propaganda this!!

Just over two years ago, when Mohamed Bouazizi stepped into the middle of traffic in Tunisia, poured gasoline over his own body and set himself ablaze as protest against his government; it was at first noticed by only a few. At the moment it occurred, the world beyond Mr. Bouazizi’s neighborhood was completely unaware of the moment of the occasion. It is doubtful that even Mr. Bouazizi himself knew just what tectonic shift he had caused in the form of destructive transformation of the Middle East. Not because the world wasn’t paying attention, but because sometimes energies that build up which cause paradigm shifts is not comprehended until after they are manifest. Another such “unknowable” event may have just occurred this weekend in a similarly overlooked country called Cyprus, which may in the future be looked upon as the great spark which caused untold disruptions and transformation in the perceptions of citizens towards their banks and governments.

Up until this weekend, banks had been viewed by depositors as a safe haven for money, albeit one with minimal returns in the form of paid interest. Despite the great depression, the advent of depositor’s insurance, such as the FDIC offers U. S. investors, fostered a sense of inviolable trust. In a stunning and unprecedented move, European finance ministers have demanded that the government of Cyprus impose a 6.7-9.9% “deposit tax” on all bank deposits in the country as a condition of receiving bail out money. For depositors In Cyprus who visit the bank on Tuesday morning, they will find out that just like that South Park episode, the banks will tell them “…aaaaaaand it’s gone!”. Just like that. Poof! Their money or at least a significant percentage of it will have been confiscated by the Cyprus government. It is not difficult to imagine how the Cypriots will react to this news, because no matter how much they may differ in culture, humans are pretty much the same when it comes to protecting their assets.

They will no doubt react with disbelief at first, then fear, and then probably great anger. Imagine being in their position. You wake up to the news that up to 9.9% of your savings has been arbitrarily taken from you by your government over the weekend with no warning whatsoever. Your perception of banks and government would instantly and forever have been altered. It seems safe to conclude that most people would immediately take steps to recover what money they could as quickly as they could to protect it from any future theft by the government. Cypriot’s by the thousands did just that on Saturday when the news came out. ATMs were quickly drained of all cash within hours. The Cyprus government had anticipated this however, and had already moved to force banks to freeze assets before the announcement was made. Checkmate.

The timing of this event had obviously been carefully thought out. You see, this is a three day holiday weekend in Cyprus, which means that on Monday, the banks would have been closed already due to “Green Monday” or “Ash Monday”. The timing by the Cyprus government reminds me of something I saw a couple of years ago during the great recession here in the United States; a series of articles nestled somewhere between other articles about chem-trails being sprayed in the sky and scary FEMA camps describing how we in the United States would soon be subject to our own bank holiday, where the value of the dollar would be debased overnight while we remained powerless to retrieve our funds until after the financial carnage. At the time, the derogatory term “conspiracy theory” was bandied about by those who scoffed at the notion that this could ever occur. In light of the shocking reality of what has just occurred in Cyprus, the idea of a banking holiday and theft of depositor’s money is no longer theoretical, and it certainly smells like a conspiracy.

It is not difficult to imagine what the immediate future holds for Cyprus, or of what import it is to the rest of us. First of all, the Cypriots will likely flock en masse on Tuesday morning to withdraw the remainder of their funds. Whatever fantasies the Cyprus government might have indulged in saving their already teetering banking system with bailouts from Europe will be utterly destroyed when the rest of the deposited funds are angrily withdrawn. Chances of survival for those banks now seem slim to none. Seeing what is transpiring in nearby Cyprus, which ironically found itself in dire straits in no small part due to investments involving Greek banks, how do you suppose the average Greek citizen will now view things? Unless they are all in a drunken stupor (which can’t be entirely ruled out) it seems inevitable that Greek depositors will soon rush to withdraw their own funds, irrevocably damaging their own country’s banks. What then of Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and the rest of Europe? Who can say now that any depositor is safe? If it can happen in Cyprus, why not Greece, or Spain, etc…? It seems just a matter of a very short time before this realization will set in, and the question will become not whether European depositors will withdraw their money from other European banks, but to what degree?

As we have come to learn these past few years, banks and their debt are not islands. They are intertwined with other banks and debts in other countries. The illness of one infects the other. In this world of derivatives, bond swaps and international bail outs, there is no escape, there is only the attempt to diffuse the burden widely enough to spare any one location such heavy damage that it causes unmanageable consequences.

If one views our global financial system as a great house of cards, one might think that the cards on the bottom row would be of most importance since they support the entire structure above, just like the developed countries of the United States, England, Germany, Japan, etc… support the lesser developed ones. The lesser cards on the top might fall, but the damage would be contained only to those above. In this model, Cyprus might be seen as one of the cards at or near the very top, since their GDP comprises less than one half of one percent of European GDP. However, if one takes that top card, and instead of letting it flutter gently down on its own, smashes it down with some force it is likely to take out the cards underneath, the combined weight of which would cause a chain reaction downward until the whole thing falls anyway. The act of stealing depositor’s money from Cyprus banks ensures that depositors will withdraw their money in a violent way, which means the Cyprus card is being slammed down with some degree of force, placing the entire system at risk through the cascading consequences created by international exposure to each other’s banking systems.

In a manner that only governments seem to be able to do, the actions taken to “save” the Cypriot banking system will end up having the exact opposite effect. To invoke the law of unintended consequences seems inadequate in this case, because the result of destroying the banks that were supposed to have been saved seems too obviously predictable to have been accidental. So while the obscurity of this financial earthquake is not yet being felt by the rest of the world, it soon will. The resulting tsunami is coming in the form of massive withdrawals by depositors of their money not just from banks in Cyprus, but in other countries as well. Distrust in governments and banks will soon surge to a whole new tidal level. The coastal alarm bells will soon be ringing and the beachgoers will be running for their lives. Make sure you get out before they do.

Although this article is protected by copyright (© 2013 Rich Rose Productions), it may be copied, transmitted, downloaded, republished so long as it is done so in full without any alterations and with full attribution to the author.

Obamacare effects starting to be felt——————————————–

When Obama care was passed several years ago, it was structured so that the good parts, like kids being able to remain on parent’s health plans, pre-existing coverage, etc… came first, but the nasty parts came later…. after the elections.  This was obviously done knowing that support would evaporate once reality had set in and that would have had a negative effect on any politician that had supported the law.  Now that the elections have passed, we are beginning to see the results of the ugly underbelly of Obama care.  Both Florida and California are reporting that they do not have sufficient doctors now to see all the patients that will soon be “covered’ under the new national health plan.

Legislators in at least two states are raising the possibility of letting lesser qualified people, such as nurse practitioners increase the scope of their responsibilities to alleviate the doctor shortage.  Meanwhile, I have heard no talk about allowing medical schools to ramp up the amounts of doctors graduated that are capped by the AMA.  It looks like the more that new people that are included in the health care plan the lower the quality of care will be for everyone.  The misery will be spread equally, you might say.  Look for foreign doctors soon being allowed into the US to practice here, despite their different educational standards.

Gun Grab———–

The Newtown shooting failed to muster sufficient support amongst moderates in this country to allow for an all out gun grab… at least not right away.  The gun grabbers  were off to a pretty good start immediately following the Newtown massacre, but the internet allowed the pro gunners to quickly rally their side providing a venue for the gun grab arguments to be pretty effectively debunked.

The gun grabber arguments went something like this:

1.  People don’t need assault weapons to hunt.

2.  People don’t need assault weapons to defend themselves when smaller firearms will do.

3.  We REALLY have to do something now FOR THE CHILDREN!

4.  The sheer atrocity of what happened in Newtown should trump any other argument against gun control because emotions are or at least should be running so high right now, that you don’t dare speak up against us or you will be labeled as being in favor of killing kids.

The Pro Second Amendment arguments went like this:

1.  The right to bear arms has nothing whatever to do with hunting.  It has everything to do with allowing free citizens to protect themselves from both criminals and tyrannical government.

2. There is really no difference between most semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles except the way they look and their durability.

3.  Any gun laws enacted will not prevent mass murders like Newtown, because criminals by definition don’t obey laws, therefore the only people that will be disarmed are the very citizens who we as a society should WANT to have guns.

4.  Most really important decisions should NOT be based on emotions, but rather should be carefully considered based on deliberate and rational thought. Therefore passing laws as serious as taking away someone’s constitutional right to own guns should not be done immediately in the aftermath of a national tragedy.

5.  If we are doing this for the children, how come abortion is still legal?

6.  If guns kill people, how come we aren’t banning cars since they obviously must cause drunk driving?  that is precisely the same logic being presented by the gun grabbers, but when used in the context of the subject of automobiles, is clearly not sound reasoning.  Way more people are killed by drunk drivers in this country than by guns, by the way.  “If only one life is saved by the banning of automobiles, then it will have been worth it!”  This is of course sarcasm, but it clearly illustrates the stupidity of the argument the gun grabbers are attempting to use.

7.  There is a process for amending the Constitution that is called, strangely enough, “amending the Constitution”.  It is quite difficult to do… on purpose. That’s because we don’t want it to change every time the political winds shift direction.

8.  Guns don’t kill people, bad people kill people.  The problem isn’t that there are too many guns so much as there are too many crazy/evil people allowed to freely live amongst us.  This ties into the argument that there aren’t too many cars as such, just too many people who drive drunk, therefore you don’t eliminate cars, you eliminate the people who choose to drive drunk.  This seems like elementary logic to many people, yet the current dumbed down level of American intelligence has prevented many from grasping the concept, leading to some success in the purely emotional appeal being used by the gun grabbers.

9. Banning guns disproportionately impacts those who are most vulnerable in our society, namely women and minorities.  This is because women are physically smaller and weaker than men, and therefore need the great equalizing power a firearm provides to protect themselves.  As for the minorities, they generally comprise the largest group living in high crime areas, therefore, to prohibit gun ownership disproportionately exposes them to danger from crime at a much higher rate than rich white people.  Therefore, any blanket gun restrictions are racist and misogynist.

The gun grabbers know they don’t have a chance in hell of raising the kind of support necessary to amend the Constitution, so they are instead attempting to pass laws at the state and local level, while also pursuing executive orders at the federal level.  There are also bills being mulled now in the Federal Senate.   Simultaneously, the gun grabbers have been ramping up the most frenzied public relations campaign we have seen in recent years using every willing media outlet from Hollywood movies, actors, singers, network news outlets, television talk shows, and even the educational system to create a climate of fear and outrage against guns and their owners.

Essentially, the gun grabbers, having been effectively stymied by radio talk shows and the internet, have begun a sort of national temper tantrum.  For example, some teachers and public school administrators are now attempting to label children who simulate guns in any way, such as drawing them on paper, making them out of “legos”, pointing fingers and saying “Bang!” or even using Hello Kitty squirt guns, as “terrorists”, complete with police response, investigations, and suspensions from school.  This is happening to children as young as 5 years old! Clearly, this is not in response to any legitimate threat or fear on the part of school administrators, but is instead intended to socialize the idea of owning or using guns as being somehow illegitimate.  It has nothing to do with educating children or keeping them safe, and everything to do with social engineering.  In another phase of the same temper tantrum, some of the more liberal merchants are prohibiting gun sales, such as on e-bay, amazon.com and craig’s list.  There have also been reports that Bank of America has intentionally denied loans to businesses whose products involve guns.

Gun rights advocates meanwhile are starting their own counter offensive with boycotts, political action committees, and campaign donations.    There is a growing movement amongst gun and ammunition manufacturers to ban the sale of any of their goods to any state or municipality that “infringes” upon gun owner’s rights.   The list of companies who are doing this is growing very quickly.The NRA and Gun Owners of America are already gearing up to target politicians who have supported the brazen gun grab attempts in the next election.

Some have seized upon the moment to increase their personal popularity, such as Piers Morgan on MSNBC, who has made a very transparent attempt to boost his ratings by provocatively questioning pro gun guests on his show, using distorted numbers, ambush tactics, and naked emotional appeal to both warm the hearts of liberal viewers while enraging, but nevertheless catching the viewer attention of gun supporters.

As of this writing, the current push amongst the gun grabbers is to try to pass laws at the state and federal level limiting the amount of ammo/magazine capacity/models citizens can purchase and/or own.  On top of that, there are efforts to require background checks to supposedly weed out those who don’t “qualify” to own guns, whatever that means.  It is unclear what the parameters of “qualification” would be, but in the past few days, notices have been sent out to disabled veterans informing them that they do not qualify to own firearms due to their physical disabilities. For them, the very people who have suffered a disabling injury while defending the Constitution, their own constitutional rights are being taken away.   Some legislators are proposing a huge prohibitive tax on ammunition, which would pretty much make the purchase of ammo too costly for most everyone on a normal budget. One assumes that the gun grabbers are passing these clearly unconstitutional laws in the hopes that Barak Obama has now been able to sufficiently stack the US Supreme Court to the point where right can now be called wrong, black can be called white, and unconstitutional can now be called constitutional.  The 2nd amendment states that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  This meaning seems very clear, yet the attempt is still being made to “infringe” on that right.

There are already laws in place of questionable constitutionality denying the right to possess guns for those convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, which can now be defined as asininely as kicking the cat or “verbal” abuse.  Unbeknownst to many, merely being accused of domestic violence is now sufficient, according to federal law, to deny possession of a gun if it involves a domestic protection order having been temporarily granted.  Anyone who has spent more than an hour in one of these family courts where these protection orders are handed out like candy would realize that many, if not most domestic orders are based on dubious evidence, if not outright lies made by one spouse attempting to get a leg up on the other spouse in the upcoming divorce proceedings because of the attendant property and child custody issues that are at stake.

So if the logic of gun control is not sound, and if there seems to be a concerted effort on many fronts to prohibit citizens from owning guns, why is all this energy being expended when it seems to be such a divisive issue?  Based on the logic underpinning the gun grabber side, it would seem that this really isn’t being done “for the children”, nor would any new laws stop criminals from performing their nefarious deeds.  It would seem that there is some other purpose.  The answer to this question can be found simply by looking at history both in the United States and abroad.  Here in the U.S., the founding fathers were explicit that the reason for the 2nd amendment was to make sure the government always feared the people, not the other way around.  Looking abroad, one can find numerous examples of citizens having been disarmed by dictators, such as Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc… and then followed closely by mass executions.  Any government that actively seeks to disarm its citizens must be suspect, and for very good reason.

The conclusion here is inescapable.  The real goal here is not to make children safe, but rather to disarm law abiding citizens.  There can only be one reason for this, which is to prevent physical, armed opposition to whatever it is that must be coming next… and which won’t be good.