Hollywood.

Recent blockbusters like Zero Dark Thirty and American Sniper focus on the military and intelligence agencies in supposed “based on true events” scenarios, but is more at work here? The film industry has always loved tales of espionage, but in reality, the creation and manufacturing of a completely alternate reality and history is far more extensive than most would assume. While many films have nobly challenged assumptions about war in figures like Kubrick or Stone, for the most part, film has functioned as one of the most powerful forms of propaganda in the western establishment’s arsenal.

Watching some old G.I. Joe cartoon episodes for an upcoming analysis, I was not surprised to find Harvard psychological consultants as part of the production of the show, as reaching the youth with propaganda is central to creating cubicle dwelling automatons later in life. Likewise, researching this as a thesis topic was also instrumental in making these connections, as was the mass of information in Peter Levenda’s Sinister Forces trilogy. More recently, a plethora of news articles have surfaced that highlight this deep relationship, as this rabbit hole never ends. The coalescing of intelligence agencies, secret societies and Hollywood in reality is more sensational than any incestuous cult a pulp crime fiction writer could dream up.

Author John Rizzo has recently published a book titled, Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA, which is an amazing admission of this scandalous affair between intelligence and the film industry. The L.A. Times comments:

“The CIA has long had a special relationship with the entertainment industry, devoting considerable attention to fostering relationships with Hollywood movers and shakers—studio executives, producers, directors, big-name actors,” John Rizzo, the former acting CIA general counsel, wrote in his new book, “Company Man: Thirty Years of Crisis and Controversy in the CIA….

The CIA also recruits actors to give more visibility to propaganda projects abroad, such as a documentary secretly produced by the agency, Rizzo said. And the agency sometimes takes advantage of the door-opening cachet that movie stars and other American celebrities enjoy. A star who met a world leader, for example, might be asked for details about that meeting.

The CIA has officials assigned full-time to the care and feeding of Hollywood assets, Rizzo wrote. Other former CIA officials added that some of those operatives work in the Los Angeles office of an agency department called the National Resources Division, which recruits people in the U.S. to help America spy abroad.”

Controlled Commodities

With that in mind, recent news regarding Britney Spears may reveal much more than the headline suggests. Researchers have opined that “rehab” centers may actually be used for “programming” the “stars” for various mind-controlled objectives (as John Marks hints at in his Search for the Manchurian Candidate), whether as sex slaves, or spies, as Rizzo discusses.

Author Dave McGowan has detailed the military and intelligence connections to Laurel Canyon, the home of the budding counter-culture rock movement in the 60s, which spawned acts like Frank Zappa and the Doors. Military and intelligence connections thus come to the fore here with Britney’s ex, who “coached her through rehab”, being killed transporting “dignitaries” in Afghanistan – obviously an intelligence cover. Was Sundahl her helpful boyfriend, or was more at work here?

The notion of mind controlled and Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder actors and singers is something still far-fetched for the masses, yet more and more information supporting this idea continues to come forward.

Quoting the Church Committee hearings on MK Ultra and its attendant programs that relied on the work of famous programmers:

The names associated with the programs are Dr. Ewen Cameron, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Dr. Jose Delgado, Dr. Jolyon West, Dr. George Estabrooks, and others. While this itself is easily tracked down in terms of the existence of the programs, what is lesser known are articles like Dr. George Estabrooks’ article from the April 1971 Science Digest, Hypnosis Comes of Age. Included in the article are some striking admissions, especially since the OSS, CIA and FBI utilized Estabrooks and his skills. The article mentions, first of all, Estabrooks’ claim of the use of secret couriers and keywords that function as the triggers in the operative: The system is virtually foolproof. As exemplified by this case, the information was “locked” in Smith’s unconscious for retrieval by the only two people who knew the combination. The subject had no conscious memory of what happened, so could not spill the beans. No one else could hypnotize him even if they might know the signal phrase.”

Thus, all the way back to World War II the program had been perfected to give handlers the ability to program alters within preselected, highly suggestible individuals. The key trigger words, phrases, signs or codes unlock the alter, with the front persona having no knowledge of the information locked in the alter. The potential for abuse here is quite obvious. The modern psychiatric “bible,” known as the DSM-V still cites Dr. Estabrooks’ old essay, showing that the present establishment views all this as authentic, as well as a host of films that portray mind control themes. In fact, it seems as if mind controlled assassins and alters are appearing in countless productions with increasing frequency.

Remember – it was Hollywood that was making films about MK Ultra before it was even known to the public as a real program, as we see in the 1962 The Manchurian Candidate.

With this direct Hollywood connection in mind, we can see the likely possibility of the abuse of pop stars, who become high-priced commodities for the same establishment. I have written before about Candy Jones, and all the way up to the present, top stars are now alleging they were abused by their “handlers” and/or producers. While some cases may be publicity stunts, it is hard to believe they all are.

News hounds will recall Amanda Bynes believing she was brainwashed and implanted with a microchip and Ke$ha recently suing for abuse by her “handler”, Dr. Luke, with Luke in turn counter-suing. Prior to that, we have witnessed a barrage of news stories the last few years recounting a stream of victims alleging networks of sickos using and abusing those under them. Let us not forget Penn State and Jerry Sandusky and Jimmy Savile of the UK, as well as a host of UK government officials. Recent reports also arose from actors like Corey Feldman, who alleges similar crimes.

Britney Spears – Alter Egos?

Excerpt from Britney Spears’ 2003 interview with Diane Sawyer.

Mysterious Death

Details surrounding the death of screenwriter Gary Devore (author of Raw Deal and Time Cop) who was killed in 1997 also made the news this week, with the production of a new documentary on his questionable death.

The Daily Mail reveals that Devore was in fact working with the CIA, while the strange dating of the severed hands suggests a possible ritual connection:

“When the skeletal remains of Hollywood screenwriter Gary Devore were found strapped into his Ford Explorer submerged beneath the California Aqueduct in 1998 it brought an end to one of America’s most high-profile missing person cases.

“The fact that Devore was on his way to deliver a film script that promised to explain the ‘real reason’ why the US invaded Panama, has long given rise to a slew of conspiracies surrounding the nature of his ‘accidental’ death. It didn’t help that Devore’s hands were missing from the crash scene, along with the script, and that investigators could offer no plausible explanation as to how a car could leave the highway and end up in the position it was found a year after he disappeared.

“Now the Daily Mail can exclusively reveal that Devore was working with the CIA in Panama and even a White House source concedes his mysterious death bears all the hallmarks of a cover-up.”

Hollywood – the Flip Side of the CIA

In analyzing J.J. Abrams’ Alias, I recently wrote that Jennifer Garner was recruited by the CIA to be a kind of PR front to sell recruitment as glamorous. A few days later, the Washington Post ran a revealing piece entitled “Ex-spies Infiltrate Hollywood as Espionage TV Shows and Movies Multiply”. Although the Washington Post article treats the issue as if this is some new move, we know this is nothing new but a classic dark marriage that existed all along.

Consider the laughable irony here: The Americans is a Hollywood-produced TV show about KGB infiltration of America, screened in the midst of an article about actual CIA usage of Hollywood, as propaganda. As the Post writes:

Hollywood tends to be a destination spot for a lot of Washingtonians,” said David Nevins, the president of Showtime, which produces the spy juggernaut ‘Homeland.’ There was the ‘West Wing’ crowd of former politicos. I’ve met with more than one former Navy SEAL. And now, certainly the intelligence community has been the most recent in a long line of Washingtonians trying to come out and tell their stories.

The show’s creator and co-head writer, Joe Weisberg, is a former CIA officer… Weisberg, whose show begins its third season on FX on Wednesday night, is perhaps the most successful of the CIA alumni who have infiltrated Hollywood. “The Americans”, about two deep-cover KGB operatives living in suburban Virginia in the 1980s, was ranked by many television critics as one of last year’s top 10 shows.

But Weisberg, who left the CIA in 1994, is hardly the only ex-agency guy trying to cash in on the spy show craze. (Spy shows, one executive at a major Hollywood talent agency observed, have become as ubiquitous as cop shows.) Former senior CIA officials Rodney Faraon and Henry “Hank” Crumpton are the executive producers of NBC’s “State of Affairs,” which stars Katherine Heigl as a CIA analyst and member of the agency’s presidential daily briefing team — one of Faraon’s old jobs.

Let us also not forget the role of Melissa Mahle, former CIA operative, in “coaching” and “advising” Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member Angelina Jolie in her role as triple agent in SALT, the 2010 espionage thriller. The film itself was loosely based on Mahle, as the Telegraph reports:

Jolie’s role is based, loosely, on the experiences of Mahle and other spies. “I was very impressed when I met Angelina”, says Mahle. “She was very intent upon understanding not only what a real CIA officer was like but also the motivations behind our actions.”

Indeed, it is becoming more and more apparent that Hollywood really is the flip side of the CIA, when we think of Ben Affleck doing a film like Argo, based around CIA operative Antonio Mendez, one of the Agency’s Masters of Disguise. Indeed, Affleck revealed to the Guardian that Hollywood is “probably full of CIA”, in the wake of his film about the CIA staging a fake B-movie shooting in Iran.

As these revelations continue to leak, we can expect more evidence to confirm that the dark side of the CIA may run far deeper than even I imagine; especially when we think of individuals like Sammy Davis Jr. and Jayne Mansfield, who were known members of the Church of Satan, as well as a host of other celebrities who fancy dabbling in the occult – for examples, see here and here. In fact, films like Eyes Wide Shut have revealed these very associations, as have films from Black Dhalia to Mulholland Drive to Milla. These CIA/occult connections are real, especially when we understand films like Zero Dark Thirty are in fact pure CIA propaganda fictions.

from: http://wakeup-world.com/2015/02/13/hollywood-and-the-cia-a-dark-marriage-revealed/

Attacking The GMO Supporters

Posted on February 14, 2015 by marcia

Why Are We Being Attacked? The Gory Details On A Dirty PR Campaign Finally Revealed.

By Food Babe

Recently an activist friend reached out to me in desperation looking for advice, counsel and support. My friend is being attacked, threatened, cyber-bullied and harassed because of her recent critical work in exposing Monsanto’s glyphosate in popular food products that children eat. Unfortunately, I know all too well what’s happening to her because it’s happening to me too. This is why I think it’s absolutely critical for us to stick together and not be afraid to tell the truth. These bullies want to intimidate us into submission. They want us to be too scared to write, investigate and share our findings. So scared, that we quit.

Well, we cannot let that happen. I need you to read this shocking new report and tell everyone you know. The non-profit group U.S. Right To Know‘s report “Seedy Business: What Big Food is Hiding with Its Slick PR Campaign on GMOs” couldn’t have come out at a better time! This is an expose (with lots of details, evidence and facts) on the shady public relations tactics that the biotech industry has been employing. After reading their report, everything is starting to make sense to me now. I have personally experienced these tactics and finally can pinpoint what’s happening to me and other activists.

The big players in the industry – Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, DuPont, Bayer – are engaging in an extensive public relations, advertising, lobbying and political campaign to make sure that genetically engineered crops (GMOs), and the pesticides they require, continue to proliferate in the U.S.

To improve their public image, they are attempting to manipulate everything we see and hear about GMO crops in the media and on TV, the internet and print articles – using propaganda-laden commercials, “mommy-blogger” articles, farmer endorsements, and front group websites. The biotech industry is feeling threatened, and their profits hang in the balance. This is their last stand.

Their agenda is clear. They desperately want you to believe:

GMOs are safe,
Anyone who disagrees is untrustworthy, and
The biotech companies that produce GMOs care about our farmers, families and a sustainable environment.

I’m not going to go into great detail about all the juicy details that are aptly described in the U.S. Right To Know’s report, because I want you to read the entire report yourself. But – here are some of the most important highlights:

The Biotech Industry is using the same PR firms used by Big Tobacco.

The tobacco industry wants us to forget their deceptive advertising from the 1950s that depicted smoking as “Best for You” as approved by “50 years of scientific tobacco research”. The truth is the tobacco companies only cared about their own profits and not about the health of their customers. They hired big public relations (PR) firms to spin their message and to help them manage the flow of information and truth that was coming out about cigarettes and disease. This is similar to what’s happening in the biotech industry today. Several of the PR firms hired by biotech companies were “once employed by the tobacco industry in its efforts to evade responsibility and liability for the millions of Americans they killed. These PR efforts on behalf of the tobacco industry – perhaps the most significant and destructive PR campaign ever – raise questions about whether these same firms are spinning a similarly deceitful PR campaign for the agrichemical industry to hide any health or environmental risks of genetically engineered food”.

Fleishman Hillard – Monsanto retained the PR firm Fleishman Hillard in 2013, to help them “resuscitate its image”. A couple decades ago, Fleishman Hillard represented The Tobacco Institute, the main tobacco industry lobbying organization that was forced to disband following a suit brought against the tobacco industry by the U.S. National Association of Attorneys General. Fleishman Hillard has been implicated in converting Healthy Buildings Institute into a front group for the tobacco industry to hide the dangers of second-hand smoke. So, next time you see those Monsanto commercials on TV (and ads in Oprah’s magazine!), keep in mind that this is who is behind them.

Ogilvy & Mather – DuPont Pioneer hired this PR firm that had an agreement with The Tobacco Institute to provide strategy development, writing assignments, media tours, and contact with target coalition groups.

Ketchum – The Council for Biotechnology (a biotech industry group openly funded by BASF, Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta) recently hired the PR firm Ketchum to run their website, GMO Answers “to help promote the industry’s views on genetically engineered food”. Ketchum worked on cigarette advertising campaigns in the 1970s, trying to convince Americans that Fact brand cigarettes were safer than regular cigarettes. Now their focus is on GMOs. This firm is actively communicating with some of my detractors, who brag about getting included in news media about me.

Jayne Thompson & Associates and White House Writers Group – Both of these PR firms hired by Syngenta, previously worked for cigarette-maker Philip Morris to help them with a public relations crisis a little over a decade ago.

Attack anyone that disagrees…

Scientists that speak out against GMOs do so courageously, knowing they will likely be attacked by the biotech industry’s PR minions. If a scientist publishes findings that go against what the industry wants the public to believe, they are harassed, their findings are suppressed, and some careers have been destroyed. Syngenta has been known to have “trained critics” that have undergone media training follow scientists to speaking engagements that have dared to speak out against their products, in an attempt to discredit them. Some notable victims of the biotech industry’s wrath are Dr. Tyrone Hayes, Dr. Ignacio Chapela, Dr. Arpad Pusztai, Dr. Gilles-Eric Séralini, Manuela Malatesta, and Emma Rosi-Marshall.

This same thing is happening to myself and other activists as well…

As part of their “multi-million dollar” campaign for the biotech industry, Ketchum closely monitors Twitter conversations and “seeks out negative (biotech-related) tweets on Twitter”, and attempts to counter their arguments. They are being paid by the biotech industry to discredit any negative information about GMOs, just like Monsanto’s new Director of Millennial Engagement, Vance Crowe, who recently claimed on Twitter that he’s “paid to help untie the knot of fear and misinformation woven together by people making money selling snake oil”.

Ketchum is described as “notoriously secretive” and has a history of targeting consumer and food activist groups like the Center for Food Safety, Friends of the Earth, and GE Food Alert, through their work with the private investigation firm Beckett Brown International (BBI), which apparently hired officers to spy on the activist’s computers, phone records, and trash during Taco Bell’s GMO scandal in 2000. Likewise, Monsanto’s PR firm Fleishman Hillard has targeted public health advocates in the past, conducting espionage and secretly taping tobacco control meetings and conferences. Monsanto has also been caught using “mommy bloggers” to promote the idea that they are a sustainable company that cares about farmers, and about you. Meanwhile, they are largely responsible for the millions of pounds of harmful pesticides that are dumped on crops, polluting our land, water and food.

GMOs don’t benefit customers, just the biotech industry’s pockets.

Don’t believe for one minute that GMOs were created with your best interests in mind. Companies are spending over 100 million dollars to prevent us from knowing the truth!

Most GMO crops were genetically engineered to either be (1) pesticide-resistant or (2) herbicide-resistant (or both), and not to be more healthy for us.

The GMO crops that we eat most here in America – soybeans, corn, sugar beets, canola – are not more nutritious or tastier than non-GMO crops, and are definitely no improvement.

Just like the overuse of antibiotics can create “super bugs”, these resistant crops are creating “super weeds” and “super bugs” that require them to be sprayed with heavier doses of poisonous chemicals – which are often made by the same companies.

The biotech industry is contributing to a “pesticide-treadmill”, by creating an environment that fosters the growth of pesticide-resistant weeds and pests. This allows them to sell more of their toxic chemicals along with their GMO seeds, to further increase their bottom line – and it’s escalating fast.

Remember that the companies that produce GMO seeds often also produce the chemicals that are sprayed on them – it’s a win-win situation for them!

The USDA recently approved Dow’s new GMO corn and soybeans (Enlist) that are billed as being resistant to Dow’s herbicide (Enlist Duo) made with glyphosate and 2,4-D, a component of Agent Orange. Just last month, another USDA approval was made for Monsanto’s new dicamba-resistant crop, with plans to roll-out a new herbicide system soon.

If you are not following U.S. Right To Know (USRTK) on Twitter, please do here – they are doing some great things and really need our support! They just filed a Freedom of Information Request for correspondence from science professors employed in public universities who write for the GMO Answers which is a website funded by the biotech companies. U.S. Right To Know wants to better understand how these professors (including one that has attacked me personally) are working with biotech companies and PR firms, such as Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Dow, Ketchum, Fleishman Hillard, Ogilvy & Mather.

I never thought in a million years I would be subjected to this disgusting PR game. The only way I and other activists can continue our work is for you to share the truth and spread the word!!! Please share this report with everyone you know.

Thank you so much for standing with me and with everyone who is working for a better food system.

from: http://foodbabe.com/2015/02/12/dirty-pr-campaign/#more-19867

Quake off Taiwan – 2/13

Posted on February 14, 2015 by marcia

Very Strong earthquake off the coast of Taitung county, Taiwan

Last update: February 13, 2015 at 11:26 pm by By Armand Vervaeck

Update : Below the CWB (Central Taiwan Weather Bureau) intensity values. CWB is considering the shaking strong Taitung County.

Update : We do not expect any serious damage from this earthquake as the epicenter is located out of the Taitung coast.

25km (16mi) ESE of Taitung City, Taiwan
100km (62mi) NE of Hengchun, Taiwan
106km (66mi) ESE of Yujing, Taiwan
110km (68mi) E of Kaohsiung, Taiwan
744km (462mi) E of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Most important Earthquake Data:

Magnitude : 6.2

Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2015-02-14 04:06:31

GMT/UTC Time : 2015-02-13 20:06:31

from: http://earthquake-report.com/2015/02/13/very-strong-earthquake-taiwan-region-on-february-13-2015/

Ridge Quake Atlantic Ocean 2/13

Posted on February 14, 2015 by marcia

Massive earthquake in the Atlantic Ocean

Last update: February 13, 2015 at 11:06 pm by By Armand Vervaeck

Update : A very special and massive Ridge Earthquake generated by a transform part in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Certainly no shaking will be felt at the nearest islands (Greenland, Iceland and Ireland.

1165km (724mi) SE of Nanortalik, Greenland
1393km (866mi) SSW of Hafnarfjordur, Iceland
1398km (869mi) SSW of Kopavogur, Iceland
1401km (871mi) SSW of Reykjavik, Iceland
1504km (935mi) W of Tralee, Ireland

Most important Earthquake Data:

Magnitude : 7.1

Local Time (conversion only below land) : Unknown

GMT/UTC Time : 2015-02-13 18:59:12

from: http://earthquake-report.com/2015/02/13/very-strong-earthquake-northern-mid-atlantic-ridge-on-february-13-2015/

Limits Placed on Civil Forfeiture

Posted on February 1, 2015 by marcia

Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police

Attorney General Eric Holder is barring local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without proof that a crime occurred. The Post’s Robert O’Harrow Jr. explains the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago,

By Robert O’Harrow Jr., Sari Horwitz and Steven Rich January 16

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.

The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them “adopted” by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. It allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.

“With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons,” Holder said in a statement.

Holder’s decision allows limited exceptions, including illegal firearms, ammunition, explosives and property associated with child pornography, a small fraction of the total. This would eliminate virtually all cash and vehicle seizures made by local and state police from the program.

While police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, Equitable Sharing was easy to use and required most of the proceeds from the seizures to go to local and state police agencies. Some states have higher standards of proof for forfeitures and some require seized proceeds to go into the general fund.

A Justice Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the attorney general’s motivation, said Holder “also believes that the new policy will eliminate any possibility that the adoption process might unintentionally incentivize unnecessary stops and seizures.”

Holder’s announcement drew praise from some groups who have denounced the seizures and criticism from some police organizations.

The decision follows a Washington Post investigation published in September that found that police have made cash seizures worth almost $2.5 billion from motorists and others without search warrants or indictments since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Post found that local and state police routinely pulled over drivers for minor traffic infractions, pressed them to agree to warrantless searches and seized large amounts of cash without evidence of wrongdoing. The law allows such seizures and forces the owners to prove their property was legally acquired in order to get it back.

Police spent the seizure proceeds with little oversight, in some cases buying luxury cars, high-powered weapons and military-grade gear such as armored cars, according to an analysis of Justice Department data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/national/your-property-is-guilty-until-you-prove-it-innocent/2014/09/06/5d04869e-69a7-11e4-8eaf-60a7a7ed9714_video.html

In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, an aggressive brand of policing called “highway interdiction,” which involves authorities seizing money and property during traffic stops, has grown in popularity. Thousands of people not charged with crimes are left fighting legal battles to regain their money.

News of the policy change surprised advocates who have for a long time unsuccessfully sought to reverse civil asset forfeiture laws, arguing that they undermine core American values, such as property rights and due process.

“It’s high time we put an end to this damaging practice,” said David Harris, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. “It has been a civil-liberties debacle and a stain on American criminal justice.”

Holder’s action comes as members of both parties in Congress are working together to craft legislation to overhaul civil asset forfeiture. On Jan. 9, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) signed a letter calling on Holder to end Equitable Sharing.

Grassley praised Holder’s decision on Friday. “We’re going to have a fairer justice system because of it,” Grassley said. “The rule of law ought to protect innocent people, and civil asset forfeiture hurt a lot of people.”

He said he planned to continue pressing for legislative reforms.

“I commend the department for this step and look forward to working with them on comprehensive forfeiture reform that protects Americans’ property rights,” Sensenbrenner said. “Equitable Sharing has become a tool too often used to bypass state law. ”

The new policy could become one of the more notable pieces of Holder’s legacy. Holder has already announced that he is leaving the department, and it is clear that he is taking steps to burnish his place in history. On Thursday, he pushed in a speech for better tracking of police use-of-force incidents.

But Friday’s action is sure to engender its share of controversy.

The policy will touch police and local budgets in every state. Since 2001, about 7,600 of the nation’s 18,000 police departments and task forces have participated in Equitable Sharing. For hundreds of police departments and sheriff’s offices, the seizure proceeds accounted for 20 percent or more of their annual budgets in recent years, according to a Post analysis.

The action comes at a time when police are already angry about remarks that Holder and President Obama made after the police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City. Some have accused them of being “anti-cop.”

“It seems like a continual barrage against police,” said John W. Thompson, interim executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association. “I’m not saying there’s no wrongdoing, but there is wrongdoing in everything.”

Critics of the decision say that depriving departments of the proceeds from civil asset forfeitures will hurt legitimate efforts to fight crime, drug smuggling and terrorism.

Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said, “There is some grave concern about the possible loss of significant funding while local police and state police are being asked to do more and more each year.”

Over the past decade, thousands of people have had to fight the government to get their cash and property back, often hiring lawyers and spending more than a year in the process, The Post found. Many of them were people of color and immigrants swept up in police dragnets on the nation’s highways aimed at stopping drug dealers, money launderers and terrorists.

That includes people such as Mandrel Stuart, who was stopped in 2012 by Fairfax County police, detained without charges, handcuffed and stripped of $17,550 in cash that was to be used for equipment and supplies for his barbecue restaurant in Staunton, Va. He eventually hired a lawyer, and a jury gave him his money back in 2013. But he lost his restaurant while fighting the government, because he had no working capital.

“A lot of people won’t be harassed the way they are harassing them now,” Stuart said Friday after he heard about Holder’s action. “It’s some justice at last on our side.”

Civil asset forfeiture is one of the most powerful — and unusual — law enforcement tools. Police do not need to prove a crime to use it, because it is a civil action against an object, such as currency or a car, rather than a person.

As a consequence, protections common in criminal law do not apply. In fact, owners who want to recover their cash or property generally must show it is theirs and demonstrate it is not tied to crime.

Forfeiture has its basis in British admiralty law, but it became a part of the fight against drugs in the United States beginning in 1970, when Congress allowed police to seize aircraft, boats and other property used to transport narcotics or bought by drug lords with ill-gotten gains.

In the 1980s, the law was expanded to include cash. About the same time, the Justice Department created its Asset Forfeiture Program and began allowing federal agencies to adopt seizures made by state and local authorities. Those changes led to a massive increase in money deposited into the federal forfeitures fund as seizures by local and state police surged. Allegations of police abuses also increased.

Searing reports by the Orlando Sentinel and other newspapers about abuses spurred Congress to pass the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act in 2000. But a key change — ending the sharing of seizure proceeds between local police and federal agencies — was cut from the bill after fierce opposition from police and prosecutors. Some lawmakers called the sharing of money a “perverse incentive” for overly aggressive police tactics.

After Sept. 11, 2001, the use of the asset forfeiture law and the Equitable Sharing Program rose to new heights as federal authorities called on local, county and state police to help keep watch on the nation’s highways, not only for drug smugglers but also for terrorists.

The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security paid private firms millions to train local and state officers in the techniques of an aggressive brand of policing known as “highway interdiction.” That training, developed by the firms, included methods for ferreting out suspicious drivers and coaxing them into granting warrantless searches of vehicles, according to internal company training documents obtained by The Post. The files emphasized the importance of targeting cash.

The federal government also encouraged police to collect and share intelligence about drivers. One training firm started a private intelligence system called Black Asphalt that enabled thousands of police to share tips about drivers across state lines and funnel raw reports about drivers to federal authorities.

Civil asset forfeiture has become one of the few public policy and social issues that united activists and lawmakers across the political spectrum.

After The Post series, John Yoder and Brad Cates, two directors of the Justice Department’s asset forfeiture office under President Ronald Reagan, said the program should end. In an opinion piece, they said the program began with good intentions. “Over time, however, the tactic has turned into an evil itself, with the corruption it engendered among government and law enforcement coming to clearly outweigh any benefits.”

The Institute for Justice and other libertarian-leaning groups teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union and left-leaning groups to press for changes in the wake of The Post’s investigation.

“This is a profoundly important and path-breaking change in the ability of the government to take property of Americans,” said Scott Bullock, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, which produced a study about civil asset forfeiture five years ago called “Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture.”

In recent months, Grassley, the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the panel’s ranking Democrat, joined the effort, along with Sensenbrenner and others.

Holder said seizure adoptions will continue to be employed by local and federal authorities, but only in limited circumstances when public safety is at risk and where local and federal authorities are collaborating in cases clearly involving criminal activity.

Most of the money and property taken under Equitable Sharing since 2008 — $3 billion out of $5.3 billon — was not seized in collaboration with federal authorities, The Post’s analysis found.

In announcing the new Justice Department policy Friday, Holder said there is also less need for federal seizure adoptions. In the 1980s, when the policies took effect, few states gave police the authority to make civil seizures and forfeit the assets of criminals in the way that federal law allowed.

“Today, however, every state has either criminal or civil forfeiture laws, making the federal adoption process less necessary,” Holder’s statement said. “Indeed, adoptions currently constitute a very small slice of the federal asset forfeiture program. ”

Some police departments have shown an apparent preference for federal law over state laws. Equitable Sharing allowed many departments to make or benefit from seizures in ways they could not have under state law. The program required the seizure proceeds to go back to the departments, while some state asset forfeiture programs mandate that the money go into general funds.

The Treasury Department is also changing its asset forfeiture program to follow the same guideline included in Holder’s order, the statement said.

Federal agencies make larger seizures of cash and property through avenues other than Equitable Sharing, typically in cases involving defendants ranging from drug cartel kingpins to Bernard L. Madoff, whose fraud case has resulted in more than $9 billion in forfeitures in recent years.

Those programs are not affected by the changes to Equitable Sharing, but Holder also said the new policy is the first step in a “comprehensive review” of civil forfeiture in general.

Justice Department officials noted that civil asset forfeiture has hurt criminals and their organizations. It also has enabled the government to refund money to crime victims — about $4 billion over the past 15 years.

“Asset forfeiture remains a critical law enforcement tool when used appropriately — providing unique means to go after criminal and even terrorist organizations,” Holder said. “This new policy will ensure that these authorities can continue to be used to take the profit out of crime and return assets to victims, while safeguarding civil liberties.”

from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/holder-ends-seized-asset-sharing-process-that-split-billions-with-local-state-police/2015/01/16/0e7ca058-99d4-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html

School Grades for “Grit” & “Gratitude”?

Posted on February 1, 2015 by marcia

As always, do your research:

California-school mind control: grades for ”Gratitude”

Jon Rappoport
Activist Post

The Sacramento Bee has the story. 1/27/15, “Grit and gratitude join reading, writing and arithmetic on report cards,” by Loretta Kalb:

“Across the state, report cards are undergoing a sea change in how students are measured for academic performance. Where teachers once graded students [only] on traditional math or English skills, they now judge attributes such as grit, gratitude or being sensitive to others… Districts are changing their report cards to reflect the new Common Core State Standards…”

“…when it comes to attributes such as grit or being sensitive to others, they [teachers] give [third-grade] students one of four marks: A for almost always, O for often, S for sometimes and R for rarely.”

Report cards for young children. Grit, gratitude, and sensitivity to others. Welcome to the madhouse.

Where are the massive parent protests? Apparently, nowhere. So they’re brainwashed as well.

In case I need to point this out: a child of eight isn’t naturally gushing gratitude and sensitivity toward others. In schools, these are taught values, and they are now attached to report-card grades. The child is being conditioned to behave in prescribed ways, in order to earn a “gold star.”

It’s all synthetic, artificial. It’s operant conditioning. The baffled clueless child learns to take cues. He learns to speak certain “grateful sensitive” words. He becomes a waddling little duck who’s taught how to quack. They all quack in concert.

As far as the schools are concerned, the child mustn’t think of himself as independent. There are no positive grades for that. Early on, he’s led into the goo-pond with the other kids.

The parents, clueless as well, can make no distinction between what a child learns on his own and what he is taught and how he is taught (conditioned). If the child appears appropriately “grateful and sensitive,” then he actually is.

The mothers and fathers are in for quite a surprise, later on, when their kid rebels against all this mind-control and turns into a hostile force. Or knuckles under, and acts like a perfect android.

This method of programming comes from the school of psychological behaviorism. Its foundation is the idea that personality develops from conditioning—because there is nothing else.

“No one is home” until someone else teaches him “how to be.” And that’s life, that’s experience, that’s perception. Case closed.

This is all true for a computer or a car or a toaster, but it doesn’t happen to be true for a child.

Let’s stop calling them schools. Let’s call them conditioning centers.

“Yes, my little Jimmy is doing quite well at the conditioning center. He says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ forty times a day. His sensitivity responses are in the ninetieth percentile, and his gratitude quotient is eighty, up from seventy-two a year ago. We’re thrilled. Last night, when we went for ice cream, he told us he appreciated our sensitivity to his preference for a cone over a dish…”

Flash forward a few years: “We don’t understand. Jimmy burned down the garage last night. When we asked him why, he stared at us in a challenging kind of way and said he was expressing his gratitude for fire. The psychiatrist told us over the phone that Jimmy has a dissociative disorder. He needs medication to calm him down. He has a chemical imbalance…”

Or how about this: “Last week in school our Bobby learned more about sexual parts of the body. He was also instructed about gender-reassignment surgery. He told us he was sensitive to people’s choices in life…”

Good for you, Bobby.

It’s wonderful. Who are these crazy terrorists who want to home-school their kids?

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 emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.

from: http://www.activistpost.com/2015/01/california-school-mind-control-grades.html

On Power Animals

Posted on February 1, 2015 by marcia

What is a Power Animal?

By Dr. Steven Farmer

Power animals are spirit guides in animal form, valuable allies who can help you navigate through life’s challenges and transitions. You can turn to these perceptive and trustworthy oracles for advice and counsel on any questions or concerns, for they’re exceptional teachers who will help you learn about both the spirit and the natural world. Working with them on a regular basis will enhance your personal life and expand your spiritual capacities immensely.

Power animals can appear in meditations, visions, dreams, shamanic journeys, or on the earth in their physical form. They can be mammals, birds, or reptiles; and even so-called mythical creatures such as unicorns or dragons can be power animals, although they have no physical representations in the material world. However, since spirit animals’ power is drawn from their instinctual and wild nature, it’s uncommon for purely domesticated animals such as pets to be part of this group.

The source of power for your animal spirit guide won’t just be a single animal, but the entire species. For instance, if your power animal is Bear, it won’t be just one particular bear, but an animal spirit guide that’s representative of the entire species of bears. Consequently, you’ll probably develop a greater appreciation for all bears, and likely extend that care and respect to the animal kingdom as a whole. If Dolphin is your power animal, for example, your love and appreciation will likely go out to all creatures of the sea and naturally expand to include those of the land and the air. Your animal will also teach you to use this power compassionately, to heal and empower yourself and others.

The good news is that we can recover our power animal or even discover a new one by opening our hearts, minds, and souls to this notion, Your power animal may come to you in meditations, visions, dreams, or shamanic journeys. You’ll have an opportunity to recover your power animal in the guided meditation journey for this lesson. If you’ve had a particular affinity or attraction for an animal, it’s most likely this is your power animal. Just recently someone wrote and asked what I thought her power animal was. She went on to describe how hawks have shown up for her much of her life, especially in the past few weeks, and was wondering if this could perhaps be her power animal. I wrote back and basically confirmed what she already knew, that Hawk was her main animal spirit guide, or power animal.

Your power animal may leave you at some point, even if you’ve paid attention to her over the years. Usually that means that the relationship has served its purpose, and another power animal either is or will be coming into your life. I’ve observed how these spirit guides will enter into our lives at a time when we most need their particular expression of spiritual power. For instance, if you’re moving into a position of leadership, Cougar spirit may very well leap into your life as power animal, helping you with confidence and clarity in your leadership roles. If you’re going through a major transformative process with big changes, you may find Snake spirit or Butterfly coming into your life as a power animal.

Another interesting facet is that often your power animal is reflective of your personality characteristics. For instance, Rachel is slight of build, energetic, with a tendency to move very quickly, often juggling several tasks at once, flitting from one to the other. It’s no accident that her power animal turned out to be Hummingbird. Gary is a fairly large man, gentle by nature, yet very capable of standing up for himself or for others as needed. No one messes with him. No surprise that his power animal is Bear.

Other questions that come up are about cats or dogs being power animals. Generally domesticated animals can’t be power animals because they’ve lost much of their wildness and are removed from the natural world. Likewise, some traditions believe that insects are to be excluded from being power animals because of their size and nature. Generally true, however in my book Power Animals, Dragonfly and Butterfly both argued vehemently about being included, so I caved and included them. I see now the wisdom of that, as they both offer unique types of power.

Yet another question that comes up on occasion is about mythological or etheric animals, such as dragons or unicorns. Although some would insist that they exist in third dimensional reality, it really doesn’t matter whether they do or not. If you believe they do, then they do. Any of these so-called mythological animals can certainly be your power animal. The only disadvantage is that they’re not commonly seen in the physical world as are other kinds of animals.

This is a highly personal and specialized relationship with an animal spirit guide. It’s not one you choose in the usual sense of the word. It’s more of a soul-to-soul connection, your soul bonding with the soul—or more accurately the oversoul—of the animal. The relationship is one to be nurtured and attended to on a regular basis, and if done, will last a number of years.

(excerpts taken from Power Animals: How to Connect with Your Animal Spirit Guides)

from: http://www.earthmagic.net/shamanic-journey/what-is-a-power-animal/

A Wind & Solar Powered VW Bug

Posted on January 31, 2015 by marcia

Nigerian engineer converts a VW Beetle into a $6,000 solar & wind powered car

The Mind Unleashed

on 30 January, 2015 at 16:07

On the BRICS Alliance

Posted on January 31, 2015 by marcia

Meet the BRICS “New Development Bank”

1st February 2015

By James Corbett

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Last week we attempted to dispel some of the confusion surrounding the World Bank and the IMF, how the two are differentiated, and what the World Bank actually does. (see: So What Does The World Bank Do Exactly?)

As you’ll recall, Bretton Woods architect John Maynard Keynes admitted that the confusion over these two bodies was embedded in their names; the World Bank should rightly be referred to as a fund (for development projects) and the International Monetary Fund as a bank (to help countries cover balance of payment deficits and ensure financial stability). The World Bank itself is a body that ostensibly provides long-term low interest or no interest loans secured on the global bond market to fund sectoral reforms and infrastructure development projects in some of the poorest countries in the world.

As we saw last week, however, the Bank is used as a weapon by the economic hitmen identified by John Perkins and others, directing infrastructure development funds to crony corporations and forcing countries into debt obligations that they will be unable to meet. These impossible debt obligations are then used to give the Bank leverage over the developing world economically and geopolitically.

What’s more, both the IMF and the World Bank have historically been controlled by the US and Europe, and clamors for reform in governance from the developing countries have fallen on deaf ears.

It is in the context of this IMF/World Bank stranglehold over the global financial architecture that we have to understand the stunning development that took place at the 6th BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil last month: the creation of a New Development Bank (NDB) to compete with the World Bank in providing funds for infrastructure development to developing nations and the creation of a Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA) to compete with the IMF in providing liquidity protection to countries with balance of payment difficulties.

The development was by no means surprising: the idea for a BRICS development bank has been bandied about for years now and was written about in the pages of this newsletter extensively last year. Nor does it represent (at least at this point) a fundamental challenge to the World Bank or IMF’s dominance; neither the NDB’s $50 billion USD in subscribed capital nor the CRA’s $100 billion liquidity pool come close to the World Bank’s $232.8 billion in subscribed capital or the IMF’s $755 billion in liquidity ($1.4 trillion if you include emergency funds). Neither do they have the infrastructure yet in place to coordinate and deploy these funds, nor a track record of working with the world’s poorest countries to ensure that funds reach their intended targets and not the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt politicians and middlemen.

Still, there is something of a revolutionary feel to the obligatory pictures of the smiling BRICS leaders coming out of this year’s summit. This year the smiles do not seem quite as forced. Perhaps they even seem a little self-assured. It may be a baby step, but after all it is a step toward a world where the poorest countries do not have to turn cap in hand to the IMF or World Bank for financial aid.

But what are the implications of this for the developing countries themselves and the prospect of genuine development? What does this development say about the BRICS and their growing ambition on the world geopolitical stage? And where does this fit into the age-old banker quest for global government? To answer these questions, we must first examine the institutions in question.

The Basics

Under the terms of the Agreement signed by the BRICS leaders at Fortaleza, the New Development Bank’s mandate is to “mobilize resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging economies and developing countries.” To accomplish this goal they will “support public or private projects through loans, guarantees, equity participation and other financial instruments.” The initial subscribed capital of $50 billion will come from initial payments of $10 billion from each of the five BRICS members. Total authorized capital of the Bank will be $100 billion. Membership of the bank will be open to all members of the United Nations and each members’ voting power will be equal to its subscribed shares in the Bank’s capital stock. The Bank will be headquartered in Shanghai and its governance will consist of a Board of Governors, a Board of Directors and a President.

The Contingent Reserve Arrangement, meanwhile, “is a framework for the provision of support through liquidity and precautionary instruments in response to actual or potential short-term balance of payments pressures.” Its initial $100 billion in committed resources will come in tranches: 41% from China, 18% each from Russia, India and Brazil, and 5% from South Africa. Governance of the CRA will consist of a Governing Council including one Governor and one Alternate Governor appointed by each of the five parties and a Standing Committee consisting of one Director and one Alternate Director appointed by each party. The Arrangement’s two main instruments will be a liquidity instrument for providing funds in response to balance of payment problems and a precautionary instrument for permitting access to funds ahead of anticipated balance of payment problems.

A Global Power Struggle?

So what does this all mean? Is this the first salvo in the long-expected economic war between the developed world and the developing world? Does the creation of the NDB and the CRA mark the rise of the BRICS as a force on the world stage? Does it threaten the existing IMF/World Bank empire?

The agreements for both the NDB and the CRA take pains to point out that they are meant as a “complement [to] existing international monetary and financial arrangements” rather than as competition to them. And the World Bank has formally welcomed the announcement of the NDB, with World Bank President Jim Young Kim telling reporters at a recent press conference with Indian Prime Minister Modi “The only competition we have is with poverty” and “Any bank or any group of institutions that try to tackle the problem of infrastructure investment to fight poverty, we welcome.”

But behind the polite words and ‘we’re all working toward the same goal’ rhetoric is the cold fact that the developing world has been increasingly vocal about their interest in World Bank reform in recent years and specific complaints from the BRICS nations themselves over the strings that are inevitably attached to World Bank lending. It is also perhaps significant that all of the BRICS nations except China will be paying more into their capitalization of the NDB than they do to the World Bank.

Although much talk has been made about how the BRICS are attempting to subvert the dollar’s hegemony as the world reserve currency, that is not the case with these institutions, at least not at this point. All of the capitalization payments and fund commitments in the agreements for the NDB and CRA are explicitly denominated in ” the official currency of payment of the United States of America.”

The main competition that many are expecting from the NDB as opposed to the World Bank is that there are expected to be far fewer (if any) conditionalities attached to NDB lending. As we saw last week the Structural Adjustment Programs of the IMF and World Bank require a whole series of political and economic reforms dictated by Washington and its cronies before developing countries can qualify for development funds. Now members of globalist institutions like Matt Ferchen of the Carnegie Tsinghua Center for Global Policy are openly fretting about the possibility that NDB funding will undermine this structure: “China has this rhetoric in terms of its foreign policy and especially as it relates to China’s engagement with other developing countries, that China won’t interfere in other countries’ domestic politics, that China respects the domestic, economic and political systems of other countries, in a way that they want to be seen as different from the World Bank, the IMF, or countries like the United States.”

For those who understand that the IMF/World Bank system is and has been used to subjugate debtor nations and impose the will of the Western powers on those countries, this seems like a potentially transformative moment. Could it be that the BRICS nations are creating a global institution that will truly undermine the Washington consensus stranglehold over the global south? Are the BRICS creating a global institution we can get behind? Should we be happy about this potential NDB/CRA revolution?

‘Good’ Globalization vs. ‘Bad’ Globalization

Like with so many other situations, we must be careful not to fall into the trap of believing that the only alternatives that are being presented to us are the only alternatives that are possible. In this case, it seems that we are being presented with the choice between supporting a development paradigm led by the ‘bad’ globalists of the IMF/World Bank crowd that seek to control other countries through financing and the ‘good’ globalists who are selflessly looking to spur development for the good of humanity. This is just such a false choice.

First, the underlying assumption that the BRICS countries are doing what they’re doing out of some selfless love of humanity needs to be confronted head on. The BRICS countries in general, and China in particular (which is the strongest proponent of the anti-interventionist stance), have much to gain by offering no strings development loans. This was made clear by Gaddafi when he made the argument that China would beat out the US for control over Africa because it’s non-interventionist foreign policy was better at winning Africans hearts and minds. China is interested in securing African resources. It cannot challenge the US directly at its leverage-and-threats approach to gaining control of those resources, so it plays the good cop in the good cop / bad cop game. This allows it to create deep (and lucrative) ties with precisely those nations, such as Sudan, that the US is most interested in ‘reforming.’ It may be a mutually beneficial relationship, but let’s not kid ourselves that China is interested in building up Sudanese infrastructure out of sheer goodwill. Did China finance the construction of a $1.3 billion railway from Khartoum to Port Sudan because they care about Africans or because they care about establishing the infrastructure to service their 2 million ton oil terminal in the port?

Secondly, the idea that the BRICS are creating a ‘good’ globalist institution rests on the further assumption that, even if the current batch of BRICS leaders are benevolent and altruistic, that the next batch (or the one after that…) will be as well. The World Bank, too, started out as a humble institution making very limited loans for very specific projects. It wasn’t until Robert McNamara took the reins of the Bank in 1968 that it started to take on the characteristics that we recognize today. Similarly who is to say that the BRICS leaders (or their successors) won’t allow the potential power of being a global financing body go to their heads? Why should we trust that any sprawling globalist institution will act always and forever in the interests of the greater good?

No, the ‘good’ globalization / ‘bad’ globalization here seems like a ruse to further globalization. Whether the world comes to accept a greater reliance on and submission of sovereignty to globalist institutions led by the West or institutions led by the BRICS countries does not seem to be a genuine choice.

So what are the alternatives? Surely it is important to build up the infrastructure of the developing countries, isn’t it? Surely this can’t be accomplished without the massive resources of a World Bank or a New Development Bank, can it?

It should first of all be noted that the urge to assume that developing nations cannot possibly find solutions to their own infrastructure and development problems without the aid of the rich global power players is not only paternalistic and patronizing, but contra-indicated by the evidence at hand. What, precisely, has the last 50 years of World Bank/IMF intervention and “aid” to the developing world achieved, exactly? Is Argentina in a better position than it was before IMF intervention, or a worse one? Has sub-Saharan Africa improved its political and economic clout on the world stage as a result of its World Bank financing, or become even more subservient to the countries that have provided it those loans? Are the success stories of economies that have risen out of poverty like South Korea because of or despite IMF/World Bank meddling? The answers to these questions, all easily enough documentable, speak for themselves.

Also, it shows a profound lack of imagination to believe that funding can only come through mega-grants delivered by bodies with hundreds of billions of dollars at their disposal. In recent decades the concept of microcredit has transformed our understanding of what is possible in terms of funding business and enterprise in the developing world, and it is currently challenging assumptions that infrastructure like affordable housing and sanitation systems can only be provided by the “grant aid lottery” of the World Bank (or NDB). Local communities know best what local needs are and how local manpower, resources and services can be organized to meet those needs. Granting bodies in Washington or Shanghai cannot possibly be expected to have that type of knowledge, or expect that throwing dollars at these problems will achieve the same results as providing small-scale, goal driven aid for specific local projects created and run by local community organizations.

It is not a question of ‘good’ global banks vs. ‘bad’ global banks. It is global banks versus the people, as it always has been, and when we understand the situation from that perspective the sheen comes off of the ballyhoo surrounding the New Development Bank.

Whither the NDB?

Before anyone gets too carried away with speculation about the NDB and the CRA and their likely role on the world stage, it would be good to conduct a brief reality check. There was another announcement of another alternative development bank just a few short years ago that received a similar amount of coverage and hoopla at the time that turned out to be all talk and no action. Remember the Bank of the South? Neither do most of the people who wrote about it at the time, and yet it seemed like a major development when it occurred.

That the BRICS are serious about following through with the NDB and the CRA is not in doubt, but that they can keep these organizations together and working toward a unified vision is very much doubtful at this moment. Internal divisions within the BRICS delayed the creation of the bank for years and even now tensions continue between the members. Brazil and China, for example, remain locked in disputes over China’s economic relation to the South American country; Brazil accuses the rising dragon of plundering their resources and dumping cheap manufactured goods on the country in return. China and India have also butted heads over control of the NDB’s policies and vision, and there is ongoing concern about whether South Africa will be able to live up to its financial obligations in these institutions.

All of this being said, the bank is hoping to make its first loan in 2016. When that happens, there will be no doubt that we will be living in a different world. The question is whether it will be a better one.

About the author:

James Corbett is editor, webmaster, writer, producer, host, and the inspiration behind The Corbett Report, an independent, listener-supported alternative news source. The Corbett Report operates on the principle of open source intelligence and provides podcasts, interviews, articles and videos about breaking news and important issues, from 9/11 Truth and false flag terror to the Big Brother police state, eugenics, geopolitics, the central banking fraud and more.

James has been living and working in Japan since 2004. He started The Corbett Report website in 2007 as an outlet for independent critical analysis of politics, society, history, and economics. Since then he has written, recorded and edited over 1000 hours of audio and video media for the website, including a weekly weekly podcast and several regular online video series. Corbett also produces video reports for GRTV, the video production arm of the Centre for Research on Globalization, and BoilingFrogsPost.com, the website of noted FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. He is also an editorial writer for The International Forecaster, the weekly e-newsletter created by the late Bob Chapman.

For more information about Corbett and his background, please listen to Episode 163 of The Corbett Report podcast, Meet James Corbett. This article originally appeared in The Corbett Report Subscriber newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter and become a member of The Corbett Report website, please sign up for a monthly or annual membership here.

from: http://wakeup-world.com/2015/02/01/meet-the-brics-new-development-bank/