buy prednisone

Archive for » April 12th, 2012«

The 700 Year-Old History Behind Friday The 13th

12
Apr 2012


By J.G Vibes (From Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance)

The unlucky Friday the 13th is one of the most well recognized superstitions in the western world.  This tradition is over 700 years old and has a very interesting origin.  During the 12th century there was a massive religious war that consumed most of Europe and Asia.  Europeans referred to these times as “the crusades”.  This war lasted centuries and allowed an elite class of knights to accumulate so much power and wealth that their influence rivaled both the monarchy and the church.  The knights of the temple of Solomon, or more commonly known as “The Knights Templar” were the most influential political force of their time.  They were the world’s first international bankers and were the corporate giant of the middle ages.

 

The Templar Knights were a military force throughout the entire crusades, but didn’t become a strong political organization until they were given diplomatic immunity by the church in 1126.  Their close relationship with the church was unusual for the time, as the lifestyle of a knight was usually associated more with the monarchy.  The Knights Templar represented both the warrior and the priest, and were often referred to as the “fighting monks”.  This best of both worlds diplomacy allowed the knights to form their own political dynasty which transcended the established powers of the time.  They did not have to abide by the same rules as the church or the monarchy but they had the advantage and privileges of both institutions.

 

During the crusades it was rumored that the Templars studied alchemy and discovered forbidden knowledge on their journeys.  This would not be the first time that this has happened in history, it is actually quite common for conquerors to return home with ancient artifacts, just like napoleon did with the Rosetta stone, for example.  Some say that instead of offering their discoveries to museums the Templars kept the artifacts and knowledge within their own order.  This is all speculation and legend, but what we do know for certain is that the Templars were sneaky businessmen and became the world’s first multinational bankers.

 

They had most of the known world caught in a complex pyramid scheme that is eerily similar to the scams that are being run by international bankers today.  They collected taxes for protecting trade roads, bankrolled both sides of all the wars and exploited the massive peasant class and used them as workhorses to build their fortunes.  Through these shady practices the knights ended up having more money than the monarchy and the church combined.  Both the church and the monarchy were deeply in debt to the Templars from loans they had taken out, so one would be able to argue quite easily that the Templars were the most dominant political institution of the time.

 

Eventually the monarchy grew very threatened by the immense power of the Knights Templar.  The person to finally take action against the Templars was King Phillip the 4th of France.  Since the Templars were under the protection of the church, King Phillip needed papal permission to overthrow them.  In order to get this blessing Phillip covertly murdered 2 popes in less than a year until a candidate of his choice was in power.  With all the necessary steps taken King Phillip made his move.  On the morning of Friday, April 13 1307 there was a surprise raid on all the Templar offices.  The knights were being arrested on over a hundred different counts of heresy and treason and confessed after being brutally tortured. After a short, rigged trial the Templars were sentenced to burn at the stake.  The grand master of the Knights Templar cursed the king and pope before he was executed, and synchronisticaly both died within the year.

 

It is said that a fleet of Templar warships managed to escape France the night before the raids, and continued to control world events from behind the scenes.  They apparently did this by changing their names and moving to various different parts of the known world.  In fact, it is said by many that the Templars who managed to escape the inquisition fled to Switzerland and reestablished their international banking cartel there.

 

This theory makes sense considering that the country has been a safe haven for bankers and robber barons for centuries.  There are over 500 major banking institutions in Switzerland, the majority of them are owned and controlled by various elite bloodlines and covert organizations that I’ll describe in detail later on. It is estimated that around 35% of all the private wealth globally is held in Switzerland.  The world trade organization or WTO is also based in Switzerland.  These banks are among some of the only financial institutions in Europe who aren’t subject to audits and investigations from the new European Union government.  The financial district in London called “the city”, as well as the Vatican in Italy is also given the same kind of protection and secrecy, but they are the only areas in Europe that have those kinds of privileges.  It is also rather interesting that the Swiss Guard is responsible for guarding the pope (located in Italy, not Switzerland), a task that was once the job of the Knights Templar.

 

The flag of Switzerland is actually an inversion of the Templar’s shield, the flag being red with a white cross and the shield being white with a red cross.  The banking elite may have ties to the areas government and economy, but they have nothing to do with the people of Switzerland.  They do not represent them and their actions should not be held against the people of this country.  In fact Switzerland is one of the best places on earth to live, with very free social policies.  They have a low crime rate because gun ownership is fairly widespread and they have more or less stayed out of the war on drugs.  They also remain neutral in all major wars, but still, when there is smoke there is usually fire.

 

Although I wouldn’t mind living in Switzerland myself and imagine it is filled with wonderful people, there are just too many clues pointing to this region as playing a vital role in the many worldwide banking schemes.  With this being a very realistic possibility, Templar influence would seem to put the puzzle together nicely, but it’s not something that we have been able to prove yet.  Switzerland is just one of the many places where the elite have established a stronghold to operate from, the same goes with “The City” in London, the Vatican, Washington DC and Zionist Israel.  The people that live in these places have nothing to do with the elite’s plans, aside from being used as workhorses, cannon fodder and political pawns.

 

Since the days of their fall from grace the Templar Knights and their predecessors have learned their lesson, and have continued their work in secret.  Even if the official order went underground their business model and diplomatic strategies are still very much alive today and have a deep impact on our way of life.  The Templars became an all-powerful “invisible government” by mastering and manipulating economics much like the bankers that influence world events today.  In fact, today’s multinational bankers follow the Templars model precisely and use all of the same age old tactics to exploit the masses.


The article above is an excerpt of the new book Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, Find a full table of contents and full breakdown of all 87 chapters here

 

J.G. Vibes is an author, and artist — with an established record label. In addition to featuring a wide variety of activist information, his company Good Vibes Promotions hosts politically charge electronic dance music events. You can keep up with him and his new book Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, at his website www.aotmr.com and facebook page.

Category: Uncategorized  Tags: , , , ,  Comments off

This Internet provider pledges to put your privacy first. Always.

12
Apr 2012

Nick Merrill, who challenged a demand from the FBI for user data, wants to create the world’s first Internet provider designed to be surveillance-resistant.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

Nicholas Merrill is planning to revolutionize online privacy with a concept as simple as it is ingenious: a telecommunications provider designed from its inception to shield its customers from surveillance.

Merrill, 39, who previously ran a New York-based Internet provider, told CNET that he’s raising funds to launch a national “non-profit telecommunications provider dedicated to privacy, using ubiquitous encryption” that will sell mobile phone service and, for as little as $20 a month, Internet connectivity.

The ISP would not merely employ every technological means at its disposal, including encryption and limited logging, to protect its customers. It would also — and in practice this is likely more important — challenge government surveillance demands of dubious legality or constitutionality.

A decade of revelations has underlined the intimate relationship between many telecommunications companies and Washington officialdom. Leading providers including AT&T and Verizon handed billions of customer telephone records to the National Security Agency; only Qwest refused to participate. Verizon turned over customer data to the FBI without court orders. An AT&T whistleblower accused the company of illegally opening its network to the NSA, a practice that the U.S. Congress retroactively made legal in 2008.

By contrast, Merrill says his ISP, to be run by a non-profit called the Calyx Institute with for-profit subsidiaries, will put customers first. “Calyx will use all legal and technical means available to protect the privacy and integrity of user data,” he says.

Merrill is in the unique position of being the first ISP exec to fight back against the Patriot Act’s expanded police powers — and win.

Nick Merrill, who once challenged a demand from the FBI for user data, is planning to create the world's first privacy-protective Internet and mobile phone provider.Nick Merrill says that “we will use all legal and technical means to resist having to hand over information, and aspire to be the partner in the telecommunications industry that ACLU and EFF have always needed but never had.”

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

In February 2004, the FBI sent Merrill a secret “national security letter” (not an actual court order signed by a judge) asking for confidential information about his customers and forbidding him from disclosing the letter’s existence. He enlisted the ACLU to fight the gag order, and won. A federal judge barred the FBI from invoking that portion of the law, ruling it was “an “unconstitutional prior restraint of speech in violation of the First Amendment.”

Merrill’s identity was kept confidential for years as the litigation continued. In 2007, the Washington Post published his anonymous op-ed which said: “I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government,” especially because “I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.” He wasn’t able to discuss his case publicly until 2010.

His recipe for Calyx was inspired by those six years of interminable legal wrangling with the Feds: Take wireless service like that offered by Clear, which began selling 4G WiMAX broadband in 2009. Inject end-to-end encryption for Web browsing. Add e-mail that’s stored in encrypted form, so even Calyx can’t read it after it arrives. Wrap all of this up into an easy-to-use package and sell it for competitive prices, ideally around $20 a month without data caps, though perhaps prepaid for a full year.

“The idea that we are working on is to not be capable of complying” with requests from the FBI for stored e-mail and similar demands, Merrill says.

A 1994 federal law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act was highly controversial when it was enacted because it required telecommunications carriers to configure their networks for easy wiretappability by the FBI. But even CALEA says that ISPs “shall not be responsible for decrypting” communications if they don’t possess “the information necessary to decrypt.”

Translation: make sure your customers own their data and only they can decrypt it.

Merrill has formed an advisory board with members including Sascha Meinrath from the New America Foundation; former NSA technical director Brian Snow; and Jacob Appelbaum from the Tor Project.

“I have no doubt that such an organization would be extremely useful,” ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer wrote in a letter last month. “Our ability to protect individual privacy in the realm of telecommunications depends on the availability of phone companies and ISPs willing to work with us, and unfortunately the number of companies willing to publicly challenge the government is exceedingly small.”

The next step for Merrill is to raise about $2 million and then, if all goes well, launch the service later this year. Right now Calyx is largely self-funded. Thanks to a travel grant from the Ford Foundation, Merrill is heading to the San Francisco Bay Area later this month to meet with venture capitalists and individual angel investors.

“I am getting a lot of stuff for free since everyone I’ve talked to is crazy about the idea,” Merrill says. “I am getting all the back-end software written for free by Riseup using a grant they just got.”

While the intimacy of the relationship between Washington and telecommunications companies varies over time, it’s existed in one form or another for decades. In his 2006 book titled “State of War,” New York Times reporter James Risen wrote: “The NSA has extremely close relationships with both the telecommunications and computer industries, according to several government officials. Only a very few top executives in each corporation are aware of such relationships.”

Louis Tordella, the longest-serving deputy director of the NSA, acknowledged overseeing a project to intercept telegrams in the 1970s. Called Project Shamrock, it relied on the major telegraph companies including Western Union secretly turning over copies of all messages sent to or from the United States.

“All of the big international carriers were involved, but none of ‘em ever got a nickel for what they did,” Tordella said before his death in 1996, according to a history written by L. Britt Snider, a Senate aide who became the CIA’s inspector general.

Like the eavesdropping system that President George W. Bush secretly authorized, Project Shamrock had a “watch list” of people whose conversations would be identified and plucked out of the ether by NSA computers. It was initially intended to be used for foreign intelligence purposes, but at its peak, 600 American citizens appeared on the list, including singer Joan Baez, pediatrician Benjamin Spock, actress Jane Fonda and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Nick Merrill says that "if we were given any orders that were questionable, we wouldn't hesitate to challenge them in court."Nick Merrill says that “if we were given any orders that were questionable, we wouldn’t hesitate to challenge them in court.”

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

Even if Calyx encrypts everything, the surveillance arms of the FBI and the bureau’s lesser-known counterparts will still have other legal means to eavesdrop on Americans, of course. Police can remotely install spyware on a suspect’s computer. Or install keyloggers by breaking into a home or office. Or, as the Secret Service outlined at last year’s RSA conference, they can try to guess passwords and conduct physical surveillance.

That prospect doesn’t exactly please the FBI. Last year, CNET was the first to report that the FBI warned Congress about what it dubbed the “Going Dark” problem, meaning when police are thwarted in conducting court-authorized eavesdropping because Internet companies aren’t required to build in back doors in advance, or because the technology doesn’t permit it. FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni said at the time that agents armed with wiretap orders need to be able to conduct surveillance of “Web-based e-mail, social networking sites, and peer-to-peer communications technology.”

But until Congress changes the law, a privacy-first ISP like Calyx will remain perfectly legal.

“It’s a really urgent problem that is crying out for a solution,” Merrill says.

Update 12:05 p.m. PT: This article sparked a lengthy Reddit thread, complete with repeated suggestions that Nick Merrill should turn to Kickstarter to raise money. Merrill told me this morning that Kickstarter “wouldn’t accept Calyx as a campaign because it’s not a physical product, or arts-related.” But he has set up a contribution page, with a $1 million target, on IndieGogo.com, a self-described crowdfunding platform. “There has been a ton of interest in the idea,” Merrill told me. “Due to popular demand I have decided to try crowd-sourced funding the idea in order to prove that the demand exists.” If he makes the $1 million target, IndieGogo takes a smaller percentage. Internet privacy aficionados, what say you?

Category: Uncategorized  Tags: , ,  Comments off

How the drug war hurts everyone

12
Apr 2012
Soldiers stand guard next to bags of marijuana being displayed to the media at a military base on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico.

 

Soldiers stand guard next to bags of marijuana being displayed to the media at a military base on the outskirts of Monterrey, Mexico.  (Credit: Reuters/Tomas Bravo)

Something as massive and amorphous as America’s War on Drugs can be difficult to imagine in concrete terms. This web of failed policies is so huge, so persistent and so deeply woven into the fabric of our nation that it’s hard to envision an alternative — or even appreciate what the conflict is currently siphoning resources away from.

That’s why the past week has been so important for the cause of ending the drug war — because it has provided three tragic examples of how that war harms not only its dead and/or incarcerated victims, but also how it makes society as a whole more susceptible to horrific crimes.

In Boulder, Colo., for example, the Daily Camera reports that “the University of Colorado announced a new plan to snuff out the Boulder campus’s 4/20 smoke-out, warning that police will ticket pot smokers at this month’s event.” In a state whose police forces have faced serious budget cuts, this decision clearly reflects a hardcore War on Drugs ideology by removing finite police resources from safety and security operations and instead focusing them on punishing pot use.

That’s a key point: Focusing police resources on safety is distinctly different than focusing them on the drug war. As the Camera notes, the new policy is “a more aggressive enforcement tactic than in years past, when officers mostly monitored the crowd for safety reasons.” Underscoring that point, notice that one day after the CU announcement, the same newspaper reported that the area near the university campus is experiencing an intense wave of burglaries. Rather than announce a serious crackdown on that crime wave, though, the university is choosing to spend taxpayers’ limited police resources on stopping pot smokers.

Back on the East Coast, there’s a similar trend. Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi reports on new evidence that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has not only used CIA tactics to target ethnic communities, but also marshaled his massive police force to expand the so-called “Clean Halls program” in which police enter private apartment buildings to conduct preemptive surveillance. Coupled with Bloomberg’s expansion of racially charged “stop and frisks” aimed almost exclusively at prosecuting minorities who smoke weed, the “Clean Halls” program looks like yet another instrument of the War on Drugs.

As Taibbi says, this is not just a problem for the people being harassed by Bloomberg’s storm troopers, but for all Americans, because it takes finite law-enforcement resources away from fighting crime in other parts of New York — specifically, on Wall Street:

We have two definitely connected phenomena, often treated as separate and unconnected: a growing lawlessness in the financial sector, and an expanding, repressive, increasingly lunatic police apparatus trained at the poor, and especially the nonwhite poor. In recent years, as Wall Street firms turned into veritable felony factories, we had pundits and politicians who cranked out reams of excuses for one white-collar criminal after another and argued, in complete seriousness, that sending a rich banker to jail “wouldn’t solve anything” and in fact we should “tolerate the excesses” of the productive rich, who “channel opportunity” to the rest of us. On the other hand, we’ve had politicians and pundits in budget fights and other controversies railing against the parasitic poor, who are not only not “productive” enough to warrant a break, but assumed to be actively unproductive (they consume our tax money and public services) and therefore sort of guilty in advance.

Finally, there was Oakland, Calif. — one of the most blatant examples of how resources fueling the drug war could have been used to try to prevent a tragedy. Recounting two near-simultaneous events in the city last week, retired police officer Neill Franklin relates how law enforcement officials were swarming to crush medical marijuana oulets at the very moment innocent civilians were gunned down on Oikos University’s campus only a few blocks away:

As I sit and watch video after video of Monday’s senseless federal raid of Oaksterdam University and other medical cannabis-related facilities managed by Richard Lee, the orchestrator of California’s historic Proposition 19, a few serious concerns come to mind.

I noticed agents from at least three federal agencies: the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Internal Revenue Service. I’m not talking about two agents here and a couple more there. There were several dozen federal agents spending their day on the scene.

Meanwhile, just blocks away, a deadly shooting was taking place. While federal agents were using a battering ram, a sledgehammer and power saws to break into a business that complies with state and local law and pays taxes, a gunman was murdering seven people at Oikos University, just three-tenths of a mile away.

Obviously, nobody can say the shooting could have been prevented. But it’s fair to say there would have been at least a better chance of that tragedy being averted had our government devoted the same resources to community security that it devoted to pulverizing medical marijuana facilities.

What’s particularly horrifying about each of last week’s examples is how they show the drug war intensifying even as the public’s support for that war precipitously declines.

In Boulder, the university is conducting its crackdown in a state where the majority of citizens voted to legalize medical marijuana and now, according to polls, a near majority support legalizing pot for everyone. Shocking as it is, such defiance of the public will is now the norm in Colorado. Here, state Attorney General John Suthers has backed federal raids on medical marijuana facilities despite the state’s vote on the matter and despite his incessant paeans to “states’ rights.” Meanwhile, the Denver police force has openly defied voter mandates to make pot arrests the lowest priority.

The same goes for New York — in a state where polls show strong support for some form of marijuana legalization, the Guardian reports that police officers are nonetheless ignoring orders from superiors to reduce arrests of those possessing small amounts of marijuana.

At the federal level, this hostility to public opinion is most overt. The Obama administration has ignored the president’s campaign pledges and initiated a new round of marijuana raids at the very moment Gallup finds that a majority of Americans support the effort to fully legalize pot. Additionally, at the same time the administration is decrying budget deficits, the White House is pushing for a big increase in drug war funding, specifically preserving funding formulas that send far more money to the war’s militaristic endeavors (interdiction, law enforcement activities, etc.) than to more humane harm-reduction and treatment programs.

Put it all together and we see that the ascendant concept of an “era of persistent conflict” (read: permanent war) is not limited to our foreign occupations. Right here at home, governments at every level are waging a never-ending war without regard for — and often in brazen defiance of — what their constituents want.

Sure, pretending that only harms those directly ensnared in the combat may be vaguely comforting — but as last week proved, that’s a fantasy in the age of finite resources.

Category: Uncategorized  Tags:  Comments off

Italian Prime Minister paid €127,000 to witnesses in his underage prostitution scandal

12
Apr 2012
@ Gaurdian
Nicole Minetti

Silvio Berlusconi’s lawyer says cash paid to Nicole Minetti, who prosecutors allege organised the so-called bunga bunga parties, was just an act of ‘generosity’. Photograph: Luca Bruno/AP

Italy‘s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has handed out cash gifts worth more than €100,000 to young women due to testify in his trial on charges of paying an underage prostitute.

Berlusconi has reportedly paid €127,000 (£105,000) to three witnesses since his trial began last April before allegedly putting pressure on Milan police to hush up the case. The trial centres on Moroccan runaway Karima el-Mahroug, known as Ruby the Heart Stealer, who attended so-called “bunga bunga” parties at Berlusconi’s mansion outside Milan in 2010.

Prosecutors allege the parties were organised by Nicole Minetti, a former dental hygienist turned TV showgirl who was nominated a councillor for the Lombardy region by Berlusconi’s party. Minetti, who is also standing trial separately for procuring prostitutes for the former prime minister, was paid €55,000 by him in two instalments in October and November, prosecutors say, according to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Two regular guests at those parties, sisters Eleonora and Imma de Vivo – models who appeared on an Italian celebrity reality show – received €72,000, paid by Berlusconi via their father, in July and October.

One party guest, dancer Maria Makdoum, has told prosecutors she saw the de Vivo twins dancing around Berlusconi in their knickers and bra at one of his after-dinner bunga bunga sessions. Berlusconi “was touching their intimate parts and they were touching him,” she said.

Berlusconi’s lawyer, Niccolò Ghedini, admitted payments had been made to Minetti and the de Vivos, but denied they were intended to sway their testimony.

“The linking of the payments with the fact they are witnesses in the so-called Ruby trial is absolutely spurious and without foundation,” Ghedini said.

“With his usual generosity, Berlusconi has sought to help, in a totally transparent fashion through bank transfers, those people who have been caught up in the media storm built around inexistent claims and who are living through an extremely difficult period economically, professionally and on the home front.”

The trial continues on Monday.

Category: Uncategorized  Tags: , , , ,  Comments off

Libya: So it was all about oil after all!

12
Apr 2012
@ RT
A view of Zawiya oil refinery is pictured in Zawiya 57km (35 miles) west of Tripoli April 11, 2012 (Reuters/Ismail Zitouny)

A view of Zawiya oil refinery is pictured in Zawiya 57km (35 miles) west of Tripoli April 11, 2012 (Reuters/Ismail Zitouny)

Last year NATO countries bombed Libya, demanding “democracy” in the country. But now it’s clear it was all about oil and it’s not like the Americans and Brits are going to be democratic about it, and share those spoils equally with France and Italy.

So… oil giants Total from France and ENI from Italy are just going to have to wait in the sidelines while the hungry American and British big boys take their juicy oil slices first… ExxonMobil, Chevron, Texaco, BP, Shell…

It’s no surprise then to read in The Wall Street Journal that the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), together with the puppet Libyan “authorities” are launching “investigations” into both companies’ “financial irregularities” in their shady dealings during the forty-two years of Gaddafi’s power.  Now who would have imagined this!  An Italian oil company involved in kick-backs?   Corruption at the highest echelons of the French oil industry?!?   Tsk, tsk!!!  Unheard of…!    The US and UK would never do something like that!!   Just ask Enron, ask Halliburton, ask BP…

Clearly, major oil companies will now be judged on how close or how far they were from the Gaddafi’s, and on how much their respective countries contributed to last year’s war effort.  Perhaps even on how much and how far and wide they shared their huge ill-obtained profits.  It seems that scorecards must now be completed…

It’s worth remembering that at the height of the Libyan fighting last year, the “rebels” found the necessary time, between their “freedom fighting” shifts, to set up a new national oil company.  As Bloomberg reported on 22nd March 2011, “The Transitional National Council released a statement announcing the decision made at a March 19 meeting to establish the “Libyan Oil Company as supervisory authority on oil production and policies in the country, based temporarily in Benghazi, and the appointment of an interim director general” of the company.”

And just as big oil and big finance always dance together, that report then went on to explain that “The Council also said it “designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”   

Like Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, or Abelard and Eloise, Oil and Money are probably the West’s most universal and paradigmatic duo.  Their love affair has been going strong for many decades.

Oil is a mighty powerful global business.  Oil companies can make or break governments and entire countries.  Nationalizing a foreign oil company like Iran did in the early fifties can put the CIA and MI6 spy agencies into full-gear ousting democratically elected governments and replacing them with “more suitable leaders’.

Trading oil in any currency other than the US Dollar as Saddam Hussein dared to do in November 2002 can get you invaded just a few months later.  Even weak Argentina’s finger-pointing at illegal British oil escapades in the Falkland Islands resulted in the Royal Navy dispatching super destroyers and nuclear subs to the region…

Libya is the world’s 9th largest oil producing country and holds Africa’s largest oil reserve.  Gaddafi was planning to introduce a new currency for Libyan and regional oil: the Gold Dinar which, contrary to the US Dollar, would have had true intrinsic value.  Gaddafi’s central bank, in turn, was fully independent of the global financial usury-based system presently in global free-fall.  Gaddafi was using oil revenues for his own people and not for the US/UK/EU/Israeli war efforts in the Middle East and further afield.

So, when the Persian Gulf became the very, very hot spot it is today, the global oil cartel together with the mega-bankers who shuffle those trillions upon trillions of Petro-Dollars all over the world, had to make sure that their respective governments would put their military on red-alert, as the oil giants scrambled for new sources…

The focus is increasingly on oil fields lying in “kinder, gentler” parts of the world: the Falkland Islands, the Brazilian Coasts, and Libya that lies smack in the middle of that easy-to-attack “it’s our-bloody-Mediterranean-Sea” North African Coast.

Last year’s destruction of Libya was a reflection of just this type of complex behind-the-scenes engineering of all these key oil, financial, military, media and political players.  It’s the kind of Real News that seldom if ever hits the headlines… just because it is the Real News!

During the better part of last year until the public execution of Muhamar Gaddafi by the Western Power’s proxies inside Libya – i.e., mercenaries, criminals, thugs and CIA/MI6/Mossad agents, aka “Freedom Fighters” – the Western media repeated time and again how very bad Gaddafi had suddenly become overnight; how the poor Libyans were clamouring for “democracy”; and how the heroic Libyan “freedom fighters” based, armed, trained and financed in Benghazi were battling to “liberate” Libya and impose Clintonite “democracy” and “human rights”.  Actually these “freedom fighters” overshot their runway: now that Libya is finally “free”, they’re asking for the Eastern Cyrenaica region to secede from the rest of the country.

Was civil war part of the West’s plan for Libya?  Last year, after securing full UN backing via Resolution No. 1973 allowing NATO air strikes to devastate the country and impose the most violent regime change seen in recent times, NATO-backed thugs have plunged the country into chaos.

As the “Libya Business News” publication mentions on Tuesday, “About 3,000 people gathered in Benghazi last month to announce that Barca (Cyrenaica) was an autonomous region within a federal state. Barca is at the centre of Libya’s oil industry, with two thirds of production and three quarters of reserves there.” It is one of the three historic regions into which the country is divided. And while Barca has the most oil, the other two is home to two thirds of the population. So the question now is how the rich revenues from rich oil reserves will be “democratically” distributed among the population.

Adrian Salbuchi for RT

Category: Uncategorized  Tags: , , , , , , , ,  Comments off

Rave promoter has cash frozen after politically motivated arrest (EDC UPDATE)

12
Apr 2012

**Update on developing story surrounding Electric Daisy Carnival promoters and politically motivated charges following their falling out with the city of los angeles

@ LA WEEKLY

In the case of the rave promoters accused of bilking the L.A. Coliseum out of more than a million dollars, they get to keep a little of their own money.

Some of the assets of Pasquale Rotella and Reza Gerami, rival promoters who held electronic dance music parties at the Coliseum and L.A. Sports Arena next door, were frozen after they were charged with embezzlement in a case that essentially accuses the duo of paying a Coliseum manager venue fees on the side.

Today a judge said that …

… Rotella could have access to $300,000 of his otherwise frozen cash ($1.7 million) and that Gerami could have $60,000 of his locked-up assets ($372,624).

Attorneys for the defendants have claimed that Coliseum events manager Todd DeStefano took the payments and was responsible for what was done with them.

Rotella’s lawyer, Gary Kaufman:

 

Thumbnail image for edc wheelchair raver caesar sebastian.JPG
Insomniac
Electric Daisy Carnival.

No one has … ever had any of their assets frozen as a result of monies they paid (to someone else).

Still, frozen they (mostly) remain.

The case against the promoters stems to 2008 when, prosecutors say, the duo began paying DeStefano what ultimately amounted to $1.8 million on the side — money they argue should have gone to the publicly run Coliseum.

The two are also charged with bribery.

The scandal blew up last year after the Los Angeles Times noticed, as did we, the coziness Rotella and his promotion company, Insomniac Events, had with Coliseum management.

At the time he was lobbying hard to keep his events at the Coliseum and its sister venue, the L.A. Sports Arena. A 15-year-old girl died of an ecstasy overdosing after attending Insomniac’s Electric Daisy Carnival in the summer of 2010, prompting officials such as L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to question the wisdom of allowing raves at the venues.

The Times reported that DeStefano has been running a couple of side businesses that allegedly took payments from companies holding events at the Coliseum.

Whether or not, however, the money handed over by the rave promoters was simply for DeStefano’s moonlighting — or if they believed that he was taking the payments in his role as a Coliseum official — remains to be seen.

[With reporting from City News Service / @dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

Category: Uncategorized  Tags: , ,  Comments off

The sky may be falling, but it’s only a storm

12
Apr 2012


J.G Vibes @aotmr.com

Recently, with more and more people becoming aware that something just isn’t right in their society the police state has gone into overdrive to compensate for this growing resistance to the status quo. It seems so crazy, between the drug war escalation, the expansion of the NATO colonization of the Middle East and Africa, and the chain of recent authoritarian legislation that we have seen slide through congress, including the NDAA, Anti-Protest laws, and strip search laws.  I’ll be the first to admit that everything that is going on right now is very ominous and there are some serious issues that must be faced head on by our species.    However, I also see a lot of things going on in these strange times were are living, that make me feel somewhat optimistic about the future of humanity.

First off, the frantic behavior displayed by the government and the mainstream media in the past year or two is showing just how desperate “the powers that shouldn’t be” are getting.  Their whole scam is dependent upon their control over the human consciousness, and that control is beginning to unravel.  This is the same kind of situation that happens when someone in a debate is faced with an argument superior to their own so they resort to screaming, yelling and ad hominem attacks.

When someone is exposed as illegitimate, or guilty of some sort of transgression it is fairly typical to see them act out in verbal or even physical aggression.  It is not unusual for guilty parties to act outraged about accusations against them and then to paint the victim as a villain.  This kind of scenario is exactly what we have been seeing play out in the macrocosm of geopolitics, as more and more people are becoming aware of their enslavement.  The establishment is lashing out with all their might to overcompensate for their own obsolescence and illegitimacy, which is now being revealed to the public on a day to day basis.

What we are going through right now may seem crazy and unusual, but really it’s nothing new.  Sure, it is true that our civilization is currently in a free fall to collapse, but this has been a long time commin’, and it has happened to nearly every civilization that has ever erected a palace.  In the past decade hundreds of societies have collapsed and began to rebuild.  In today’s technological civilization the collapse can be far less dangerous, violent and miserable than the times of Ancient Rome, but only if the people within that society are willing to work together and cooperatively face the adversity that has disrupted their path.

There is no doubt that we are in the midst of a storm that has been raging for centuries, and the intensity of that storm is growing by the minute.  For this, we have every reason to make any and all preparations that we deem to be necessary, but we should not be consumed by fear to the point where we are considering violence or nihilism.  The reason why there is so much fear surrounding the obvious downfall of our civilization is because people have grown detached from their communities and have lost their ability to be self-sufficient.

With that being the case, the first step towards overcoming that fear and preparing for the oncoming storm is to get more familiar with your community and start thinking about ways in which you can be more self-sufficient.  Growing food, getting to know your neighbors, establishing community study groups and learning about off the grid solutions are just a few ways to strengthen your family and your community as living standards continue to deteriorate.  People these days seem to be talking about “the end of America” like we are somehow going to forget about what we have built in the past few generations and just return to pre-industrial living conditions simply because the government and their fiat currency has failed and may not be around for much longer.  In the meantime we are still dealing with a dictatorship, which has been writing authoritarianism into law for well over a decade now so we must remain vigilant on that front, but at the same time we must not become overwhelmed with what they are throwing at us, because that is exactly what they are trying to provoke.

The establishment wants us paralyzed with fear so they can prevent us from making any moves that might rock the boat, but we can’t row the boat to safety without rocking it, so we must find the courage within ourselves to make waves instead of sitting around waiting for the boat to row itself or waiting for the deranged hijacker of the boat to set sail in his own direction.  It is absolutely true that we are dealing with one of the worst dictatorships that have ever walked the earth, and I am in no way trying to downplay the seriousness of this issue.  However, we must not be scared into thinking that there aren’t any options for us, or that we are fighting a losing battle because those kinds of defeatist attitudes actually prevent us from making any real progress.

Human beings have an incredible ability to find solutions for any problems that may stand in our way.  Just as a rushing river will forge a new path around a bolder that has fallen in its midst, groups of voluntarily cooperating people will naturally find a way around any roadblock when they have a desire to do so.  The old phrase “where there is a will, there is a way” is extremely profound in this context and describes the process of spontaneous order and self-organization in the most concise way imaginable.  It’s difficult for a lot of us to see this at work in nature because of how our day to day lives are so compartmentalized and separated from our actual needs.  Due to this compartmentalization so many of us have come to believe that there will be no food if the grocery store closes down, that there will be no electricity without a government power grid, that there will be no Caesars guards patrolling the community.  However, all of these needs can and will be filled by able and kindhearted people in our community who will step up to the challenge.  So be aware, and be concerned, but try not to be afraid…at least not too much.

This article originally appeared at Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance

J.G. Vibes is an author, and artist — with an established record label. In addition to featuring a wide variety of activist information, his company Good Vibes Promotions hosts politically charged electronic dance music events. You can keep up with him and his new book Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, at his website www.aotmr.com.

Category: Uncategorized  Comments off

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to our posts, you can even select how often you get updates for your convenience!

  • GV Records

  • Bitcoin Donations

    Donate to:

    1K9pTUb1fVe85zmGXp6pnNnvwMtJivwgot

  • Paypal Donations

  • CLICK HERE TO MAKE US YOUR HOMEPAGE

    CLICK HERE TO BOOKMARK US

  • J.G Vibes Books

    Get your own copy of AOTMR here!

    Click the Image to get your own copy of AOTMR!

  • Ultimate History Lesson

    Get the UHL box set at discount here!

  • Free Your Mind Conference