http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/15-signs-that-the-economy-is-rapidly-getting-worse-as-we-head-into-2013              

15 Signs That The Economy Is Rapidly Getting Worse As We Head Into 2013

By Michael, on December 10th, 2012

 

How can the mainstream media claim that the U.S. economy is "improving" when it is painfully obvious to anyone with a brain that the middle class is being absolutely eviscerated?  According to numbers that were just released, the number of Americans on food stamps rose by more than 600,000 in a single month to an all-time record high of 47.7 million.  Youth unemployment in the U.S. is at a post-World War II high and large companies have announced the elimination of more than 100,000 jobs since Barack Obama won the election.  Consumer debt just hit a new record high and the federal government is accumulating debt at a much faster pace than it was at this time last year.  So where is the evidence that the economy is getting better?  The mainstream media says that the decline of the unemployment rate to "7.7 percent" is evidence that things are improving, but I showed how fraudulent that number is yesterday.  The percentage of working age Americans with a job today is exactly where it was back in September 2009 in the midst of the last major economic crisis.  The mainstream media is desperate for any shred of evidence that it can use to make people feel good and show that the Obama administration has our economy on the right track, and so they jump on any number that even looks remotely promising and they ignore mountains of evidence to the contrary.  They don't seem to care that poverty is absolutely exploding and that the number of Americans on food stamps has risen by nearly 50 percent while Obama has been in the White House.  They don't seem to care that the U.S. share of global GDP has fallen from 31.8 percent in 2001 to 21.6 percent in 2011.  They don't seem to care that more good paying jobs are being shipped overseas with each passing day.  They don't seem to care that formerly great U.S. cities that were once the envy of the entire globe are now crime-infested hellholes.  All they seem to care about is putting out news that makes people feel warm and fuzzy and making sure that Obama looks good.  Unfortunately, the truth is that the U.S. economy is steadily getting worse, and 2013 is not looking very promising at all right now.  Hopefully at some point the mainstream media will take a break from coverage of the royal pregnancy and the latest celebrity scandals to report on the real problems that we are facing right now.
The following are 15 signs that the economy is rapidly getting worse as we head into 2013...
#1 According to numbers that were just released, the number of Americans on food stamps has risen to a new all-time record of 47.71 million.  That is a huge increase of more than 600,000 over the previous reading of 47.10 million.  After about a year of slow growth, it looks like the number of Americans on food stamps is starting to skyrocket once again.  Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps.  Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.
#2 Youth unemployment in the United States is now at the highest level that we have seen since World War II.
#3 According to Gallup, unemployment in the United States shot up very sharply during the month of November.
#4 It looks like the unemployment numbers are likely to get even worse.  Since the election, dozens of large companies have announced major layoffs.  Overall, large companies have announced the elimination of more than 100,000 jobs since November 6th.
#5 According to the Wall Street Journal, of the 40 biggest publicly traded corporate spenders, half of them plan to reduce capital expenditures over the coming months.
#6 Small business owners all over America are declaring that Obamacare is going to force them to start replacing full-time workers with part-time workers during 2013.
#7 One recent survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.
#8 A different recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies.
#9 62 percent of middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.
#10 Many Americans are trying to make ends meet for their families by going into more debt.  Consumer borrowing hit another brand new record high in October.  It looks like the American people have not learned from their past mistakes and have decided to roll up consumer debt at a faster pace than ever before.
#11 Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years.  Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.
#12 Wall Street bankers are expecting "the worst bonus season" since 2008.  Not a lot of people are going to shed tears over this one, but this is a sign that there is trouble in the financial world.
#13 Food banks all over America are reporting that more needy families than ever before are showing up to get food.
#14 As I wrote about yesterday, the federal government has run a deficit of $292 billion dollars during the first two months of fiscal 2013.  That figure is $57 billion higher than it was during the same period last year.  Government debt continues to soar wildly out of control and at some point all of that debt is absolutely going to crush us.
#15 I have written previously about how the once great city of Detroit has become a symbol of the downfall of the U.S. economy.  Well, now the state of Michigan is laying the groundwork for a "managed bankruptcy" of Detroit.  Sadly, many other large U.S. cities will likely follow suit over the next couple of years.
We should truly mourn for what is happening to Detroit.  At one time, it was one of the most beautiful cities on earth.  But now it is on the cutting edge of America's economic decline.  You can see some amazing before and after pictures of an abandoned Detroit school right here.  Sadly, what is happening to Detroit will soon be happening to the rest of the country.
A similar thing is happening over in Europe.  Greece is on the cutting edge of Europe's economic decline, and people over there are becoming very desperate.  The following is an excerpt from a Financial Post article about how the Greek middle class is turning to crime as the depression in that nation gets even worse...

In the once stable neighborhood of Kordelio, the unemployed and drug users gather in the parks, scaring away mothers and children, and crimes like chain snatching are on the rise. Many long-time residents have left, moving abroad or to their families’ villages, leaving behind empty houses, said Evangelia Rombou, 58, who has lived in Kordelio for 22 years.

But it is not just Greece that is grappling with these kinds of issues.  Now even countries that had been thought to be "stable" are experiencing significant problems.  For example, a massive crime wave has broken out in France.  The crime wave in France is being blamed on "austerity", but the government of France still spends far more than it brings in.
So how bad would things get in France if the French government actually did go to a balanced budget?
And how bad would things get in the United States if the federal government was not stealing more than 100 million dollars an hour from our children and our grandchildren?
Even in the midst of our debt-fueled prosperity we are starting to see glimpses of how desperate people will become when our country is someday forced to live within its means.  For example, the following is from a report about an incident that happened in Columbus, Ohio the other day...

Columbus Police sprayed Mace on several people in a crowd that had gathered to sign up for a list to get subsidized housing at a northwest Columbus apartment complex.
Police said the crowd started to gather Friday night for the Saturday morning event at The Heritage apartment complex on Gatewood Road near Sunbury Road in northeast Columbus.
Authorities said that its highest number, the crowd reached 2,000 people.

Our entire economy is a giant mirage.  Our prosperity has been purchased by stealing from the future.  A few people have been warning that we have completely destroyed our future in the process, but both major political parties just continue to do it and the mainstream media just continues to cheer them on.
At some point this con game will end and this economic mirage will disappear.  When that happens, millions of people all over this country are going to become very angry and very desperate.
I hope that you have a plan for what you will do when that happens.

Part I: Motives for Mind Control & Pt.2,Pt.3

http://www.jbhfile.com/Part_I_Motives_for_Mind_Control.htm      
Part I: Motives for Mind Control Allen Barker, June 13, 2001
This essay is the first in a series of three on mind control.  It discusses some of the motives for mind control and why it continues.  Part II of the series, "Resisting the Mind Control State," describes some methods to protest and resist mind control abuses and atrocities.  Part III, "Mental Firewalls," discusses some of the techniques victims have developed to survive the ongoing torture operations.
For the purposes of this essay, mind control refers to any method used nonconsensually on a victim to covertly and deniably attempt to control or modify that person's behavior.  This occurs in settings where a person has a reasonable expectation not to be violated, such as in his or her home or in his or her private mentation.  It is this sort of violation that differentiates a mind control crime from an ordinary social interaction, just as the lack of consent turns sex into rape.
Consider "street theater" as an example.  Street theater refers to a form of harassment where a group of torturers act out little skits, either literally on the street or on the internet, in the media, etc., intended to harass and disturb an individual or to otherwise modify the victim's behavior.  So if a group of people act out "street theater" to a random person to disturb him or her then, while this might be a crime, I would not necessarily call it mind control.  It is when surveillance is combined with the "skits" to both track a person over time for harassment and to obtain personal information about a person to be used in the harassment that I would say a mind control operation is being carried out.
Of course there are many sorts of mind control operations, but they all tend to have this sort of feedback setup: violate a person with extreme surveillance and use that surveillance information to target the influencing.  It is a classic sort of feedback setup that might be described in terms of the mathematical and engineering fields of control theory, at least in the abstract sense.  The surveillance devices can range from phone taps, audio and video bugs in a home or car, internet monitoring, and basic tracking devices, all the way up to advanced satellite surveillance methods, super-sensitive electromagnetic sensor systems with computer analysis, and devices implanted in people's bodies without their consent.  The "effector" or the control variables can range from harassing phone calls, street theater, rumor spreading, power-line dimming, and internet messages all the way up to harassment with microwave devices, acoustic weapons, messages in the media such as TV and newspapers, projecting "voices" to a person that only he or she can hear, and direct brain stimulation and manipulation.
Other mind control methods use techniques such as hypnosis and drugs to influence people, but the methods all have the common thread of the denied and deniable attack against the mind of an individual.  The purpose of this essay is not to specifically describe the methods of mind control.  More specifics will be given in the later essays of this series, and one can consult books and articles by various authors for the documented history of mind control technology and operations in the U.S.  See, for example, the articles at the Mind Control: Technology, Techniques, and Politics web site at http://www.datafilter.com/mc.
Even if you do not believe that all of this is currently happening -- though it is -- you should still be concerned.  Based on public, open sources it is clear to almost anyone that the technology will be available in the near future.  But there are victims now.  You do not even have to think the U.S. government is doing this, but it is.  "Our boys" will be targeted with these sorts of weapons in future wars.
For the purposes of this essay, I assume that the reader has a general grasp of the type of mind control manipulations being discussed and I consider possible motivations a harasser, monitor, or controller (or group thereof) might have to commit such vicious crimes.  Because this essay is intended to get people thinking, the possible motives will not necessarily be linked to any particular technological method, but the reader with some common sense will see what methods might be used in each case and will no doubt be able to think of combinations and motivations not directly mentioned here.
To spoil the rest of the essay, the reasons boil down to money and power.

Technological Equivalent of the Atomic Bomb

Many items appear on the list of motivations for mind control abuses, but the one primary reason why the technology was developed is because it is a weapon.  This is the first motivation and why billions of dollars have been covertly spent on the technology.  Of course, once the technology and techniques are developed they tend to proliferate.  Other application tend to be found, depending on the level of corruption in a society, and organized crime groups other than the government tend to obtain such weapons and techniques.  But the primary reason such devices were first developed and tested is that governments were and are developing and testing weapons. A recent Air Force Times article about a microwave crowd control weapon being prepared for deployment described such weapons as "perhaps the biggest breakthrough in weapons technology since the atomic bomb," and the particular weapon they were describing is far, far from the covert cutting edge.  Indeed, a government would be negligent if it did not investigate such technology.  But using the technology on people without their consent, either in testing or in applications, is either an act of war if committed on foreign individuals or an act of treason if committed on domestic citizens.  It is almost always an act of torture.
It is important not to confuse the real motivation with the rationalizations or the cover reasons.  Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, and pedophiles are the currently popular rationalizations for usurping citizens' inalienable liberties now that the cold war is over.  A week of American TV would convince any unindoctrinated viewer of that.  There is also the phenomenon I call "spreading the blood around."  This is the idea that the more people who can be made to take part in some way in a large-scale atrocity -- to get some of the blood on their hands -- the more political support that can be generated for continuing the atrocities.
Some differences between the atomic bomb and mind control technology need to be pointed out.  First, mind control technology is meant to be used covertly and deniably.  It is not meant necessarily to kill, though it can, but rather to ultimately control a human being like an automaton.  Secondly, mind control technology is designed for use against the domestic population, rather than just against foreign targets.

Who Would Want to Rule the World?

At some level it is stunning that an essay such as this is necessary at all.  People have always wanted to "control men's minds" -- not to mention women's minds.  But people historically have also been manipulated again and again, by one group of people followed by another, by one big lie followed by another -- often convinced that it cannot possibly be happening now.  There is also a "moral big lie" where decent people cannot imagine that anyone could have the capacity to carry out such heinous atrocities and conspiracies over long periods of time, because they could not imagine themselves doing it.  They have minor moral lapses like everyone (like ordinary people tell small lies) but they just cannot grasp the notion of the big moral atrocity because they would never consider such abominations. There always have been and always will be people among us who yearn for nothing but to be tyrants over other people.  Let us be clear here on that point and never forget it.  There will always be someone who wants to be the next Stalin -- to choose one historical example from countlessly many -- and who will stop at absolutely nothing to achieve this.  This also means that there are Americans among us now who are just this sort of person -- or a lackey for such a person -- living among us in our society.  Do not let the big lie and ubiquitous American propaganda fuzzy your thinking.  The threat is more likely to come from within the government than from someone's garage.  Eternal vigilance is indeed the price of liberty.

Motives for Mind Control

We finally come to the list of possible motivations for mind control.  It is important to remember, though, that it is not the responsibility of the torture victim to second-guess the reasons the torture was committed.  In this sense the "reason" for the torture is generally that the torturer had the opportunity to commit the torture and thought he or she could get away with it.  Nonetheless, it is useful to examine more mercenary or mercantile sorts of possible motivations to better see why mind control torture is happening, why it continues, and maybe gain some insight into how it can be abolished. Remember that in any group of people there is politics.  This is also the case with the people involved in the conspiracy of mind controllers.  So when considering questions such as "why don't they just kill everyone who speaks out at all" or other such questions -- which can be useful to consider even if you cannot know the exact answer -- it is important to keep this in mind.  Mind control conspirators tend to come from the same culture and live in the same society with the victims.  When they leave the underground bunker -- literally or metaphorically -- they go to live in homes and with families among us.  [The low-level mind controllers, like Auschwitz guards, probably do not know the whole mind control system either.  Also, with advanced electronic sorts of harassment the harasser could be half a world away with a good connection, but presumably still lives in a community among some decent people.]
Many interrelated motives are mentioned on the following list, but that does not imply that exactly one listed motive is the true motive in any case, or that the list is exhaustive.  A useful comparison for how a victim might be used is a comparison to a slaughterhouse, where an animal comes in and is cut up and almost every usable scrap that can be used for anything is used.  To use a slave auction analogy, if one slaver has a slave that is good for X but needs Y, and another slaver has a slave that is good for Y and wants X, then perhaps they can strike up a commercial transaction on their human chattel.
Some might object that publicizing this list will only give new ideas to harassers.  It might, but the only alternative is to keep the people uninformed and to allow the atrocities to continue.  I also suspect that the people with access to this technology for some years have already thought of (and applied) all of these reasons, even if they did not express them this way.
Here is the list of motives, in no particular order.
Low-intensity warfare against the domestic population.  This has long been the policy of the U.S. government, though it typically is not so directly stated.  Cointelpro actions are covertly undertaken to harass and discredit people who, for whatever reason, are "in the way."  Frank Donner, in his 1980 book Age of Surveillance, makes this point with example after example.  In his phrase, convert surveillance and harassment has become an unspoken "mode of governance" in the U.S.  So this newer technology simply fits right in as a more high-tech way to continue carrying out this "mode of governance."  A key concept which Donner points out, and which many Americans cannot quite seem to grasp is that the government does not need to accuse you of a crime or charge you or try you if they can just punish you.  A paranoid government does not even need to suspect that you are committing any crime, wrongdoing, or organizing at all: only that you might do so.  These sorts of programs usually tend to target potential leaders and whistleblowers, though anyone can be cointelproed.
Ideas to mine/steal.  In some sense this is just a form of old-fashioned spying updated with new technology that obliterates the notion of human rights.  Consider what might be the first step on a slippery slope of rationalizations.  Suppose an Iraqi nuclear scientist, or any brilliant "foreign" scientist or engineer, was of concern to the U.S.  Suppose there is now this new technology, that can literally "get inside the head" of such a scientist and watch him or her as he or she thinks and works.  Not only that, it can be used to influence that scientist.  Armed with such a rationalization, the covert action crew goes to work and sets up the massively invasive surveillance.  Then, for years afterward, analysts can study the subject and extract any "intelligence" they can from him or her.
Would such a program, if "successful," be contained and only be used on foreign scientists?  I do not think so.  It would be used on any people at all, only limited by the cost and the perceived risk of being caught.  Domestic targets might even be more tempting because the risk of discovery could be better "managed."  You would not even have to be a brilliant scientist, some bureaucrat only needs to think you are, or that you are somehow "of interest."  If enough people are targeted then almost all levels of scientists and engineers could be targeted.  (If they had a golden goose they'd dissect it.)
Intellectual property theft from scientists and engineers is only listed first because of the slippery slope example above; there are many classes of people who might be targeted for similar reasons.  Einstein is quoted as having said that imagination is more important than intelligence, and imagination is even more important to covert organizations who effectively select against employees with real imagination.
Other sorts of creative people who might be vulnerable are writers (plagiarism), other types of artists or craftspeople, inventors, programmers, etc.  In an economic espionage sense, any sort of innovative or high-volume stock trader or business leader might be a tempting and very lucrative target.  Dialogue and situations stolen from people's real lives can become tomorrow's "drama."  Patents, copyrights, trademarks, and any sort of intellectual property can be deniably stolen from these victims.  This can deny them their livelihoods and makes them literal slaves.
Statistical profiling of a population.  This is like using nonconsensual subjects in a focus group, to understand what their likes, dislikes, needs, and trends are.  It might be most effective with unwitting subjects (who have not realized they are under monitoring), but can still be used on subjects who know they are being monitored.  It is like having the ability to take an instant poll of a captive population, who may not even be able to hide what their innermost secrets are.  Anyone who knows anything about modern U.S. elections knows how influential and widely used polls are.  This is just one aspect of the power of being able to statistically profile a large population.  It is the statistics of population control, where some sample of people -- which does not even need to be especially large relative to the hundreds of millions in the population -- can be used to predict trends in the larger population.
Suppose, for example, that an individual were put under surveillance and found useful to serve as an exemplar of a statistical demographic group, say of 100,000 people.  That is, that person's perspective, ideas, and reactions could be used to both predict and manipulate the entire social group on a large scale.  This sort of analysis is already known to take place; it becomes that much more effective with a focus group under even more invasive monitoring.  In a commercial sense, the power to manipulate a demographic group is the power to get them to purchase goods and provide a profit.  Every sort of thing is marketed these days.  Advertising campaigns are created to sell politicians, soap, ideas, slurs, and anything else.
Interrogation for secrets.  This is another advanced technology application to old-fashioned spying.  People can be "brain interrogated" for secrets they know.  This may be used to reveal critical passwords, uncover blackmailable incidents, and obtain national and commercial secrets.
Psyop BDA.  BDA is the military abbreviation for bomb damage assessment.  In order to most effectively bomb a target you need to know which bombs hit their target and how much damage was inflicted by the bombing.  This feedback is then used to both improve the subsequent bombings and to revisit targets that were missed.  One of Noam Chomsky's main theses has for years been that "democratic" governments use propaganda similarly to the way direct totalitarian governments use violence.  Therefore, it is important for the cloistered elites to know how well their propaganda "bombs" are playing with the masses.  Like with the statistical profiling use of "maximally invasive surveillance," nonconsensual monitoring can provide this sort of political control feedback data.
Entertainment freak show.  Sadism and voyeurism are powerful motivations for some people.  Mind control victims can provide a live torture-cam of an individual 24 hours a day, and may even allow the sadist to play at the controls and inflict damage or influence the "show."  It would be like an ongoing snuff film you could participate in.  This may also be a part of "spreading the blood around" by appealing to some of the baser human instincts and then having a person on the hook for having participated (like has been alleged for some "satanic" rituals where people take a small part in a ritual crime so they are inextricably linked to the conspiracy).
To suppress technology they cannot control.  Many people believe that you can always be the best if you can harass and put down anyone better.  This seems to be the modus operandi of the U.S. secret sector, where if they do not control the technology then it is stolen, the original inventor or developer (or just student) is harassed, and it can then be developed in secret.  Even if they are not themselves interested in the new technology, the temptation to suppress any possible disruption to the status quo is always there.  There is a law in Washington that there can be no building taller than the Capitol.  When secrecy-bred mediocrity and lack of accountability are taken into account the Capitol becomes a very low building.
Hired harassment squad for billionaires.  It does not take long for some personnel involved in this technology and experienced with these techniques to leave for the private sector.  This opens the possibility for deniable mercenary harassment squads.
Distributed concentration camps.  The federal government has historically made plans for "emergencies" which have included lists of people to lock up in internment camps.  With this new technology perfected, the concentration camps can be "distributed," by turning each listed person's home and mind into an electronic prison.
Vigilante groups.  To control "crime," or whatever they choose to claim they are targeting people for, a vigilante group can select people they do not like for extrajudicial punishment.  Like most such groups, actually "controlling crime" is just an excuse to pick people for victimization and to rationalize it to the members of the group.
To control a person, like a world leader or assassin (or any sort of leader).  This is probably the ultimate dream of a mind controller (or their own controllers): to take control of a world leader or other important person.  This could even start from a young age, with the person groomed for the position of power and with members of the secret team influencing and increasing the opportunities for the chosen "asset" to reach a position of power.  When trained from a young age an unfortunate child might not even realize that the influencing was not normal (the "secret friend" that is not imaginary).  Subtle advanced techniques could influence an adult without his or her knowledge.  Even if he or she suspected, there would likely already be a pool of blackmail information and powerful psychological levers to employ against the person.
The quest for controlled assassins, or Manchurian candidates, is well-known.  The search for such techniques never stopped and is still ongoing.  Similarly, sexual blackmail operations are an ongoing reality and mind control victims may be utilized in setting up such traps.
If the technology is cheap enough or if you have a wide-field multi-target device you do not even need to target the leaders.  Your army can covertly "capture" more and more of the inhabitants (or flick a switch on a wide-field device) until it can march into town down main street to a hero's welcome.  Then again, once this is accomplished there is no need to march in at all, just keep milking out "tribute" from the conquered people -- who never even knew there was a war against them.  It is easy to parody this as just some sort of "body snatchers" scenario, but to military planners it is a very real thing.
To infiltrate a group.  In order to control, influence, or install a puppet leader in a group the controllers do not know much about and really do not understand, it could be useful to monitor a member or leader in order to learn what might be effective responses, ideas, or actions.  For example, a religious sect they wanted to control.  Another example would be for a mind controller to use information gained from the monitoring of a victim in order to better pose as a victim, say on the internet.
Genocide.  This could be the implicit or explicit result of a mind control operation.  The group here is whatever group is selected for torture, which may be racial, religious, socioeconomic, or related to whatever other selection criteria is used.  People under long-running extrajudicial torture are not free to just "choose life" even if they wanted to.  People are forced to decide whether they should bring a child into the world to also be monitored and violated every day, without the child's or the parent's consent.  They have to wonder about supporting a child when they are under ongoing torture which may intensify at any moment.  They know that, at the least, the life of any child will be threatened in order to further torture them and harass them, and they know that the threat is credible.
As a medical scam for money.  These days medicine and pharmaceuticals represent big money.  If the cover lie for mind control abuses is mental illness them some mind control victims will be misdiagnosed as mentally ill (rather than as torture victims) and given (or even forced) treatment and medication.  An unscrupulous company or group of individuals could exploit this fact to make money off the suffering of the mind control victims.
To predict and preempt actions.  Besides wanting to just control behavior, a running trend is to want to predict behavior, obviously before it happens.  But the sort of data that is needed to predict behavior in detail is exactly the same as the invasive surveillance data used to control and harass individuals.  Prediction is also a component in more effective control.
We are already seeing instances where people's rights are infringed upon not because they have done anything but because someone predicted they would do something, based upon whatever methodology.  Much of this prediction is just snake oil and pseudoscience, but that does not change the fact that the rights infringement is very real.  There is also a statistical and scientific methodology to prediction which undoubtedly will improve with time.  If you can accurately predict someone's actions you can move to preempt those actions even before they are taken.
To train agents to perform any of these actions.  As professional torturing scum either retire, move into other sectors, or quit in disgust, new agents must be hired to take their places.  If the system is expanding then new people need to be hired to enlarge the system (or to automate the system with computers so fewer monitors can control more and more people).  These people need to be trained in the special juvenile and idiotic barbarity the U.S. mind controllers love to inflict.  Therefore fresh victims must continually be selected from the population so these sadistic pigs can practice their torture techniques.
To intimidate a population by making "examples" of people. If it were an open secret that people can be selected for any reason for mind control torture, then the population in on the open secret would be intimidated, if not terrified, that any one of them could be the next victim.  This is just a new method of violence by which a regime of thugs can control a population using a long-practiced terror tactic.
To perfect the technology and techniques and make it less detectable. This is the human guinea pig testing of the weapons technology, much like radiation tests on unwitting citizens.  Weapons are built, human subjects are chosen from the population, and the weapons are tested on the nonconsensual subjects.  (Some consensual subjects are no doubt also used, but that is not a human rights violation if the consent was truly informed.)  After these tests, the weapons lab analyzes the terrorized or influenced or manipulated responses of the subjects (in a "successful" test) and refines the weapon system.
A part of this testing also serves to help close all avenues of response and redress which might be open to the human subjects (and which later domestic targets of the weapon might have).  Any response the victim tries to make is monitored, and if it might be successful then this "loophole" in the system of denying justice is closed.  For example, a lawyer might be used to attempt to see what legal strategies he or she might think of so they could be rendered ineffective.  A technical person would be observed as he or she tried to understand, measure, and block the effects of the weapons system.  This would be valuable feedback to the designers, and might even provide them with ideas.  Note that for this particular aspect of the torture it is important that the victim know he or she is being attacked/violated.
Of course a victim has little choice but to try to resist or else to willingly become a slave (which still would not likely stop the harassment).  He or she must constantly think about the "testing" because it is typically ongoing, day and night.  That is just the vicious catch 22 that victims must deal with and is a part of why it is torture.  I am not trying to discourage any victim from taking whatever action they decide is the best course in such a horrible situation.
Various unwitting spy scenarios.  Perhaps the best spy is one who does not even know he or she is a spy.  He or she cannot reveal it even under the most extreme torture because he or she does not know it.  Such people can be infiltrated into any group or just selected out of any particular group and "wired up."  In a domestic social sense, inmates in prisons can be wired up before they are released so their monitors can peep into any criminal underworld activity which they might enter into after being "freed."  (Of course it is important not to confuse the secret police with the regular police and law enforcement, though there is certainly overlap.)
To steal negotiating strategies or information.  Arms control, treaties, business negotiations.
To conceal scientific and philosophical insights into human existence.  One of the things repressive societies fear is new ideas and new ways of thinking.  Scientific advances have been made which could revolutionize the ways man views himself (to use the masculine form); but for some people this represents a potential threat to their power.  The new technologies could also potentially help our aging relatives, for example, if used in a humane and consensual way.  But it is a difficult philosophical shift to acknowledge that now our own "silent" thoughts might not be private -- or might not really be our own.  This is one of the difficulties in getting people to understand mind control crimes.  (Remember also that mind controllers have no compunction or restriction against using any lies or deceptions or defiling and desecrating any religion in an attempt to manipulate people.)
Human guinea pigs for medical or psychological research.  Once people are under ongoing, invasive surveillance they can become guinea pigs for any sort of medical or psychological human testing that needs continued monitoring.  This is a lucrative business now.  For example, if a person were were "knocked out" one day by whatever method and had a patch of skin rubbed with some chemical under development or of concern then the experimenters could watch the person's own response to the potential poisoning.  Psychological research has even larger potential for abuse.  Real "field testing."
To maintain the ongoing mind control conspiracy.  Because atrocities have been committed, atrocities continue to be committed to conceal them.  The mind control technology and harassment network is used to keep the secret system secret, punish whistleblowers, and of course increase profits at whatever cost to human dignity.

Conclusions

Given that there is a long list of possible motives, hundreds of people (at the least) claiming to be victims of exactly this sort of technology, the known development of the technology, a history of such abuses, and the continued coverups of acknowledged MKULTRA and other mind control victims in the population, it seems reasonable to conclude that nonconsensual testing and harassment is still going on with the latest technology.  The questions are, who are the victims, how many are there, what was and is being done to them, and how can this extrajudicial torture of the domestic population be stopped as soon as possible.
 
 

Part I - Motives for Mind Control | Part II - Resisting the Mind Control State | Part III - Mental Firewalls

CONVERGING TECHNOLOGIES FOR IMPROVING HUMAN PERFORMANCE

http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com/articles/NBIC_pre_publication.pdf

12/17

http://visupview.blogspot.com/2010/12/1217.html      

12/17

"The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave, and raised him from the dead, bare record."
-John 12:17

December 17th marked the beginning of the Roman holiday Saturnalia in ancient times. Traditionally it was celebrated from the 17th to the 23rd, though multiple attempts were made by the Emperors over the years to shorten the length of the festival. And for good reason, as the festival was noted for the absolute decadence and license it inspired amongst the multitudes. Legendary mythological scholar James Frazer notes:

"...many peoples have been used to observe an annual period of license, when the customary restraints of law and morality are thrown aside, when the whole population give themselves up to extravagant mirth and jollity, and when the darker passions find a vent which would never be allowed them in the more staid and sober course of ordinary life. Such outbursts of the pent-up forces of human nature... occur most commonly at the end of the year... Now, of all these periods of license the one which is best known and which in modern language has given its name to the rest, is the Saturnalia. This famous festival fell in December, the last month of the Roman year, and was popularly supposed to commemorate the merry reign of Saturn, the god of sowing and of husbandry, who lived on earth long ago as a righteous and beneficent king of Italy, drew the rude and scattered dwellers on the mountains together, taught them to till the ground, gave them laws, and ruled in peace. His reign was the fabled Golden Age: the earth brought forth abundantly: no sound of war or discord troubled the happy world: no baleful love of lucre worked poison in the blood of the industrious and contented peasantry. Slavery and private property were alike unknown: all men had all things in common."
(The Golden Bough, pg. 630)

To those of you familiar with Greco-Roman mythology this description of the age of Saturn may seem a bit off as this god, as well as his Greek counterpart Cronus, had a rather bloody image in antiquity. Frazer states:

"Cronus certainly bore a sinister reputation in antiquity. He passed for an unnatural parent who had devoured his own offspring, and he was regularly identified by the Greeks with the cruel Semitic Baals who delighted in the sacrifice of human victims, especially children. A legend which savours strongly the infant sacrifice is reported of a shrine that stood at the very foot of the god's hill at Olympia; and a quite unambiguous story was told of the sacrifice of a babe to Lycaean Zeus on Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia, where the worship of Zeus was probably nothing but a continuation, under a new name, of the old worship of Cronus, and where the human victims appear to have been regularly offered down to the Christian era."
(The Golden Bough, pg. 640-641)

In Roman culture, the observance of Saturnalia on the 17th had originally begun as holy day in which the Romans offered sacrifice, and only later was added a festival, according to this website:

"In the Roman calendar, the Saturnalia was designated a holy day, or holiday, on which religious rites were performed. Saturn, himself, was identified with Kronos, and sacrificed to according to Greek ritual, with the head uncovered. The Temple of Saturn, the oldest temple recorded by the pontiffs, had been dedicated on the Saturnalia, and the woolen bonds which fettered the feet of the ivory cult statue within were loosened on that day to symbolize the liberation of the god.

"It also was a festival day. After sacrifice at the temple, there was a public banquet, which Livy says was introduced in 217 BC (there also may have been a lectisternium, a banquet for the god in which its image is placed in attendance, as if a guest). Afterwards, according to Macrobius (I.10.18), the celebrants shouted "Io, Saturnalia!" at a riotous feast in the temple."

Frazer speculates that in earlier times these sacrifices to Saturn were typically human:

"Yet the bright tradition of his reign was crossed by a dark shadow: his altars are said to have been stained with the blood of human victims, for whom a more merciful age afterwards substituted effigies."
(The Golden Bough, pg. 630)

Frazer further elaborates on his theory by giving an example of how Saturnalia customs were observed by Roman legionaries in several of the more far-flung provinces of the Empire where festivals remained closer to their origins:

"Thirty days before the festival they chose by lot from amongst themselves a young and handsome man, who was then clothed in royal attire to resemble Saturn. Thus arrayed and attended by a multitude of soldiers he went about in public with full license to indulge his passions and to taste of every pleasure, however base and shameful. But if his reign was merry, it was short and ended tragically; for when the thirty days were up and the festival of Saturn had come, he cut his own throat on the altar of the god he personated."
(ibid, pg. 632)

Over the years many comparisons have been drawn between Saturnalia and the later Christmas holiday and aptly so -It seems beyond a doubt that many Saturnalia customs were preserved in Christmas. For instances, firs decorated with red berries were frequently used as decorations during Saturnalia. While the Christianized version of Saturnalia associates it with the birth of Christ, it is the crucifixion, according to Frazer, that it most closely resembles.

"...the remarkable resemblance between the treatment of the mock king of the Saturnalia by the Roman soldiers at Durostorum; and he would explain the similarity by supposing that the soldiers ridiculed the claims of Christ to a divine kingdom by arraying him in the familiar garb of old King Saturn, whose quaint person figured so prominently at the winter revels."
(The Golden Bough, pg. 666)

The obvious problem here is that Christ was crucified at Passover, in the midst of spring. This led Frazer to speculate the Saturnalia may have made its origins in the spring and was later moved to the winter. I do not, however, agree with this view. As Frazer had earlier noted, many similar winter festivals existed in Europe at the time that possessed the same carnival-like atmosphere. Further, the festival Saturnalia falls in the midst of the Winter Solstice, which is typically held on either December 21st or 22nd, and was generally one of the two most important festivals in European paganism next to Midsummer. Finally, there's the two dates that have traditionally marked the beginning and end of Saturnalia: the 17th and the 23rd.

Many readers of this blog are likely aware of the 23 enigma. To briefly recap: in the mid 1960s Robert Anton Wilson, William S Burroughs, and the authors of Principia Discordia began to address numerous odd synchronicities revolving around the number 23. Wilson elaborates in this old article:

"In conception, Mom and Dad each contribute 23 chromosomes to the fœtus. DNA, the carrier of the genetic information, has bonding irregularities every 23rd Angstrom. Aleister Crowley, in his Cabalistic Dictionary, defines 23 as the number of 'life' or 'a thread', hauntingly suggestive of the DNA life-script. On the other hand, 23 has many links with termination: in telegraphers’ code, 23 means 'bust' or 'break the line', and Hexagram 23 in I Ching means 'breaking apart'. Sidney Carton is the 23rd man guillotined in the old stage productions of A Tale of Two Cities. (A few lexicographers believe this is the origin of the mysterious slang expression '23 Skiddoo!'.)

"According to Omar Garrison’s Tantra: The Yoga of Sex, in addition to the well-known 28-day female sex cycle, there is also a male sex cycle of 23 days.

"Burroughs, who tends to look at the dark side of things, sees 23 chiefly as the death number. In this connection, it is interesting that the 23rd Psalm is standard reading at funerals.

"Through various leads, I have become increasingly interested in Sir Francis Bacon as a possibly ringleader of the 17th-century Illuminati (Some evidence for this can be found in Francis Yates’s excellent The Rosicrucian Enlightenment). Bacon, in accord with custom, was allowed to pick the day for his own elevation to knighthood by Elizabeth I. He picked 23 July."

Interestingly, July 23rd is the beginning of the 'dog days' of summer. Presumably this label stretches back to ancient Egypt when the priests began a series of rituals to Sirius, commonly referred to as the Dog Star, on July 23rd that lasted till September 8th.

The number 17 has closely been associated with 23. In fact, Wilson originally referred to the 23 enigma as the '23/17 phenomenon.' However, the number 17 has much older occult significance, which also dates back to ancient Egypt. In the Mystery traditions, the death of Osiris occurred on the 17th of Athyr in the ancient Egyptian calendar. In our own calendar, the date falls roughly on November 13th. Strangely, this would have been mere days before the Romans chose an honorary 'King Saturn' to be sacrificed on December 17th, if the 30 day period is to be believed. Is it possible that the dates may have been confused?

A potential clue may lay in a passage from the Gospel of John that was quoted in the beginning of this article. 12:17 deals with the resurrection of Lazarus by Christ. According to Christopher Knowles in his outstanding article on the number 17 Lazarus may have been a Christianization of Osiris:

"Incidentally, Lazarus, whom many Biblical scholars believe was an adaptation of Osiris (Lazarus coming from El Ausur, Hebrew for "the god Osiris") was raised by Jesus in John 12:17."

To recap: In myth Osiris was murdered on the 17th of Athyr, which corresponds to our November 13th. In some versions of Saturnalia festival a man was selected on November 17th as a stand-in for King Saturn, given a month of license, and then sacrificed on the god's altar on the 17th of December. In the Gospel of John passage 12:17 refers to the resurrection of Lazarus by Christ, which in turn may be a sly reference to Osiris. Finally, there's odd appearance of Robert Anton Wilson's '23/17 phenomenon' several centuries the synchroncities were (publicly?) revealed. I don't know what it means, but it certainly is interesting.

And now I wish to hesitantly broach a topic that may potentially come off as being extremely pompous, for which I wish to apologize in advance. However, I feel that I cannot do full justice to this topic without discussing my own bizarre synchronicities surrounding 17 and 12/17 especially.

For starters, my birthday happens to fall on December 17th, the beginning of Saturnalia. My father's birthday is on November 13th, which as I mentioned above, corresponds to the 17th of Athyr on which tradition holds Osiris was murdered. If that were not odd enough, I also happen to share the same birth date as my great-grandfather, who obviously I never met but who I seem to have inherited much from. Amongst the inheritance would include his shotgun, his tools (he was a carpenter by trade), strong doses of his personality (according to my father), and an obsession with secret societies.

The later was something that I was not aware until a few a months ago when I was having a conversation with my mother about my plans for starting a blog that would tackle various aspects of the occult and secret societies. It was at this point that she told me to ask my father about my great-grandfather, who had been a high ranking Freemason.

She wasn't kidding. Great-grandfather had been a 32nd degree Freemason, in addition to being a member of the Shriners and the Ku Klux Klan. I acquired his Masonic ring the last time I visited home.

Needless to say, I find the 17 phenomenon in my family to be most strange.

So, from my family to yours... A happy Saturnalia.

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/commentary/396/the_23_phenomenon.html      

The 23 Phenomenon

Robert Anton Wilson

Author: Robert Anton Wilson

With the release of movie The Number 23 earlier this year we paid tribute to the late, much lamented Robert Anton Wilson by reprinting this 1977 article from (you guessed it) Fortean Times 23...

By Robert Anton Wilson

May 2007

I first heard of the 23 enigma from William S Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23.

Burroughs began collecting odd 23s after this gruesome synchronicity, and after 1965 I also began collecting them. Many of my weird 23s were incorporated into the trilogy Illuminatus! which I wrote in collaboration with Robert J Shea in 1969–1971. I will mention only a few of them here, to give a flavour to those benighted souls who haven’t read Illuminatus! yet:

In conception, Mom and Dad each contribute 23 chromosomes to the fœtus. DNA, the carrier of the genetic information, has bonding irregularities every 23rd Angstrom. Aleister Crowley, in his Cabalistic Dictionary, defines 23 as the number of “life” or “a thread”, hauntingly suggestive of the DNA life-script. On the other hand, 23 has many links with termination: in telegraphers’ code, 23 means “bust” or “break the line”, and Hexagram 23 in I Ching means “breaking apart”. Sidney Carton is the 23rd man guillotined in the old stage productions of A Tale of Two Cities. (A few lexicographers believe this is the origin of the mysterious slang expression “23 Skiddoo!”.)

Some people are clusters of bloody synchronicities in 23. Burroughs discovered that the bootlegger “Dutch Schultz” (real name: Arthur Flegenheimer) had Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll assassinated on 23rd Street in New York when Coll was 23 years old. Schultz himself was assassinated on 23 October. Looking further into the Dutch Schultz case, I found that Charlie Workman, the man convicted of shooting Schultz, served 23 years of a life sentence and was then paroled.
Prof. Hans Seisel of the University of Chicago passed the following along to Arthur Koestler, who published it in The Challenge of Chance. Seisel’s grandparents had a 23 in their address, his mother had 23 both as a street number and apartment number, Seisel himself once had 23 as both his home address and his law office address, etc. While visiting Monte Carlo, Seisel’s mother read a novel, Die Liebe der Jeannie Ney, in which the heroine wins a great deal by betting on 23 at roulette. Mother tried betting on 23 and it came up on the second try.

Adolf Hitler was initiated into the Vril Society (which many consider a front for the Illuminati) in 1923. The Morgan Bank (which is regarded as the financial backer of the Illuminati by the John Birch Society) is at 23 Wall Street in Manhattan. When Illuminatus! was turned into a play, it premiered in Liverpool on 23 November (which is also Harpo Marx’s birthday). Ken Campbell, producer of Illuminatus!, later found, on page 223 of Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections, a weird dream about Liverpool, which Campbell says describes the street intersection of the theatre where Illuminatus! opened (Jung, of course, was the first psychologist to study weird coincidences of this sort and to name them synchronicities). Campbell also claims that Hitler lived briefly in Liverpool when he was 23 years old, but I haven’t found the reference for that.
Recently, I was invited to join an expedition to the Bermuda Triangle. I declined because of other commitments, but “the crew that never rests” (Sir Walter Scott’s name for the Intelligence – or idiocies – who keep pestering us with this kind of phenomenon) refused to let me off the hook that easily. A few days after the expedition left, I turned on the television and caught an advertisement for the new film, Airport 77. The advertisement began with an actor shouting “Flight 23 is down in the Bermuda Triangle!”

A week later, Charles Berlitz, author of The Bermuda Triangle, claimed he had found a submerged pyramid “twice the size of the pyramids of Cheops” in the waters down there. You will find that monstrous edifice described in Illuminatus!, and it is specifically said to be “twice the size of the pyramid of Cheops” – but Shea and I thought we were writing fiction when we composed that passage in 1971. In 1977, Berlitz claims it is real.

I now have almost as many weird 23s in my files as Fort once had records of rains of fish, and people are always sending me new ones.

Euclid’s Geometry begins with 23 axioms.

As soon as I became seriously intrigued by collecting weird 23s, one of my best friends died – on 23 December.

My two oldest daughters were born on 23 August and 23 February respectively.

According to Omar Garrison’s Tantra: The Yoga of Sex, in addition to the well-known 28-day female sex cycle, there is also a male sex cycle of 23 days.

Burroughs, who tends to look at the dark side of things, sees 23 chiefly as the death number. In this connection, it is interesting that the 23rd Psalm is standard reading at funerals.

Heathcote Williams, editor of The Fanatic, met Burroughs when he (Williams) was 23 years old and living at an address with a 23 in it. When Burroughs told him, gloomily, “23 is the death number”, Williams was impressed; but he was more impressed when he discovered for the first time that the building across the street from his house was a morgue.

Bonnie and Clyde, the most popular bank-robbers of the 1930s, lived out most American underground myths quite consciously, and were shot to death by the Texas Rangers on 23 May, 1934. Their initials, B and C, have the Cabalistic values of 2–3.

W, the 23rd letter of the English alphabet, pops up continually in these matters. The physicist who collaborated with Carl Jung on the theory of synchronicity was Wolfgang Pauli. William Burroughs first called the 23 mystery to my attention. Dutch Schultz’s assassin was Charlie Workman. Adam Weishaupt and / or George Washington, the two (or one) chief source of 18th-century Illuminism, also come to mind. Will Shakespeare was born and died on 23 April.

(I have found some interesting 46s – 46 is 2 x 23 – but mostly regard them as irrelevant. Nonetheless, the 46th Psalm has a most peculiar structure. The 46th word from the beginning is shake and the 46th word from the end, counting back, is spear.)

Through various leads, I have become increasingly interested in Sir Francis Bacon as a possibly ringleader of the 17th-century Illuminati (Some evidence for this can be found in Francis Yates’s excellent The Rosicrucian Enlightenment). Bacon, in accord with custom, was allowed to pick the day for his own elevation to knighthood by Elizabeth I. He picked 23 July.

Dr John Lilly refers to “the crew that never rests” as Cosmic Coincidence Control Center and warns that they pay special attention to those who pay attention to them. I conclude this account with the most mind-boggling 23s to have intersected my own life.

On 23 July 1973, I had the impression that I was being contacted by some sort of advanced intellect from the system of the double star Sirius. I have had odd psychic experiences of that sort for many years, and I always record them carefully, but refuse to take any of them literally, until or unless supporting evidence of an objective nature turns up. This particular experience, however, was especially staggering, both intellectually and emotionally, so I spent the rest of the day at the nearest large library researching Sirius. I found, among other things, that 23 July is very closely associated with that star.

On 23 July, ancient Egyptian priests began a series of rituals to Sirius, continuing until 8 September. Since Sirius is known as the “Dog Star”, being in the constellation Canis Major, the period 23 July – 8 September became known as “the dog days”.

My psychic “Contact” experience continued, off and on, for nearly two years, until October 1974, after which I forcibly terminated it by sheer stubborn willpower (I was getting tired of wondering whether I was specially selected for a Great Mission of interstellar import, or was just going crazy).

After two years of philosophic mulling on the subject (late 1974 – early 1976), I finally decided to tune in one more time to the Sirius–Earth transmissions, and try to produce something objective. On 23 July 1976, using a battery of yogic and shamanic techniques, I opened myself to another blast of Cosmic Wisdom and told the Transmitters that I wanted something objective this time around.

The next week, Time magazine published a full-page review of Robert KG Temple’s The Sirius Mystery, which claims that contact between Earth and Sirius occurred around 4500 BC in the Near East. The 23 July festivals in Egypt were part of Temple’s evidence, but I was more amused and impressed by his middle initials, K.G., since Kallisti Gold is the brand of very expensive marijuana smoked by the hero of Illuminatus!.

The same week as that issue of Time, i.e. still one week after my 23rd experiment, Rolling Stone published a full-page advertisement for a German Rock group called Ramses. One of the group was named Winifred, which is the name of one of the four German Rock musicians in Illuminatus!, and the advertisement included a large pyramid with an eye atop it, the symbol of the Illuminati.

Coincidence? Synchronicity? Higher Intelligence? Higher Idiocy?

Of course, the eye on the pyramid was a favourite symbol of Aleister Crowley, who called himself Epopt of the Illuminati, and subtitled his magazine, The Equinox, “A Review of Scientific Illuminism”. And 2/3 equals .66666666 etc. – Crowley’s magick number repeated endlessly. Readers of this piece might find it amusing to skim through The Magical Revival and Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, two books by Kenneth Grant, a former student of Crowley’s (and note the initials K.G. again!). You will find numerous references, cloudy and occult, linking Crowley in some unspecified way with Sirius.

The actor who played Padre Pederastia in the National Theatre production of Illuminatus! informed me that he once met Crowley on a train. “Mere coincidence”, if you prefer. But the second night of the National Theatre run, the actors cajoled me into doing a walk-on as an extra in the Black Mass scene. And, dear brothers and sisters, that is how I found myself, stark naked, on the stage of the National Theatre, bawling Crowley’s slogan “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”, under the patronage of Her Majesty the Queen.

As a fortean, I am, of course, an ontological agnostic and I never believe anything literally. But I will never cease to wonder how much of this was programmed by Uncle Aleister before I was ever born, and I’m sure that last bit, my one moment on the stage of the National Theatre, was entirely Crowley’s work.

If you look up Crowley’s Confessions, you’ll find that he began the study of magick in 1898, at the age of 23.

http://news-beacon-ireland.info/?p=9163      

The Icelandic Success Story

Posted on December 10, 2012

Editor’s note:
related articles here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

————————————————-

by azizonomics.com

no copyright claimed
published on azizonomics. com 8 Dec 2012
republished here under the term of “Fair Use”

Emotionally, I love Iceland’s financial policies since the crash of 2008:

Iceland went after the people who caused the crisis — the bankers who created and sold the junk products — and tried to shield the general population.

But what Iceland did is not just emotionally satisfying. Iceland is recovering, while the rest of the Western world — which bailed out the bankers and left the general population to pay for the bankers’ excess — is not.

Bloomberg reports:

Few countries blew up more spectacularly than Iceland in the 2008 financial crisis. The local stock market plunged 90 percent; unemployment rose ninefold; inflation shot to more than 18 percent; the country’s biggest banks all failed.
This was no post-Lehman Brothers recession: It was a depression.
Since then, Iceland has turned in a pretty impressive performance. It has repaid International Monetary Fund rescue loans ahead of schedule. Growth this year will be about 2.5 percent, better than most developed economies. Unemployment has fallen by half. In February, Fitch Ratings restored the country’s investment-grade status, approvingly citing its “unorthodox crisis policy response.”

So what exactly did Iceland do?

First, they create an aid package for homeowners:

To homeowners with negative equity, the country offered write-offs that would wipe out debt above 110 percent of the property value. The government also provided means-tested subsidies to reduce mortgage-interest expenses: Those with lower earnings, less home equity and children were granted the most generous support.

Then, they redenominated foreign currency debt into devalued krone, effectively giving creditors a big haircut:

In June 2010, the nation’s Supreme Court gave debtors another break: Bank loans that were indexed to foreign currencies were declared illegal. Because the Icelandic krona plunged 80 percent during the crisis, the cost of repaying foreign debt more than doubled. The ruling let consumers repay the banks as if the loans were in krona.
These policies helped consumers erase debt equal to 13 percent of Iceland’s $14 billion economy. Now, consumers have money to spend on other things. It is no accident that the IMF, which granted Iceland loans without imposing its usual austerity strictures, says the recovery is driven by domestic demand.

What this meant is that unsustainable junk was liquidated. While I am no fan of nationalised banks and believe that eventually they should be sold off, there were no quick and easy bailouts that allowed the financial sector to continue with the same unsustainable bubble-based folly they practiced before the crisis (as has happened throughout the rest of the Western world).  


And best of all, Iceland prosecuted the people who caused the crisis, providing a real disincentive (as opposed to more bailouts and bonuses):

Iceland’s special prosecutor has said it may indict as many as 90 people, while more than 200, including the former chief executives at the three biggest banks, face criminal charges.
Larus Welding, the former CEO of Glitnir Bank hf, once Iceland’s second biggest, was indicted in December for granting illegal loans and is now waiting to stand trial. The former CEO of Landsbanki Islands hf, Sigurjon Arnason, has endured stints of solitary confinement as his criminal investigation continues.
That compares with the U.S., where no top bank executives have faced criminal prosecution for their roles in the subprime mortgage meltdown. The Securities and Exchange Commission said last year it had sanctioned 39 senior officers for conduct related to the housing market meltdown.

Iceland’s approach is very much akin to what I have been advocating — write down the unsustainable debt, liquidate the junk corporations and banks that failed, disincentivise the behaviour that caused the crisis, and provide help to the ordinary individuals in the real economy (as opposed to phoney “stimulus” cash to campaign donors and big finance).

And Iceland has snapped out of its depression. The rest of the West, where banks continue to behave exactly as they did prior to the crisis, not so much.

 

 

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How to Create 20 Million Jobs in the US

http://beforeitsnews.com/economy/2012/12/how-to-create-20-million-jobs-in-the-us-2469408.html        

How to Create 20 Million Jobs in the US

Sunday, December 9, 2012 15:45

By Avalon
theintelhub.com
December 9, 2012

Sounds impossible right? One thing is for sure, it’s American Small Business that actually creates the majority of the US Economy. The belief that the Global Corporations control our economy is false. Their control is on a macroeconomic level – through the Private Federal Reserve and their cartel of Regional Reserve Banks.

It is the Private Federal Reserve that has bankrupted the United States, make no mistake about it. Look around globally, and you can easily see a coordinated effort to consolidate and destroy economies the world over. This is the Global Criminal Banking Cartel in action. They are already responsible for the death of thousands – probably millions of people through the loss of income, their homes and businesses. The only solution is to nationalize the Private Federal Reserve – it is a matter of National Security.

Nevertheless, we as Americans are in this fight to the end. We have the real power and through recent actions like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, as controlled as these groups may have become, in the end, it was the American Spirit that made them powerful. It’s going to take a lot more than some 1000 Global Relics from a dead European Paradigm to defeat the American Spirit.

So, how does America create 20 million jobs? Quite easy as a matter of fact – there are 20 million Small to Medium Businesses in the United States and with the hiring of (on average) one new employee, these 20 million jobs could be created within 30 days. Let’s call it:

Small Business vs The Globalist

Although many people do business with a few large corporations like McDonald’s,Walmart, Home Depot, Bank of America etc, these trends can be reversed in weeks if not months. All that is required is the will to defeat these Globalists at their own game. Of course, another and even more successful strategy would be for employees of these corporations to leave en mass, sending them into a chaotic death spiral.

It’s interesting to note that on the SBA (Small Business Administration) website, we read the following summary:

One thing is for sure, as a small business owner you are not alone! There are millions of small businesses across the United States traveling the same road as you each and every day. Although your business operates in its own unique fashion, the cumulative impact of the small business sector is enormous.

Here are a few statistics from the Small Business Administration:

• The 23 million small businesses in America account for 54% of all U.S. sales.
• Small businesses provide 55% of all jobs and 66% of all net new jobs since the 1970s.
• The 600,000 plus franchised small businesses in the U.S. account for 40% of all retail sales and provide jobs for some 8 million people.
• The small business sector in America occupies 30-50% of all commercial space, an estimated 20-34 billion square feet.

Furthermore, the small business sector is growing rapidly. While corporate America has been “downsizing”, the rate of small business “start-ups” has grown, and the rate for small business failures has declined.

• The number of small businesses in the United States has increased 49% since 1982.
• Since 1990, as big business eliminated 4 million jobs, small businesses added 8 million new jobs.

For more interesting facts about the Small Businesses community visit:

• U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistics of U.S. Businesses
• SBA Office of Advocacy’s Firm Size Data
• DOE’s Energy Information Administration
• National Small Business Association 

Source:

http://www.sba.gov/content/small-business-trends

SBA’s Strategic Plan for 2011 through 2016

 

U.S. Small Business Administration Strategic Plan Fiscal Years 2011 – 2016

Every few years or so, SBA releases a strategy document for the current and upcoming years.  The three strategic goals outlined for the fiscal years 2011 – 2016 period are not significantly different from those of recent SBA planning cycles.  SBA’s core objectives of effectively supporting our nation’s current and future small business owners and providing assistance to victims of disaster remain unchanged. However, the means for achieving our goals reflect the lessons learned through experiences in serving our customers across the nation and from listening to, and working with, our employees at all organizational levels. SBA’s three strategic goals for FY 2011-2016 are:

1. Growing businesses and creating jobs.
2. Building an SBA that meets the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s small businesses.
3. Serving as the voice for small business.

Fortunately, the Entrepreneurial Spirit is still alive in America. The major difficulty is in acquiring capitol and competing with extremely low prices from Importers like China. Of course, thanks to Treaties like NAFTA andGATT, Americas Manufacturing and Industrial capability has been nearly destroyed. What perpetuates this condition is the purchasing of goods from China that account for nearly all manufactured goods today.

A very in-depth article posted on Inc. May 1st, 2007 titled Does the SBA Still Matter? features many anecdotal stories and details on the SBA and questions if it’s relevant today. A lengthy article but worth the read.

One of the more recent legislative developments to address Employment and Job creation is the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act or JOBS Act.According to Wikipedia:

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act or JOBS Act, is a law intended to encourage funding of United States small businesses by easing various securities regulations. It passed with bipartisan support, and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on April 5, 2012.

One of the more interesting provisions of the bill, other than Micro-Loans is to “raise the number of permitted shareholders in community banks from 500 to 2,000.^[15]> What this translates to is that up to 2,000 individual investors can start a Community Bank that would potentially be able to, say, allow deposits to be translated into Gold or Silver. Also, major funding of community project could eliminate the Criminal Banking Cartel from destroying any further the remaining value of our economy.

Granted, it might sound like an over-simplification, but many times, a simple solution is the best solution. Take for instance the hysterical Christmas Shopping we’ve witnessed across America, where most of the products purchased are from foreign countries. Why Americans keep thinking companies who have the gall to declare, “Saving people money so they can live better lives” can  do anything to bring our economy back to life. Yes, I’m talking about your average Walmart Shopper who aside from trying to save a few dollars are contributing to the destruction of the US Economy.

As Gerald Celente has said so succinctly, People want Quality and if Americans can find a way to manufacture quality products and services, we might have a chance to fight our way out of this Depression. Gerald also emphatically makes the case the people should “Buy American” whenever possible.  Gerald Celente is founder of The Trends Journalwhich follows trends globally and locally. Interestingly, Gerald predicted and started suggesting to buy locally back in the 1993Trnds Journal Issue.

This article is Part 1 of an ongoing series of articles on the US Economy, Employment and Possibilities as well as Solutions that are offered by a variety of sources.  Part 2 will be titled:

How We Lost America – Glass-Steagall 101

 

SOURCE:

Strategic Plan Fiscal Years 2011 – 2016

U.S. Small Business Administration Strategic Plan Fiscal Years 2011 – 2016

Does the SBA Still Matter?

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/features-does-the-sba-still-matter.html

Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act

Private Federal Reserve

The Trends Journal

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/trade/s_geneva2011/refdocs/cds/usa%20-%20itc%20-%20small%20and%20medium%20sized%20enterprises%20%28nov%202010%29.pdf

http://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub4125.pdf