Obsolete Phrases: “Independence Of Mind”

Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com | JonRappoport.wordpress.com
By: Jon Rappoport
August 22, 2017

Like a car with high fins and long protruding tail lights, the phrase “independence of mind” has gone out of style, especially at colleges and universities where it ought to be the most profound ideal. The thugs have taken over.

As recently as 2008, a professor of Jurisprudence at King’s College London, Timothy Macklem, described the phrase in this fashion:

“Independence of Mind [explores] the ways in which the fundamental freedoms help us to achieve something even more profound, by enabling us to arrive at beliefs, convictions and voices of our own, so that we truly come to think, believe, and speak for ourselves in the rich and various ways that the freedoms then protect. Privacy grants us the distance and refuge from others necessary to develop views of our own; freedom of speech calls on us to imagine ways of expressing ourselves that are both true to the views we have developed and innovative in their own right; freedom of conscience enables each of us to create a distinctive rational personality in which to embed the convictions that we wish to treat as non-negotiable…”

If the professor taught at one of many American “liberal colleges” today, a mere nine years after he wrote that description, he would be pilloried and subjected to prolonged attacks from students and even other faculty.

That’s the pace of change these days.

I started NoMoreFakeNews.com in 2001. Independence of mind was a given for me. As the years passed, I saw the need for promoting it and defending it. I still do. More than ever.

What drives the human spirit isn’t sameness from individual to individual. It’s difference. It’s uniqueness. The people who know that and embody it are the lights that burn and keep burning. They’re inextinguishable.

The betrayal of independence of mind is fantastical in the culture. It raises a stink to the heavens. It oozes fanaticism.

Many of the little academic intellects who support that betrayal and play its tunes are Marxists in disguise, who seek revenge on humanity for their own failures and shortcomings, by putting populations under the totalitarian gun of political correctness. This is “progressivism.”

Without knowing it, I grew up on the legacy of Emerson and Thoreau and Walt Whitman. These giants of literature and philosophy had breathed the air of independence and knew what it meant in their blood and brains and souls and minds. They heralded an age that came and then went, buried in a growing landfill of collectivism.

The myth that the onrushing political Left was composed of millions of awake and aware individuals was eventually exposed as a gigantic lie.

There is a choice: the glory of the individual or the glory of the mob?

Whoever takes his own independent ideas and prizes them has something the mob can never fathom.

What does censorship mean to a person who has nothing that could be censored? Why would he be concerned about shutting up other people, since he has nothing of his own to express that might be censored?

What does “having an idea” mean to a person who has never considered making a distinction between what he thinks and what others, to whom he attaches himself, think?

In the description of independence of mind I quoted above, what would the following phrase mean to a person who is always surrounded with allies who mimic each other’s thoughts: “Privacy grants us the distance and refuge from others necessary to develop views of our own.”

Privacy? What is that? What is it for? Who needs it? Why would anyone seek it?

Therefore, what harm could come from spying on others?

Who stands up for something on his own when he has nothing to stand up for on his own?

In the delirium of the collective, it is always overcast and dim, and the occasional joys come from acts of destruction against the vague “other.”

The first sacrifice by the true believer is the sacrifice of self. From that, everything else follows with dead certainty.

No matter what the state of the culture, independence of mind is a virtue of the highest order.

It is there for anyone who wants to achieve it.

Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com
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Jon Rappoport

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 29^th 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.

Freedom | Conformity Crisis

We Need A Social Revolution

Source: PeakProsperity.com
Charles Hugh Smith
August 18, 2017

In the conventional view, there are two kinds of revolutions: political and technological. Political revolutions may be peaceful or violent, and technological revolutions may transform civilizations gradually or rather abruptly—for example, revolutionary advances in the technology of warfare.

In this view, the engines of revolution are the state—government in all its layers and manifestations—and the corporate economy.

In a political revolution, a new political party or faction gains converts to its narrative, and this new force replaces the existing political order, either via peaceful means or violent revolution.

Technological revolutions arise from many sources but end up being managed by the state and private sector, which each influence and control the other in varying degrees.

Conventional history focuses on top-down political revolutions of the violent “regime change” variety: the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), the Russian Revolution (1917), the Chinese Revolution (1949), and so on.

Technology has its own revolutionary hierarchy; the advances of the Industrial Revolutions I, II, III and now IV, have typically originated with inventors and proto-industrialists who relied on private capital and banking to fund large-scale buildouts of new industries: rail, steel manufacturing, shipbuilding, the Internet, etc.

The state may direct and fund technological revolutions as politically motivated projects, for example the Manhattan project to develop nuclear weapons and the Space race to the Moon in the 1960s.

These revolutions share a similar structure: a small cadre leads a large-scale project based on a strict hierarchy in which the revolution is pushed down the social pyramid by the few at the top to the many below.  Even when political and industrial advances are accepted voluntarily by the masses, the leadership and structure of the controlling mechanisms are hierarchical: political power, elected or not, is concentrated in the hands of a few at the top. Corporations are commercial autocracies; leadership is highly concentrated and orders are imposed on the bottom 99% of employees with military-like authority.

Social Revolutions Are Not Top-Down

But there is another class of revolution that does not share this hierarchical structure, nor does it manifest in the large-scale, top-down power-pyramids of the state and private corporations: social revolutions are bottoms-up affairs, lacking centralized leadership and hierarchical control mechanisms.

Social revolutions eventually influence the state and private sector, but they do not require the permission, funding or leadership of these hierarchies; as a rule, social revolutions drag the state and corporate sectors forward, kicking and screaming, as the social fabric and values of the populace change and the state and corporate sector cling to the status quo.

Examples of recent social revolutions include the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, the Counterculture of the 1960s, and the gay rights movement.  The leadership of the state resisted each revolution, and was essentially forced to adapt to the new social order as it became mainstream.

Once corporations figured out ways to profit from the transformed social order, they quickly introduced new products and fresh marketing: all-Caucasian advertising, for example, gave way to targeted ethnic advertising and mixed-race national advert campaigns.

When social revolutions are suppressed by the state, they may spark a political revolution as the socially oppressed come to see the overthrow of the autocratic political order as a necessary step towards liberation.

In other cases, social revolutions may have little immediate impact on the political stage. Faith-based social secular movements–for example, the Second Great Awakening in the early 19^th century– were not overtly political; their eventual political impact (temperance, woman’s rights and support for the abolition of slavery) may manifest decades later.

In summary: social revolutions may generate political waves, but they need not be overtly political to do so, nor do they rely on political, financial or technological hierarchies to transform society.

The Decline of Social Groups and the Erosion of the Social Order

Robert Putman’s 2000 book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, documented the decline of social connections and what we might calling belonging in American society with reams of data. This erosion of social bonds is not limited to social groups such as bowling leagues; it is secular, spanning every social type of connection from family picnics to community and neighborhood groups.

If we extend Putnam’s findings to the core human bonds of family and friendships, we find the same fraying of social ties; people have fewer close friends, are more isolated and lonely, and family relationships are increasingly superficial or characterized by alienation.

The factors feeding this broad-based decline of connectedness and social capital are many: the nation’s economic mode of production has changed, requiring two incomes where one once sufficed, and globalization has increased both the demands on those with jobs and the number of adults who have fallen out of the work force.

This winner-takes-most economy has been accompanied by the rise of political divisiveness, a brand of politics that fosters us-versus-them disunity and the erosion of common ground in favor of demonized opponents and all-or-nothing loyalty to one party or cause.

The technological revolutions of broadcast television and radio homogenized the mainstream media even as they provided superficial substitutes for social engagement. The technologies of social media, mobile telephony and narrowcast echo-chambers of uniform opinion have created even more addictive forms of distraction that are not just shredding social connectedness—they’re destroying our ability to form and nurture social bonds, even within the family.

This dynamic was explored in a recent essay in The Atlantic, Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

Any careful observer of present-day family life would add that the addictive draw of mobile telephony has also damaged the parents’ generation and the family unit itself.

Cui Bono: To Whose Benefit?

Longtime readers know I often begin an inquiry with the time-tested question: cui bono, to whose benefit? Who has benefited from the erosion of the social fabric and social capital, from the politics of divisiveness and the mass addiction to the technologies of superficial connectedness?

While we can take note of soaring corporate profits, and draw a causal connection between these profits and the modern-day “always connected to work” lifestyle of high-productivity corporate employees, it’s difficult to argue that corporations have benefited directly from the loss of social capital that characterizes American life.

Rather, it seems that the corporation’s relentless pursuit of narrowly defined self-interest, i.e. maximizing profits by whatever means are available, has laid waste to boundaries between work and home life as collateral damage.

In a similar fashion, purveyors of smartphones and the software and content that render them so addictive don’t necessarily benefit directly from the destruction of intimate, authentic social bonds, but they certainly have prospered from the feeding of the smartphone addiction. Once again, the loss of authentic social connectedness is collateral damage.

While it seems quite clear that political groups have fueled divisiveness to their own benefit, does the state (government in all its forms) benefit from the fraying of the social order? It’s difficult to discern a direct benefit to the state, though it might be argued that a fractured populace is easier to control.

But the erosion of the social order has gone beyond fracture into disintegration, and it’s hard to see how class wars and social disunity benefit the state, which ultimately relies on some measure of social unity for its authority, which flows from the consent of the governed.

It’s Time To Take Our Future Back

In Part 2: Rescuing Our Future, we focus on the self-evident truth that governments and corporations cannot restore social connectedness and balance to our lives.  Only a social revolution that is self-organizing from the bottom-up can do that.

And we detail out the specific steps each of us can and should take to develop the values and skills required to form and maintain authentic social wealth—the wealth of friendship, of social gatherings, of belonging.

It takes courage and independence to swim against the toxic tides of our economy and society. The good news is that true wealth is within reach of everyone. The steps we each need take are clear; it’s just a matter of having the will to invest the time and effort.

Do you have it?

Read More At: PeakProsperity.com

Wake Up To The Rockefeller Movie Of Political Reality

Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com | JonRappoport.wordpress.com
By: Jon Rappoport
July 24, 2017

The key document here is the 2010 Rockefeller Foundation brainstorming exercise, “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development”.

It imagines various disasters and possible responses to them.

The report presents a friendly and concerned front, but reading between the lines, you can see Globalism at work, shoring up a new and improved international order—as if that solution is the only viable future for humanity.

Here is a choice bit of scenario-building and forecasting from the report:

“In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit…national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets. Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified. In order to protect themselves from the spread of increasingly global problems—from pandemics and transnational terrorism to environmental crises and rising poverty—leaders around the world took a firmer grip on power.”

Ah yes, the favorite phony stepchild of the Globalists: a pandemic. Forget the fact that every dire prediction of worldwide destruction from a dreaded virus, during the past 15 years, has fallen flat. SARS, Swine Flu, West Nile, Bird Flu, etc. Duds.

Here’s another preposterous Rockefeller future, from the viewpoint of 2010:

“Undeniably, the planet’s climate was becoming increasingly unstable.”

“Sea levels were rising fast, even as countries continued to build-out coastal mega-cities.”

“In 2014, the Hudson River overflowed into New York City during a storm surge, turning the World Trade Center site into a three-foot-deep lake. The image of motorboats navigating through lower Manhattan jarred the world’s most powerful nations into realizing that climate change was not just a developing-world problem.”

The last Time I looked, New York City was not underwater. Submarine taxis weren’t taking people to work.

Now read further, to get a flavor of the Rockefeller solution to the “climate disaster.” Notice that an international order, and NOT separate nations, is required:

“In such an interconnected world, where the behaviors of one country, company, or individual had potentially high-impact effects on all others, piecemeal attempts by one nation here, one small collective of environmental organizations there, would not be enough to stave off a climate disaster – or, for that matter, to effectively address a host of other planetary-scale problems.”

“But highly coordinated worldwide strategies for addressing such urgent issues just might. What was needed was systems thinking – and systems acting – on a global scale.”

“International coordination started slowly, then accelerated faster than anyone had imagined.”

“In 2015, a critical mass of middle income and developed countries with strong economic growth publicly committed to leveraging their resources against global-scale problems, beginning with climate change. Together, their governments hashed out plans for monitoring and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the short term and improving the absorptive capacity of the natural environment over the long term.”

“In 2017, an international agreement was reached on carbon sequestration (by then, most multinational corporations had a chief carbon officer) and intellectual and financial resources were pooled to build out carbon capture processes that would best support the global ecosystem. A functioning global cap and trade system was also established.”

“Worldwide, the pressure to reduce waste and increase efficiency in planet-friendly ways was enormous.”

Now here is the big one, with technocracy as the master:

“New globally coordinated systems for monitoring energy use capacity – including smart grids and bottom-up pattern recognition technologies – were rolled out. These efforts produced real results: by 2022, new projections showed a significant slowing in the rise of atmospheric carbon levels.”

“Inspired by the success of this experiment in collective global action, large-scale coordinated initiatives intensified. Centralized global oversight and governance structures sprang up, not just for energy use but also for disease and technology standards. Such systems and structures required far greater levels of transparency, which in turn required more tech-enabled data collection, processing, and feedback.”

“Enormous, benign “sousveillance” systems allowed citizens to access data – all publicly available – in real time and react. Nation-states lost some of their power and importance as global architecture strengthened and regional governance structures emerged. International oversight entities like the UN took on new levels of authority, as did regional systems like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).”

Are you following this? The monitoring of energy use, for example. This is nothing less than moment to moment tracking of energy production and consumption, planet-wide.

It’s the ultimate top-down force. What flows from this position is the ALLOCATION of energy to every nation—and, up the road, TO EVERY HUMAN.

“Mr. Jones, your energy-use card shows you’ve reached your limit for this month. Ten days left until February 1. All your energy-producing devices and assets will shut down now. Have a nice day.”

You don’t think that could ever happen? There is no way to assign energy-use limits to nations without directly impacting use by individuals.

I also hope you noticed the reference to emerging “regional governance structures.” The takeover of separate nations by the UN, the EU, and other unelected bodies.

This is the preferred and mandated Rockefeller solution.

And now a word about the hated and loved Donald Trump. Whatever you think of him, he raised the issue of Globalism, front and center. He shot down the Rockefeller TPP treaty. He didn’t sign the Paris Climate pact. He emphasized nationalism, as opposed to internationalism. He mocked climate-change “science.”

For the moment, let’s assume the very worst. Trump didn’t mean anything he said. He was a liar, is a liar, and will be a liar. He was actually put in office by the Globalists, who wanted a ludicrous enemy to play off of. He wasn’t and isn’t an enemy of Globalism. He’s a complete fraud. By relentlessly attacking Trump, the Globalists will defeat their “last opponent,” and in the next election they will sweep into power as never before, believing they can then complete their plan for worldwide domination. Let’s assume all this.

Nevertheless, millions and millions of people have become alerted to this thing called Globalism as a destructive force with a covert agenda of planetary control.

Observers can go full-bore gloom and doom, claiming it doesn’t matter. They can bitch and moan about how nothing has changed. They can confirm their own personal prophecy of failure along all fronts.

Or they can try to wake up more people to what Globalism is really all about.

All along I’ve said I’m far more interested in the people who supported Trump, for their own reasons, than I’m interested in Trump. And I’m not particularly interested in those supporters’ reasons, either—except when FREEDOM is involved.

The freedom to take destiny into their own hands.

That idea is not dead. It will never be dead.

Time is long.

THE INDIVIDUAL is at the very bottom of the Globalist plan. He is considered to be a fly in the ointment who needs to be eradicated, in favor of The Group.

He is considered to be an extinct evolutionary appendage.

That is why the Globalist superstructure must be defeated.

Psychologically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, creatively, a separate nation is better than an oligarchical global government.

An individual is better than a nation.

A free individual is better than a sleeping individual.

A self-empowered individual—free, responsible, rational, intensely creative—is possible and necessary.

This is where it all starts.

This is where it has to start.

It doesn’t start with a global glob of fantasizing utopians, who are unaware they’re acting on behalf of an Earth Empire.

Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com
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Jon Rappoport

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 29^th 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.

Book Review: Churchill & Orwell: The Fight For Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks | #SmartReads

TheBreakaway | BreakawayConciousness
Zy Marquiez
July 1, 217

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
– George Orwell

In Churchill And Orwell, Thomas E. Ricks does an apt job of juxtaposing two of history’s pillars of freedom – Winston Churchill and George Orwell, whose real name is Eric Arthur Blair.

The author follows the lives of these men through the 30s and 40s with lucidity, while comparing and contrasting key elements of these stalwarts of critical thought and independence.

Though both men were incisive writers that did not overlook the power of the written word, each man went through his own trials and tribulations that helped mold who they became.  Those life lessons they learned helped each become staunch supporters of freedom and individuality in a world that sought then, as it still seeks now at times, to conform individuals at nigh every turn.

With a critical eye to the unique path these men have walked, the author sagely states that their path:

“… is a path we should all strive for if we are to preserve the right to think, speak, and act independently, heeding the dictates not of the state or of fashionable thought but of our own consciences.  In most places and most of the time, liberty is not a product of military action.  Rather, it is something alive that grows or diminishes every day, in how we think and communicate, how we treat each other in our public discourse, in what we value and reward as a society, and how we do that.”[1]

Such a compelling statement beckons rumination for those that value freedom.   Freedom isn’t something that’s merely handed down, but an idea that’s alive, fluid, wholly able to grow or whither depending on how it is treated.

As such, given the totalitarian train of tyranny and fascism that is barreling down the pike, it would be wise to reap wisdom from these prescient pillars of the past, whilst also contemplating what Freedom truly means to us.

If the past is any indication of the future, and we certainly know that it is, then given the cyclic nature of history and man’s inability to learn from the past, then it is only a matter of time before we are waist deep in the very totalitarian and tyrannical issues that both Churchill and Orwell fought to prevent.

This makes learning our history and from those that stood before us and fought the good fight an imperative.  If not, humanity is merely choosing the path of ignorance once again.

Churchill & Orwell: The Fight For Freedom is an evocative read, made all the more relevant by the rise in tyranny and censorship that seeps further into society.  The courage Churchill and Orwell brought to bear in the fight for freedom was immeasurable, just as their wisdom is timeless.  To ignore their words and actions would be unwise, and if we do that, we do that at or own peril.

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Sources:

[1] Thomas E. Ricks, Churchill & Orwell, pg. 269.
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If you find value in this information, please share it.  This article is free and open source.  All individuals have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and TheBreakaway.wordpress.com.
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About The Author:

Zy Marquiez is an avid book reviewer, inquirer, an open-minded skeptic, yogi, and freelance writer who aims at empowering individuals while also studying and regularly mirroring subjects like Consciousness, Education, Creativity, The Individual, Ancient History & Ancient Civilizations, Forbidden Archaeology, Big Pharma, Alternative Health, Space, Geoengineering, Social Engineering, Propaganda, and much more.

His other blog, BreakawayConsciousnessBlog.wordpress.com features mainly his personal work, while TheBreakaway.wordpress.com serves as a media portal which mirrors vital information nigh always ignored by mainstream press, but still highly crucial to our individual understanding of various facets of the world.

You won’t believe this stupid new law against Cash and Bitcoin

Source: SovereignMan.com
Simon Black
June 14, 2017

This one is almost too ridiculous to believe.

Recently a new bill was introduced on the floor of the US Senate entitled, pleasantly,

“Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017.”

You can probably already guess its contents.

Cash is evil.

Bitcoin is evil.

Now they’ve gone so far to include prepaid mobile phones, retail gift vouchers, or even electronic coupons. Evil, evil, and evil.

These people are certifiably insane.

Among the bill’s sweeping provisions, the government aims to greatly extend its authority to seize your assets through “Civil Asset Forfeiture”.

Civil Asset Forfeiture rules allow the government to take whatever they want from you, without a trial or any due process.

This new bill adds a laundry list of offenses for which they can legally seize your assets… all of which pertain to money laundering and other financial crimes.

Here’s the thing, though: they’ve also vastly expanded on the definition of such ‘financial crimes’, including failure to fill out a form if you happen to be transporting more than $10,000 worth of ‘monetary instruments’.

Have too much cash? You’d better tell the government.

If not, they’re authorizing themselves in this bill to seize not just the money you didn’t report, but ALL of your assets and bank accounts.

They even go so far as to specifically name “safety deposit boxes” among the various assets that they can seize if you don’t fill out the form.

(Yet another reason to consider storing cash, gold, and silver in an overseas safety deposit box.)

This is unbelievable on so many levels.

It’s crazy to begin with that these people are so consumed by the fact that someone has $10,000 in cash.

But it’s even crazier that they’re threatening to take EVERYTHING that you own merely for not filling out a piece of paper, without any due process whatsoever.

Oh, and on top of civil asset forfeiture penalties, there are also criminal penalties.

Right now according to current law they can imprison you for up to FIVE YEARS for not filling out the form. Five years.

But apparently that doesn’t go far enough to protect us against evil men in caves.

So this bill aims to double the criminal penalty to TEN years in prison.

And if that weren’t enough, this bill also gives them with new authority to engage in surveillance and wiretapping (including phone, email, etc.) if they have even a hint of suspicion that you might be transporting excess ‘monetary instruments’.

Usually wiretapping authority is reserved for major crimes like kidnapping, human trafficking, felony fraud, etc.

Now we can add cash to that list.

It’s not just government spy agencies to worry about, either.

Banks in the US are already unpaid government spies, required by law to fill out suspicious activity reports on their customers.

Then Congress started expanding those requirements to include other businesses and industries that might come into contact with cash.

Stock brokers. Casinos. Currency exchanges. Precious metals dealers. Pawnbrokers. The Post Office.

According to the law (section 5312 of US Code Title 31), those industries are also required to spy on their customers for the government.

But under this new bill, they want to forcibly recruit even more unpaid spies, including any business which issues or redeems ANYTHING that’s prepaid.

Prepaid credit cards. Prepaid phones. Prepaid retail gift cards. Prepaid coupons.

So, Amazon.com, which issues and redeems prepaid gift cards, will be required under this bill to file reports to the government.

For that matter, TGI Fridays and Chuckee Cheese will also become unpaid government spies since they both issue and redeem prepaid vouchers.

Truly these Senators have figured out how to strike at the heart of ISIS.

Further, their bill wants to pull any business which “issues” cryptocurrency under the anti-money laundering regulatory umbrella.

Here’s where these people demonstrate that they have no idea what they’re talking about.

No one “issues” Bitcoin. There’s no Bitcoin central bank. There’s no Chairman of Bitcoin who decides on a whim to increase the supply.

Bitcoin is created automatically amounts that are pre-determined by its code. It’s software.

So the Senate is essentially trying to force the Bitcoin core software to comply with money laundering regulations.

How pathetically clueless.

The bill also…

Continue Reading At: SovereignMan.com

India: corruption scandals reveal a gaping hole in society

Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com | JonRappoport.wordpress.com
By: Jon Rappoport
January 9, 2017

“There are two ways to go. One, expose an enormous scandal and say, ‘See, this is what humans do, there is no hope’; or, exposing the same scandal, say, ‘As bad as this is, there are individuals who can invent futures that surpass the greed and the insanity’.” (The Magician Awakes, Jon Rappoport)

Honor, honesty, integrity, ethics—words that mean nothing in a universe of corruption. Words that have been co-opted by vague idealists who hide behind them.

No matter what systems and organizations people build, there is always the question of how many honest individuals are in positions of power—and that question is crucial, to say the least.

I can’t count the number of scandals I’ve written about over the past 35 years. Nor can I count the number of times I’ve referred to The Individual as the bedrock of society.

There is an illusion that the future is shaped by collectives, that we live in a planetary collective, but the truth is, individuals are still at the center of things. Failing to focus on, and elevate the importance of, the individual leads to dire consequences.

The failure of education (at home and in schools) to take up issues of individual freedom, power, and responsibility opens the door to unaccountable corruption. There is no way around it.

How many colleges in the world teach courses that truly explore individual freedom, responsibility, power, creativity, and ethics as a single whole? How many teachers, even if permitted, would be able to lead students through such a course without the usual empty platitudes and academic fiddle-faddle?

The obvious answers to these questions reveal a gaping hole in society and civilization, a hole that most people don’t notice, because they’ve been trained to look away from it.

This time I’m taking a look at India, and a gigantic “institutional” scandal many readers have never heard of.

The Washington Post July 5, 2015: GWALIOR, India — “Nobody knows exactly when or why the witnesses and small-time crooks caught up in one of India’s biggest-ever corruption scandals began dying under mysterious circumstances. But in the past two years, that’s what’s happened to more than two dozen people implicated in a $1 billion test-rigging scheme.”

“Even by standards in India, where corruption is routine, the scale of the scam in the central state of Madhya Pradesh is mind-boggling. Police say that since 2007, tens of thousands of students and job aspirants have paid hefty bribes to middlemen, bureaucrats and politicians to rig test results for medical schools and government jobs.”

“So far, 1,930 people have been arrested and more than 500 are on the run. Hundreds of medical students are in prison — along with several bureaucrats and the state’s education minister. Even the governor has been implicated.”

“Police have had their hands full racing to meet a July deadline in the criminal probe. And now they are faced with the deaths of more witnesses and suspects. In the past week, police said, one of those accused died after having chest pains in prison, another drowned in a village pond and a third died of a liver infection.”

“On Saturday, television reporter Akshay Singh died while investigating a suspect’s death. Singh sipped tea during an interview and began coughing and foaming at the mouth, according to media reports. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors said he had suffered a heart attack. Police said the initial examination did not reveal anything ‘suspicious’.”

“’The police say they keep coming up against a wall in their investigation every time someone is found dead’, said Chandresh Bhushan, chairman of the special investigation team that was appointed by the state court to monitor the police probe. ‘We ask them, “Why are so many dying in road accidents in this case? Does this have any link to the scam?” There is no evidence of a link yet, but we cannot overrule it, either’.”

“’There is so much information with the investigators that it could bring the government down,’ said Ashish Chaturvedi, 26, one of the whistleblowers. He has been attacked 14 times by unknown assailants, he said. Six of the assaults took place in front of a police officer assigned by a court to protect him last year.”

“Many of the mysteriously dead are young — either students who paid money and made it into medical schools or job aspirants trying to take tests to become police officers, school teachers, forest rangers and food inspectors.”

“Some of the accused, called ‘racketeers’ in police files, have died from poison. Others died in freak road accidents, or by consuming too much alcohol, or by hanging. One medical college dean died in a fire. A medical student was found dead on railway tracks. The son of the state governor was found dead at his father’s home in March, ostensibly from a brain hemorrhage.”

“Last week, Narendra Singh Tomar, a 29-year-old veterinarian who was in prison on charges of arranging impersonators for medical school applicants, complained of chest pain, police said, and died soon after in a hospital. His family told reporters that they suspected Tomar was murdered.”

“A day later, a 40-year-old assistant professor at a medical college, Rajendra Arya, who was out on bail after being charged in the case, died of a heart attack…”

You could call this a collective scandal of corruption, but many individuals make up that collective, each acting according to his own sense of (lack of) honesty. And you could also say that individuals trying to expose the scandal and get to the bottom of it are paying the ultimate price—as if that were a reason to give up and claim there is no solution, ever.

But there is always a solution in the long run, if it begins with educating individuals about who and what they are—and, more importantly, finding that place in a person where he already knows who he is, beyond the kind of greed and evil exemplified by the corruption described above.

Honesty, integrity, and responsibility exist. Yes they do. In the minds and consciences of individuals.

This has always been true, and it will always be true.

The worst cynic in the world is, in fact, the worst cynic precisely because he understands this. He sees the good. He never loses sight of it. He has it in himself, and he knows others have it, too, no matter how forcefully he denies it.

Genuinely and authentically helping to lift up the individual opens a portal to a world almost everyone would want to live in.

Over the years (and currently), I’ve known people who forwarded projects and enterprises dedicated to this goal. Without exception, they could see past corruption, and in so doing, they projected an energy that exposed the lie of “the human condition” and the doom that would consign human civilization to failure.

They knew there was something else.

We know it, too.

No matter how bad things get, the individual can fashion and create enterprises that rise beyond the common bed of corruption….and beyond the collective.

Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com
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Jon Rappoport

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 29^th 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

Australia: Marijuana Doctor Arrested For Helping Children

Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com | JonRappoport.wordpress.com
By: Jon Rappoport
June 5, 2017

Crazzfiles.com has the story (5/31):

“Dr Andrew Katelaris, will appear in the Hornsby Local Court today after being arrested yesterday.”

“Chief Inspector David Hogg confirmed to Echonetdaily that Dr. Katelaris had been charged with a number of offences including drug possession, having an indictable quantity of cannabis, and having proceeds of crime.”

“On Sunday Dr Katelaris featured in a Channel Seven report in which he was shown giving cannabis oil to a four-year-old boy, who has since been taken from his parents.”

“He had spent the weekend at a Hemp Industry forum at Rosehill in Sydney, where police arrived on the final day after reports that a large crop of cannabis was on display.”

“No arrests were made as the ‘cannabis display’, which consisted of low-THC plants for hemp production, had been approved prior to the forum.”

“Dr Katelaris has been a staunch advocate of medical cannabis, having been researching its effects since 1990.”

“He has been arrested numerous times in the past and openly admits to supplying CBD dominant cannabis to over 50 children with serious seizure disorders.”

“Just last year the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) determined Dr Katelaris, who also holds a doctorate, had been involved in more breaches of a code of conduct for non-registered health professionals after injecting two women with cannabis oil to treat ovarian cancer.”

At crazzfiles.com you can watch a short video featuring Dr. Katelaris and make up your own mind about his sincerity, skill, and competence.

The numerous government attacks against him are inevitably based on the fact that marijuana is a natural substance, and can’t be patented in that form. Having an effective medicine floating around that people can freely use for themselves contradicts the goals of the pharmaceutical money machine:

“We know what’s good for you, and what’s not good for you. The government has given us a monopoly on healing, and you’d better go along with it.”

Yes, even if a medicine kills you, it’s still the best that “science” can offer at the present moment.

And by the way, parents have no say in how their children are treated. They have no inherent rights. The government owns those children. As proof, if health authorities don’t like what the parents are doing, they can come in and take the children away and put them in foster care, where they’ll be drugged up to their eyeballs.

Medically speaking, Australia is on lockdown. The majority of citizens appear to be unaware or unconcerned. But those who are aware are looking for, and using, alternatives. They are forming a growing underground.

The Australian government is advised to study the history of police states. In the long run, they fail. People will stand for only so much, particularly when their health and the health of their children are on the line.

The police state appears to be invincible…until one day it isn’t, because huge numbers of people, who have been dealing with their very survival, outflank totalitarian departments and bureaus.

The top-down control factor disintegrates. A belittled and minimized impulse re-emerges.

It’s called freedom.

It turns out that the “market” in freedom is forever.

The mind never forgets it.

Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com
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Jon Rappoport

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 29^th 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.

Book Review: The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse | #SmartReads

TheBreakaway | BreakawayConciousness
Zy Marquiez
May 19, 2017

Wide in scope, and methodical in its examination, The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse is not only a dire warning, but a call to action for those who are seeing the decline of modern adults and the transmutation and erosion of adulthood in modern times, and the erosions of Freedoms as well.

Examining a veritable panoply of issues, the author centers upon myriad issues in modern schooling such as age segregation, over-consumption, lack of knowledge or literary skills, and also the incomplete view on what Freedom really is and all that it entails, and more.

Speaking about the glaring disrespect for Freedom and all that it took the gain, the author incisively notes:

“Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, has created the tragically apt phrase “unlearning liberty” for the troubling turn from freedom of expression and academic freedom toward political correctness and speech codes on our elite campuses.

“Let’s state it clearly: This is nearly the opposite of hat American Revolution as fought for.  America declared independence from Great Britain in pursuit of liberty, not “safe spaces.”  Freedom, and particularly freedom of discourse and debate about the big ideas of life, death, and meaning, is the foundation of the American idea.  Fleeting notions of psychological safety from having to considering competing ideas are quite nearly the opposite.”[1]

Such is what takes place when people are raised wrapped in bubble wrap, and are only allowed to experience a fraction of the totality that the world holds.  Worse, these actions are antithetical to Freedom since they aim to castrate others of the very views Freedom aims to protect, even if they are unpopular.

At one point, the author centers upon the work of award-winning teacher, John Taylor Gatto, who has done yeomen’s work in sounding the alarm regarding the insidious nature of public schooling.  In his landmark book, Dumbing Us Down, the author notes that:

“…seven lessons are universally taught from Harlem to Hollywood,” in our cookie-cutter schools.  The main consequences for students are: emotional confusion, social class disparity indifference, passivity, intellectual dependency on experts, conditional self-esteem, and surveillance by those in charge.”[2]

In such a system that seeks to conform, Is it a wonder that many are merely shadows of what they are fully capable of?

That said, there are two contentions to note with the book.  The first contention centers upon footnotes.  Although the author has a bibliography, and does in fact does address why the footnotes are missing, it still leaves a lot to be desired.  Given that this book aimed to cover a large scope of information, for those wanting to not only verify the information given, but wanting to research it further, footnotes are black pearls, they are essentially priceless.  One can only construct the present out of the roadmap of the past, and without a roadmap, one is unable to know where to go.  One would have to spend hours trying to stitch together the book’s sourced material in an attempt to ascertain which statement correlates with what book in the Bibliography, and there in you STILL don’t know what page that statement came from.  Had he given the page in the bibliography this would have been alright, but such was not the case.

The second contention with the book is that although the author does note some of the incisive issues that are taking place within society, and rightly so, the author doesn’t go far enough and only does a cursory examination.  One could make a sound argument that a large portion of issues stems from the social engineering in education, which is wholly verifiable if one takes the time to look.  It’s certainly not the only reason, but a leading one.

In fact, the very work that the author cited of John Taylor Gatto, throughout his books shows at length many references for the system having been engineered this way.  It wasn’t random that America’s education is failing, and that critical thinking skills have been lost – It was meant to BE that way.  Gatto’s work is a crucial start to glean this.  Moreover, the work of whistleblower Charlotte Iserbyt, who was a former Senior Policy Adviser for the Office Of Education Research & Improvement in the Reagan Administration adds more fuel to the fire, and sheds more light onto the darkness.  Her intriguing book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down Of America, is a phenomenal foray into the insidious roots of this broken system.

Also noteworthy is a gentleman who came out pulling no punches on this very topic named Professor Patrick Deneen.  In fact, in a lucid article entitled “How A Generation Lost Its Common Culture,” he states the following:

“We have fallen into the bad and unquestioned habit of thinking that our educational system is broken, but it is working on all cylinders.  What our education system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, history-less free agents, and educational goals composed of content-free process and unexamined buzz-words like “critical thinking,” “diversity,” “ways of knowing,” “social justice,” and “cultural competence.”  Our education system produces solipsistic, self-contained selves whose only public commitment is an absence of commitment to public, a common culture, a shared history.  They are perfectly hollowed vessels, receptive and obedient without any real obligations or devotions.”[3]

Such is the true nature of the beast.   Not only is society being dumbed down, but culture as a whole is being eviscerated, one child at a time.

In any case, Sasse does provide some solutions to these problems and they are worthy of consideration.  The solutions that the author offers are not only practical, but much-needed.

It would be prudent for those seeking to understand more thoroughly how all these issues came to be to not only read The vanishing American Adult but also to read up on the work of Gatto, Iserbyt, and Deneen.  Complement this piece not only with the prior authors’ work, but also with Dr. Joseph P. Farrell’s and Gary Lawrence’s Rotten To The Common Core, and Gatto’s books called Weapons Of Mass Instruction, A Different Kind Of Teacher, The Underground History Of America, and John Holt’s How Children Learn, and one will begin to have a firm foundation upon which to grasp the totality an depth of this disturbing issue and even some possible solutions.

The myriad ramifications of this book abound, and should be ruminated upon at length.  If the America of the future is to have a firm foundation, at present, action needs to take place, with an ironclad education at the vanguard.  All individuals that value Freedom need to realize their fullest potential in mind, body and soul.  The future that awaits seems rather bleak, and it will remain bleak as long as ignorance remains.

That is why being proactive should be a daily priority.  Change starts with the individual – every single one of us.  Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.  For if we don’t take time to teach our children, kit and kin about the lessons of life, a great majority will arrive at life’s end having learned nothing.

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Footnotes:

[1] Ben Sasse, The Vanishing American Adult, p. 250.
[2] Ibid., p. 71.
[3] Professor Patrick Deneen, How A Generation Lost Its Common Culture

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This article is free and open source.  All individuals are encouraged to share this content and have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and TheBreakaway.wordpress.com.
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About The Author:

Zy Marquiez is an avid book reviewer, researcher, an open-minded skeptic, yogi, humanitarian, and freelance writer who studies and mirrors regularly subjects like Consciousness, Education, Creativity, The Individual, Ancient History & Ancient Civilizations, Forbidden Archaeology, Big Pharma, Alternative Health, Space, Geoengineering, Social Engineering, Propaganda, and much more.

His other blog, BreakawayConsciousnessBlog.wordpress.com features mainly his personal work, while TheBreakaway.wordpress.com serves as a media portal which mirrors vital information nigh always ignored by mainstream press, but still highly crucial to our individual understanding of various facets of the world.

 

It’s Not Free Speech if You Don’t Have a License

Source: TheDailyBell.com
May 7, 2017

Should free speech cover criticizing the government? That is kind of the whole point, right?

An Oregon man is suing Portland for violating his first amendment right to free speech after he was fined $500 for calculating how long yellow lights stay yellow and then speaking publicly about it.

Free speech? No. The city considers making and disseminating calculations about public works “engineering without a license.”

The lawsuit states:

This is a civil-rights lawsuit to vindicate the right of Plaintiff Mats Järlström to talk and write freely without fear of government punishment. Järlström wants to write and speak publicly about a matter of local, state, and nationwide concern: the safety and fairness of traffic lights and traffic-light cameras. Specifically, Järlström wishes to communicate about the mathematics behind traffic-light timing. If he does so in Oregon, however, he will be exposed to government investigation and punishment for engaging in the unlicensed “practice of engineering.” In fact, between February 2015 and January 2017, Järlström was investigated and fined for “critiquing” the standard formula for calculating traffic-light timing and for sharing his ideas with “members of the public.” Under Oregon’s Professional Engineer Registration Act (Act), Or. Rev. Stat. §§ 672.002 et seq., only state-licensed professional engineers are entitled to speak publicly on these sorts of topics. For everyone else—in the words of the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying (Board)—sharing “reports, commentary, and testimony” on technical subjects is “clearly not protected speech.”

…But speech like Järlström’s is exactly what the First Amendment’s Speech and Petition Clauses exist to protect.

Obviously, the city is just trying to silence and intimidate him so they can keep making money off of red light cameras. His point was that the yellow lights were too short to properly allow motorists to stop.

By the government’s definition of free speech, you basically are not allowed to criticize or even petition the government at all.

What if this same standard was applied elsewhere in government?

We could easily get to a point where any speech about government actions is not protected unless you are an expert in the field–the government, of course, deciding who qualifies as an expert.

Should accountants be the only ones allowed to publicly advocate a tax policy?  Perhaps only licensed law enforcement could criticize the police. And surely if you are not a legislator, the intricacies of bills and laws are off limits to discuss.

What an open and public dialogue that would promote!

And as for the issue of traffic light cameras issuing tickets, that in itself should never have been permitted. The government takes a picture of a car and accuses the owner of a crime, regardless of who was driving the vehicle. And then, you must either pay the fine or prove yourself innocent! So much for due process. So much for the government having to prove you committed a crime. Innocent until proven guilty? What an inconvenience for a government!

There are various reports online of how to beat a red light camera traffic ticket. Even so, it will take multiple visits to the court, which waste time and money, and even then you might be forced to fork over the cash!

That is why most people just pay the fine, and forget about it. The system is rigged against the recipients of tickets. Everyone knows the time wasted in fighting a traffic ticket will overshadow any money saved if it is dismissed.

Still, if you have the time, and are bothered by the principle of it, it may be worth fighting the ticket to at least make the court work for its theft.

Interestingly, one of the tutorials online about how to fight traffic cameras suggests visiting the site of the infraction:

Time the traffic light as it transitions from yellow-to-red. If the timing is minimal, you might be able to stage an argument in court that there is not enough time to safely bring your vehicle to a stop at the particular intersection.

Would Oregon even allow this evidence in court? Perhaps they would instead slap and extra fine on top of the red light ticket for public engineering. After all, only state licensed engineers are allowed to testify publicly on technical issues.

Read More At: TheDailyBell.com