John Steele To Court: You Have No Evidence That I've Done Anything Wrong

from the oh-yeah? dept          http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130410/10503022663/john-steele-to-court-you-have-no-evidence-that-ive-done-anything-wrong.shtml

And, the next filing in the big Prenda showdown has been filed, and it's John Steele's response to the Order to Show Cause (OSC) for why he shouldn't be sanctioned for a variety of misdeeds. Not surprisingly, Steele builds on the previous filings from Paul Hansmeier and from Paul Duffy and Prenda Law. But the crux of his argument: "Judge, you've got nothing on me. There's no evidence I did anything wrong."

Ridiculously, he argues that there's no jurisdiction over him, because despite Brett Gibbs' detailed testimony of how Steele (and Hansmeier) basically ran the entire litigation campaign, that Gibbs' testimony: "lacks specificity regarding Steele's involvement in the subject cases or any California cases, and is otherwise inconsistent or contradicted by others." Amazingly, in support of this, he points to lawyer Jason Sweet's "Perry Mason moment" during the March 11th hearing, in which Sweet noted that Gibbs had claimed to be counsel for AF Holdings. This is really throwing Gibbs under the bus. Sweet's statements were not meant as an exoneration of Steele or Hansmeier (by any means), but rather to show that Gibbs wasn't completely a puppet, but a willing participant in a scheme that was mostly managed by Steele and Hansmeier. Steele goes on to take other Gibbs' comments completely out of context to pretend that Steele had nothing to do with the case (or other cases).

For example, although Gibbs claimed he was supervised by Steele and Hansmeier at Prenda Law, when pressed for specifics about the degree of supervision he received, Gibbs only offered that Steele and Hansmeier gave him authority to file certain cases here. See Dkt 108-5, at 77:8-24. Gibbs' further testimony has revealed he had significant autonomy in handling the cases. See Dkt 108-5, at 77:25-78:4 (claiming Steele and Hansmeier "gave me certain parameters [pursuant to] which I could settle the case myself.");

First of all, that is not the "only" thing Gibbs "offered." He also noted that Steele had the ability to use his email address and made it pretty clear that Steele was calling the shots. As for the "certain parameters" claim, that was Gibbs noting that Steele and Hansmeier gave Gibbs very limited autonomy within the context of controlling pretty much everything else. That's so obvious from the context that it's almost amazing Steele would try to bullshit a judge who clearly knows better.

On various other points, Steele dumps the blame on Gibbs (and a little on Hansmeier). And then we get to the Alan Cooper question. On that point, everyone has been consistent: Steele was the guy who got Cooper's signature. So how does Steele try to avoid being blamed for "fraud on the court" over that? First, he repeats the statement made by others that Cooper's signature is meaningless, since the copyright holder wanted to assign the copyrights, no matter who signed on behalf of AF Holdings. And then he completely avoids the question of whether or not he faked Cooper's signature, by saying, basically, it doesn't matter because it's not a sanctionable offense anyway (what....?) and then takes a dig at Cooper's "credibility." Uh, yeah.

The Court stated: "First, with an invalid assignment, Plaintiff has no standing in these cases." Dkt 48, at 9:8. Apparently re-articulating the same concern, the Court added: "Second, by bringing these cases, Plaintiff's conduct can be considered vexatious, as these cases were filed for a facially improper purpose." Dkt 48, at 9:9-10. As both Gibbs and Prenda/Duffy/ Van Den Hemel noted in their Responses To The OSC, the Court is mistaken about the law in this regard; the signature of the assignee is irrelevant to the validity of the assignment, so long as the assignor signs. See Dkt 49, at 25:9-26:19; Dkt 108, at 11:24-12:9.; see also 17 U.S.C. 204(a). Lastly, the Court stated: "the Courtm will not idle while Plaintiff defrauds this institution."; Dkt 48, at 9:10-11. However, even if the Court were to discount the evidence submitted impugning Cooper's credibility and blame Steele for this "fraud,"; it hardly rises to the level of fraud upon the court recognized by the Ninth Circuit, i.e., "a fraud perpetrated by officers of the court so that the judicial machinery cannot perform in the usual manner its impartial task of adjudging cases that are presented for adjudication." In re Intermagnetics Am., Inc., 926 F.2d 912, 916 (9th Cir. 1991).

Regarding any other alleged fraud the Court may consider, as Section III above makes clear, except in rare circumstances not present here, this Court is not empowered to sanction Steele or anyone else based on conduct occurring entirely outside of the subject cases and the Central District. Based on its prior statements, the Court may have erroneously felt otherwise before.

I'm sorry, but if anyone believes that the evidence to date impugns Cooper's credibility more than Steele's credibility, they haven't been paying attention. At all.

On the question of hiding the ownership of various shell companies, Steele, amazingly, argues that "the evidence" shows that the Court is wrong to suggest that the folks from Team Prenda own/control the various shell companies:

Disturbingly, the Court's apparent conclusions about the relationships between the persons and entities named in the March 14, 2013 OSC wholly ignores evidence to the contrary. Compare, e.g., Dkt. 69-1, pp. 21:18-2, 38:22-39:15, 40:8-12 (regarding who owns AF Holdings) with Dkt 108-5, at 114:5-8 (I do have the picture, and I know who the client is. We have talked about the client, and the client has been running everything. Yeah, I know who the client is”); see also Dkt 108-5at 19:15-18 (suggesting Prenda law is "controlled by Mr. Steele.")

However, Steele cannot be sanctioned for any of these alleged misrepresentations made to this Court regarding the relationships among the parties and entities named in the Court’s March 14 OSC because Steele has taken no actions nor made any representations to this Court of any kind, nor is there any evidence before this Court that he acted or was otherwise involved in anyone else's alleged misrepresentations to this Court.

This part strikes as the most incredible part of it all. The entire purpose of the April 2 hearing was to answer questions about this very point. And Steele chose not to respond to any questions. And now, in this filing, he's basically claiming "nope, I had nothing to do with it" without presenting any evidence to the contrary. Incredible.

I get the feeling that Judge Wright is not going to react well to this particular filing, which (like Hansmeier's before it) makes statements that clearly are at odds with what nearly all of the evidence has suggested is happening, without providing any actual evidence to support their claims.

Meanwhile, despite not being willing to talk to the court, Steele apparently has no problem talking to some in the press, and has told Xbiz that he "never even heard of the case" until two months ago. That seems rather difficult to believe given Gibbs' statements concerning Steele's involvement in his cases. I would imagine that someone involved in the case will quickly make Judge Wright of Steele's sudden willingness to "talk" and the details of his statements.

DHS-funded course asks cops if they will confiscate guns from Christians

• Time 2 clean the ass pipes out  ,folks  ..they know it , We know it  ....Time is gonna force it !

Colorado troopers trained to consider Christians as dangerous terrorists.

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
April 10, 2013

Training course portrays devout Christians as a potential threat. Illustration: Norman Rockwell.

Bob Livingston of Personal Liberty Digest has posted an email written by Colorado Undersheriff Ron Trowbridge.
In the email sent to a blogger, Trowbridge describes how Christians and so-called sovereign citizens are actively demonized by the government and troopers are trained to consider them dangerous, even terrorists.
The letter was also posted on the Red Statements website on April 5.
Trooper Joe Kluczynski, a CSP analyst with the Colorado Information Analysis Center, used training materials provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
Infowars.com has documented how the DHS works hand-in-hand with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, two organizations that specialize in churning out propaganda designed to demonize and marginalize patriot and constitutional groups.
DHS boss Janet Napolitano showered kudos on the ADL during a conference held in early 2009. “In recent years, the Department has placed our employees in your advanced training school to educate us on the tactics used by extremists and terrorists,” Napolitano told conferees.
In March, the Southern Poverty Law Center sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urging the federal government to establish a task force to investigate the supposed domestic terror threat posed by the likes of Alex Jones, We Are Change, Oath Keepers, the Constitution Party, the Tyranny Response Team and thousands of other Americans who dare question the government.
On April 8, Michael Snyder wrote about a U.S. Army Reserve training presentation that labeled evangelic Christians as “religious extremists” and Christian organizations as “hate groups.”
“Topping the list is Evangelical Christianity,” Fox News wrote about the presentation. “Other organizations listed included Catholicism, Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Ku Klux Klan, Sunni Muslims, and Nation of Islam.”
According to Undersheriff Ron Trowbridge’s email, the DHS-funded Colorado Information Analysis Center training session not only told troopers Christians pose a threat to law enforcement, but also asked if they would confiscate firearms if ordered to do so.
Trowbridge’s email follows. It was sent on Friday, April 5:
On April 1, 2013 I attended training in La Junta, Colorado hosted by the Colorado State Patrol (CSP).  The training was from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm and covered two topics, Sovereign Citizens, and Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.  I was pretty familiar with motorcycle gangs but since we often deal with the so-called sovereign citizen groups I was interested to see what they had to say.  The group consisted of police officers, deputies, and CSP troopers.  There were about 20 people in attendance.
Trooper Joe Kluczynski taught a 2-hour section on sovereign citizens.  Kluczynski spent most of his two hours focusing on how, in his view and apparently the view of Homeland Security, people turn to the sovereign citizen movement.  Kluczynski started off by saying there are probably some sovereign citizens in this room and gave a generalized list of those groups that have sovereign citizen views.  Among those groups, Kluczynski had listed, were those who believe America was founded on godly principles, Christians who take the Bible literally, and “fundamentalists”.  Kluczynski did not explain what he meant by “fundamentalists” but from the context it was clear he was referring again to those who took the Bible literally or “too seriously.”
While Kluczynski emphasized that sovereign citizens have a right to their beliefs, he was clearly teaching that the groups he had listed should be watched by law enforcement and should be treated with caution because of their potential to assault law enforcement.  Kluczynski explained why he believed these groups were dangerous saying they were angry over the election of a black president.  When someone in the group suggested the failing economy was probably much more to blame, Kluczynski intimated that those who are not going along with the changes in America will need to be controlled by law enforcement.  Kluczynski even later questioned some of the troopers present if they were willing and prepared to confiscate “illegal” weapons if ordered to.
Kluczynski’s assignment with the CSP was an Analyst for the Colorado Information Analysis Center, (CIAC).  CIAC is funded by Homeland Security funds and run by the CSP.  Kluczynski said he gets his information from the Department of Homeland Security.  Kluczynski said he was leaving the CSP at the end of that week (March 29, 2013) to begin his new career with Homeland Security.  I thought he was perfect for the job.
Ron Trowbridge
Undersheriff
Prowers County Sheriff’s Office
The Colorado State Police subsequently issued a statement downplaying Trowbridge’s description. Sergeant Mike Baker, a public information officer with the CSP, told The Blaze that Trowbridge’s accusation about the content of the training presentation was not substantiated by others in attendance.
“A law enforcement training class offered by the Colorado State Patrol on April 1, 2013, in southeastern Colorado has come under scrutiny from one of its attendees, a local county undersheriff,” the release states. “The specific assertion was that the Colorado State Patrol would target members of certain religious or political ideologies.”
The CPS statement claims officials had spoken with “several officers who attended this same training” and they did not interpret Kluczynski’s presentation in the same light as Trowbridge.
“We regret that he misrepresented the training material in a way that clearly is not the position of the Colorado State Patrol,” the release states.

This article was posted: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:26 am

Tags: big brother, domestic news, police state, terrorism

SPLC, DHS, Community Officials Team Up to Attack Patriot Groups

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
October 8, 2010
Stewart Rhodes writes today on the Oath Keepers website that the Southern Poverty Law Center is now officially part of the Department of Homeland Security. Rhodes sources a DHS document, entitled “Countering Violent Extremism Working Group,” that lists Richard Cohen as a member of the DHS created group. Cohen is president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center. In addition to Cohen, a number of law enforcement officials are members of the DHS group, including Austin Chief of Police Art Acevedo.

	Download the document as a PDF.

“What does the working group do? Make recommendations on training and how to use all of the local resources — police, social services, media, NGO’s, you name it – to fight ‘extremism.’ So, now no need to file a FOIA request to discover that SPLC is writing the reports naming constitutionalists as possible terrorists. Now it is in your face and the mask is off,” writes Rhodes.
The document encourages local “partners” and the feds to work together to share “threat-related information… and develop case studies that can be used by local authorities as a learning tool for law enforcement personnel” in order to prevent “ideologically-motivated violent crime (radicalization, violent extremism, etc.),” in short the patriot movement.
In early April of 2009, a document produced by the Department of Homeland Security, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” characterized patriot political groups that reject “federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or [reject] government authority entirely” as domestic terrorists.
The DHS report followed similar reports issued by the Missouri Information Analysis Center and the Virginia Fusion Center. The MIAC report specifically describes supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as “militia” influenced terrorists and instructs the Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters displaying bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with the Constitutional, Campaign for Liberty, and Libertarian parties.
According to the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, the MIAC documents were heavily influenced by “faulty and politicized research issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Anti Defamation League (ADL).” In 2008, law enforcement officers from across Missouri gathered in the town of Arnold to hear from ADL experts on right-wing extremism.
The SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League work hand-in-hand with the Department of Homeland Security to demonize patriot and constitutionalist organizations,” we wrote on April 10, 2010, after the government attempted to frame the Hutaree in Michigan. “SPLC’s Mark Potok appears on corporate media networks almost daily peddling his organization’s hysterical rantings and fairy tales about impending violence and mayhem that will be perpetuated by patriot groups and individuals.”
In 2009, DHS boss Janet Napolitano showered kudos on the ADL during a conference held on April 22 of that year. “In recent years, the Department has placed our employees in your advanced training school to educate us on the tactics used by extremists and terrorists,” Napolitano said.
The ADL is currently involved in brainwashing children in the Austin, Texas, school system under the guise of preventing cyberbullying and guarding against so-called hate speech. “The ADL said schools have a duty to protect students and exercise precautions against cyberbullying that happens on campus through policies, supervision, reporting processes and education,” reports KXAN. “Through the years, the League has been a leading provider of anti-bias education and diversity training programs that help create and sustain inclusive home, school, community and work environments,” the ADL website states.
Both the ADL and the SPLC have manufactured a cottage industry around the bogus threat of the “modern militia movement” and specialize in going after key individuals and leaders of the constitutionalist, Libertarian, and patriot movements.
Alex Jones is a favored target of the ADL-SPLC propaganda and demonization project. A Google search of the ADL website produces dozens of references to the radio talk show host, most related to the Pittsburgh cop killer and admitted white supremacist Richard Poplawski. Poplawski posted comments on the Infowars website.
Other ADL targets include the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, who are according to the ADL “both part of an anti-government extremist movement that has grown since President Obama took office, promote the idea that the federal government is plotting to take away the rights of American citizens and must be resisted. The two groups are apparently trying to make inroads in the U.S. military,” a distortion that plays right into the DHS “rightwing extremism” document that claims returning veterans pose a violent threat.
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In 2009, DHS boss boss Janet Napolitano showered kudos on the ADL during a conference held on April 22, 2009. “In recent years, the Department has placed our employees in your advanced training school to educate us on the tactics used by extremists and terrorists,” Napolitano admitted.
The vicious campaign against the Oath Keepers escalated earlier this week when the CPS in New Hampshire kidnapped the newborn baby of John Irish and Stephanie Janvrin. Authorities said the child was taken in part due to Irish’s association with the patriot group the Oath Keepers. “The Division became aware and confirmed that Mr. Irish associated with a militia known as the Oath Keepers,” confirming the fact that Irish’s political beliefs were the primary reason the child was snatched.
As Stewart Rhodes notes on the Oath Keepers website, the DHS spawned working group details how they plan to utilize local social welfare and mental health agencies to counter “violent extremism” as defined by the government, the SPLC, and the ADL, thus revealing that Irish and Janvrin’s newborn was kidnapped as part of an effort to criminally harass and punish members of the patriot community.

Connecticut School Teaches Children That People Don’t Have Gun Rights

Just recently a Connecticut school was busted attempting to rewrite history in regards to gun rights.

By JG Vibes
Intellihub.com
April 10, 2013
Generally the historical curriculum in government school is skewed to portray the establishment in a positive light.  History lessons make warmongers look like martyrs because the warmongers have control over the formation of these lessons.
Many of the harsh realities involving the civil war, the great depression and the civil rights movements were completely left out along with the real history of slave owning aristocratic presidents and robber barons.  These are pivotal points in history that one must have a clear picture of in order to make sense of what is going on in the world today.
Just recently a Connecticut school was busted attempting to rewrite history in regards to gun rights.
Fox reported that “The father of a Connecticut child is furious after discovering that his son’s school is teaching students that Americans don’t have a Second Amendment right to bear arms.”
“I am appalled,” said Steven Boibeaux, of Bristol. “It sounds to me like they are trying to indoctrinate our kids.”
Boibeaux’s son is an eighth grader at Northeast Middle School. On Monday his social studies teacher gave students a worksheet titled, ‘The Second Amendment Today.’
“The courts have consistently determined that the Second Amendment does not ensure each individual the right to bear arms,” the worksheet states. “The courts have never found a law regulating the private ownership of weapons unconstitutional.
The worksheet, published by Instructional Fair, goes on to say that the Second Amendment is not incorporated against the states.
“This means that the rights of this amendment are not extended to the individual citizens of the states,” the worksheet reads. “So a person has no right to complain about a Second Amendment violation by state laws.”
According to the document, the Second Amendment “only provides the right of a state to keep an armed National Guard.”
Boibeaux said he discovered the worksheet as he was going over his son’s homework assignments.
“I’m more than a little upset about this,” he told Fox News. “It’s not up to the teacher to determine what the Constitution means.”
Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, called the lesson propaganda – that is “absolutely false.”
“In fact, the US Supreme Court has affirmed that the Second Amendment ensures the individual the right to bear arms,” Staver told Fox News. “The progressive interpretation of the Second Amendment is that it doesn’t give you the right to bear arms – that it’s a corporate right of the government – but that has been rejected by the Courts.”
Ellen Solek, the superintendent of the school district, told Fox News they have now decided to pull the assignment from the classroom.
“It is no longer an assignment in that particular school,” she said, noting that it was an “administration decision in the best interest of the district.”
As many of you who follow my regular work are already aware, I am an advocate of unschooling and homeschooling, and I feel that the kind of schooling that we have today is counterproductive and oppressive.  There are a lot of great teachers out there, who care about what they do and have every good intentions, like the world famous educator John Taylor Gatto, but as he found, the top down structure of the school system and the curriculum provided is very damaging to the minds of children.
He left public schools by writing his resignation letter in the op ed pages of the wall street journal, starting the letter off by saying that he “refuses to continue hurting children”.  He then went on to start an incredible career in writing, researching and speaking out about the dangers of compulsory schooling.
This element is important, because the public school system combined with other forms of child abuse has worked to create the kind of violent and angry culture that we see today.  When you treat people like prisoners and second class citizens for the most vital developmental years of their lives, you are going to create confused, bitter and deranged people.  There is still value in group learning settings, and there is still value in teachers, but what we have today is indoctrination, not education.
******
Read more articles by this author HERE.
J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter-culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, a staff writer, reporter for Intellihub.com and Executive Producer of the Bob Tuskin Radio Show. You can keep up with his work, which includes free podcasts, free e-books & free audiobooks at his website www.aotmr.com

Eight ways China’s military is catching up to the US

Source: TPQ
Although the Pentagon has routinely dismissed some of China’s very publicly touted military advances as being decades behind the United States, they are still significant. Just because someone gets a new piece of tech later than you doesn’t mean that you will always be better at using it than they are. So, we thought we’d bring you a list of the eight most noteworthy military enhancements that China is making by buying, stealing and innovating:
Stealth jets
First up are China’s J-20 and J-31 stealthy-looking fighters. We call them “stealthy looking” because until more information is made public, we won’t know how well the jets mask their heat signatures, noise and electronic emissions — all critical elements of modern stealth that go beyond radar-evading shapes and radar-absorbent coatings. Nevertheless, China has developed two jets that appear stealthy. Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group’s large J-20 made its first flight in early 2011 and is thought to be either a high-speed interceptor, designed to fly out and shoot down incoming enemy bombers (similar to the famous MiG-25 Foxbat), or a stealthy bomber along the lines of the US F-111 Aardvark or the more recent F-15E Strike Eagle, meant to penetrate enemy defences and bomb bases and ships. One has to notice the similarities between the cockpit and nose section of the J-20 and the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor.
Less than two years after the J-20 appeared, Shenyang Aviation Corporation unveiled China’s second stealthy fighter, the J-31. This jet is smaller than the J-20, and its fuselage bears a striking resemblance to the US’s F-22 and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. (It has been widely reported that the computers of numerous defense contractors working on the F-35 program were hacked and information on the jet was stolen.) Some speculate that the J-31 will be used as a complement to the J-20 — similar to the role that F-16 Vipers play for F-15 Eagles or F-35s play for the F-22s. Others point to the twin wheels on the J-31’s nose landing gear as sign that it is being developed as a carrier-based fighter.
Aircraft carriers
Speaking of aircraft carriers . . . after decades of buying old British and Russian Cold War-era aircraft carriers and turning them into museums and theme hotels, China converted the hull of the incomplete 1980s vintage Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag into its first operational carrier: the Liaoning. Chinese investors purchased the ex-Varyag from Ukraine in 1998, claiming they would turn it into a casino. That obviously didn’t happen, and China spent much of the last decade completely modernizing the old hulk, installing new engines, electronic warfare gear, radars, defensive weapons, and modernized interior spaces (right down to the galleys). She took to sea for the first time in August 2011 and was commissioned into Chinese naval service in September 2012. The first carrier landings and takeoffs by Chinese fighters occurred in late November.
Interestingly, China’s first carrier fighter, the J-15, is a knockoff of another Soviet/Russian design, the Sukhoi Su-33. China may have purchased a partially completed Su-33 from Ukraine in 2001, after Russia refused to sell it the aircraft because China was reverse-engineering the very similar Sukhoi Su-27s that Russia was selling to China. (Got that?) While many are quick to point out that China is conducting its first carrier ops more than a century after Eugene Ely landed on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania, it’s worth noting that China plans to have at least three carriers by the middle of this decade. Still, the learning curve is extremely steep for carrier ops.
Spaceplanes
Next up is China’s very own spaceplane, the Shenlong or “Divine Dragon,” which first flew in January 2011 (roughly the same time the J-20 took its maiden flight). While there’s been plenty of speculation about the mission of the US Air Force’s super secret X-37B robot space shuttle, the United States isn’t alone in having a reusable spaceplane. What interests some China watchers most about the Divine Dragon is the fact that China flew such a craft less than a year after the United States did. (Granted, the United States could have done so much earlier, given its decades of experience with the Space Shuttle, which could easily have been flown as a large, unmanned spaceplane.) Speculation surrounds both the US and Chinese spaceplane programs, with observers suggesting the vehicles could be used for everything from spying on and destroying enemy satellities to simply repairing their own nation’s satellites.
Anti-satellite weapons
Of course, China doesn’t need fancy robot spaceplanes to destroy enemy satellites. In 2007, China became only the second nation (after the United States) to shoot down a satellite when it destroyed one of its own weather satellites using a modified version of the DF-21 ballistic missile. Needless to say, the United States and several other nations condemned the test, saying the debris created by the shot posed a serious risk to other nations’ satellites, spacecraft, and space stations. The incident also alarmed U.S. defense officials, who saw this development as evidence that Chinese military planners are preparing to knock out a major U.S. advantage in the event of war: its network of spy, communications, and navigation satellites. This worried some in the U.S. military so much that the Pentagon has begun working on terrestrial and airborne backups to its space systems, and the Air Force has even begun practicing operations without relying on satellites under the theme “a day without space.”
UAVs
Next up is China’s growing fleet of UAVs, which for now strongly resemble U.S. drones. Simply look at Shenyang’s Pterodactyl, a recently introduced armed drone that appears to be a blatant copy of General Atomics’s MQ-9 Reaper — the US Air Force’s premier armed drone. According to Chinese press accounts, Beijing is testing up to 10 different UAVs, including high-altitude drones that may have a strategic reconnaissance mission similar to the United States’s RQ-4 Global Hawk. Then there’s China’s fleet of small, stealthy-shaped models and miniature UAVs, which appear to be the precursors to full-size jet-powered stealth drones. (Remember, models of the design that eventually became the J-31 emerged years before we saw the production aircraft.)
Carrier killers
Remember the DF-21 China used to shoot down its satellite? Well, the ballistic missile has other uses as well. The missiles are designed to zoom into space and then rain down on US bases or moving ships, such as aircraft carriers, as far as 900 miles from their launch sites — hence the nickname “carrier killer” and the reason that the United States is sending many of its ballistic missile defense ships to the Pacific. China has been building a fleet of the missiles that is thought to have become operational in 2009 or 2010. And it is fielding the DF-21D in conjunction with a host of advanced radars, surveillance drones, spy satellites and so-called triple-digit surface-to-air missiles designed by Russia that are capable of shooting down most U.S. aircraft. All of these systems are part of China’s “area denial” strategy, aimed at keeping enemy ships and aircraft far from its shores.
Aegis Destroyers
The Chinese navy has been investing in everything from a new fleet of hovercraft that will land troops ashore during amphibious assaults to the new Type 052D class guided-missile destroyers, equipped with Aegis-style phased-array radars designed to track missiles and aircraft. (This is in addition to the older Type 052C class equipped with similar systems.) The Chinese navy is also fielding a new generation of nuclear missile-carrying submarines, the Type 094, designed to fire the JL-21 nuclear-tipped ballistic missile. Beijing’s navy is also beefing up its amphibious assault capabilities with the ZDB05 fighting vehicle. The ZDB05 — think of it as a swimming armored personnel carrier with guns — is capable of hitting 16 knots in the water and then using its 30mm cannon, 7.62mm machine gun, and antitank missiles to protect the five to seven infantrymen it can deliver to the beach. Could be useful if China wanted to stake a claim on some islands in the South China Sea.
Cyber
No conversation about China’s rapidly expanding military would be complete without mentioning the Chinese military’s focus on using an enemy’s own computer networks against it. Click here to read the US China Economic and Security Review Commission’s report on the country’s use of cyber to gain military advantage. While you’re at it, read the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s claim that Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE, both of which have a large presence in the United States, may be doing the work of China’s military and intelligence agencies. China has numerous military units dedicated to corrupting the data in enemy computer networks or taking those networks out entirely.
As the Economic and Security Review Commission report notes: “PLA leaders have embraced the idea that successful warfighting is predicated on the ability to exert control over an adversary’s information and information systems, often preemptively. This goal has effectively created a new strategic and tactical high ground, occupying which has become just as important for controlling the battlespace as its geographic equivalent in the physical domain.”

Former Israeli MK Exposes Top-Secret IDF Unit Engaged in Foreign Assassinations

Source: RS
Even in the midst of the National Security State obsessed with secrecy, you can’t button down every secret.  Israeli Likud former MK Carmel Shama HaCohen has inadvertently exposed the existence of a top-secret military intelligence unit.  It’s so hush-hush it’s never been named before either inside Israel or in the foreign media.  Until this report, no one knew what it did.
Yediot’s headline plays on the Hebrew phrases “superhero” and “don’t ask” (the latter a reference to the ultimate secrecy of the unit) and may be translated as “The Heroes of Do-Not-Ask.”
Shama Ha-Cohen reveals in his Knesset website what he worked in Aman, the IDF military intelligence department.  He served there in a group that was called the “special unit for counter-espionage and special investigations” (היחידה המיוחדת לסיכול ריגול וחקירות מיוחדות).  As is usual for Israeli spookery, this is spy lingo that euphemizes the real nature of what the group did.  “Special investigations” means it engaged in, among other things, foreign assassinations.  Until now, no one has ever reported that this Aman group engaged in such operations outside Israel (though Sayeret Matkal, another Aman unit, is known to have done so).  But an authoritative Israeli source confirmed to me that this is the case.  When I asked whether operations “abroad” meant only in frontline states like Lebanon or Syria; or whether it reached as far as Iran, he hinted this was the case, though he refused to confirm it explicitly.
This is an astonishing lapse by MK Shama Ha-Cohen.  It would be as if G. Gordon Liddy announced before Watergate was exposed that he was a member of the White House plumbers on his personal website.  It’s also extraordinary that the military censor didn’t discover this major security breach.  It goes to show you that information simply wants to be free.  All attempts to suppress it will fail.  If not now, then eventually, the truth will go free.
Israeli superheroes Batman, Spiderman, Power Ranger and others protest on behalf of military intelligence veterans
Veterans of this unit have described themselves as men who never existed, with no past and no future.  They live completely in the shadows and cannot tell their wives or children what they do.
Their activities have become public knowledge recently due to an acrimonious dispute between them and the defense ministry.  Though much of the dispute is shrouded in secrecy, the veterans demanded that the ministry honor a clause in their contracts that demanded a budgetary outlay of some sort.  Their lawyer noted that the dispute had something to do with the health conditions that resulted from their service.  The Treasury Ministry balked at the expense, claiming that the original agreement with the Aman personnel was illegal.
To publicize their plight, they hired an attorney and organized protests outside the Kirya (Israel’s Pentagon).  Since they weren’t allowed to show their faces in public, they dramatized their story by hiring models in bikinis to hold signs.  On another occasion, they hired six super heroes to carry placards demanding that Bibi and Barak honor their promises to them.
In the Yediot article I summarized above, the lawyer for the unit mentioned that one of the professional specialties of his clients was “killer,” confirming the claims of my own source.
All I can say is that the buttoned down ways of Israeli intelligence past are slowly breaking down.  In the past, such spooks would never have broken ranks.  And perhaps past governments wouldn’t have dared betray them as this one has.  After all, loyalty ain’t what it used to be.

Gun Manufacturer to Leave Conn. After New Gun Control Law

http://freebeacon.com/gun-manufacturer-to-leave-conn-after-gun-control-bill/

Gov. Dannel Malloy signs into law Connecticut's strict new gun laws. (AP)

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
April 10, 2013 10:01 am
A Connecticut gun manufacturer announced plans to leave the state after the strict gun control measures enacted last week, the Bristol Press reports:

“With a heavy heart but a clear mind, we have been forced to decide that our business can no longer survive in Connecticut – the former Constitution state,” declared PTR Industries in a statement released on its website.
The manufacturer of rifles and small arms with 41 employees said it “has not decided upon a specific relocation site at this time” but plans to review “offers from states that are friendly to the industry.” [...]
The company’s owner, Josh Fiorini, told the Press last week that all of his products are banned for sale in Connecticut under the new law.
He said he wasn’t sure if he could transport parts, test fire guns, pick up parts and a host of other concerns.

The new laws limit magazine capacity, requires background checks for all gun purchases, and expands the number of banned guns under the state’s assault-weapons ban.
In advance of the new state gun laws, Connecticut customers rushed to buy guns and ammunition, causing long lines at gun stores.
Connecticut’s new laws are just one part of a number of state gun control efforts in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting. A number of states have approved new restrictive gun control packages (New York, Colorad0), or proposed new sales taxes on guns or ammunition (New Jersey, California).

The American Flu

Chinese colonel says latest bird flu virus is U.S. biological weapon

AP

BY: Bill Gertz
April 9, 2013 6:05 pm          http://freebeacon.com/the-american-flu/
A Chinese Air Force officer on Saturday accused the U.S. government of creating the new strain of bird flu now afflicting parts of China as a biological warfare attack.
People’s Liberation Army Sr. Col. Dai Xu said the United States released the H7N9 bird flu virus into China in an act of biological warfare, according to a posting on his blog on Saturday.
The charge was first reported in the state-run Guangzhou newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily and then picked up by several news outlets in Asia.
State Department spokesman Jason Rebholz dismissed the claim. “There is absolutely no truth to these allegations,” he told the Washington Free Beacon.
Seven deaths from the bird flu outbreak were reported as of Tuesday in state-run Chinese media. As many as 24 people reportedly were infected by the disease in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui.
Chinese authorities are trying to calm public fears of a major epidemic, claiming there is no evidence the virus can be transmitted between humans.
The government also is claiming that the outbreak is not related to the recent discovery of thousands of dead pigs floating in a river in China.
The accusation of U.S. biological warfare against China comes as the Pentagon is seeking closer military relations with China. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is set to travel to China for talks with Chinese military leaders later this month.
Dai is a military strategist who in the past has been outspoken in seeking to foment conflict between China and the United States. He told the Global Times in August that China should go to war over U.S. support for Japan’s claims to the disputed Senkaku Islands.
Writing on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site akin to Twitter, Dai stated that the new bird flu strain was designed as a biological weapon similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which he also claimed was developed as a U.S. bio-weapon, that affected the country in 2003.
According to Dai’s posting, the new flu outbreak should not be a cause for concern. “The national leadership should not pay too much attention to it,” the PLA lecturer at the National Defense University wrote. “Or else, it’ll be like in 2003 with SARS!”
“At that time, America was fighting in Iraq and feared that China would take advantage of the opportunity to take other actions,” he said. “This is why they used bio-psychological weapons against China. All of China fell into turmoil and that was exactly what the United States wanted. Now, the United States is using the same old trick. China should have learned its lesson and should calmly deal with the problem.”
Dai said that even if “a few may die” from the flu outbreak, it will not equal one-thousandth of the deaths caused by vehicle accidents in China.
Dai in the past has called for China to punish the United States for U.S. arms sales to rival Taiwan, by selling arms to U.S. enemies. “China recognizes that a few perfunctory protests will not have any effect,” Dai said in 2010. “China can’t directly sanction American arms companies since they did not do business with China … but China can sanction companies that are doing business with China directly, like Boeing or General Electric.”
Dai also has said the United States has used crises with North Korea and offers of cooperation on the issue as a plot to drive a wedge between Beijing and its fraternal communist ally.
Dai also has said U.S. efforts to counter Chinese espionage and intelligence-gathering were part of a U.S. “plot theory” of “western countries threatening others by [releasing] information gained through spying in order to damage the reputations of other countries.”
A State Department official said China notified the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 31 about its first detected human cases of H7N9 infection. Fourteen cases were confirmed by the WHO by April 5, of which six were fatal. The organization said there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
“U.S. Embassy Beijing and U.S. Consulate Shanghai are monitoring the situation, working closely with counterparts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and the Beijing and Shanghai municipal governments,” the official said.
The colonel’s accusation provoked a widespread response on Chinese websites. One post in reaction joked that Dai’s comment about auto deaths must mean that the United States and Germany are responsible for a conspiracy to produce cars, according to a report in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.
Luo Changping, deputy editor of Caijing, said most PLA soldiers would not support Dai’s comments and he urged the colonel to resign and apologize to those who have died from the current bird flu outbreak.
A defiant Dai then said in a new posting Sunday that “it is common knowledge that a group of people in China have been injected with mental toxin by the United States.”
“Now, a group of fake American devils are attacking me,” he wrote in another post. “I will not retreat even half a step.”
Analysts say the colonel’s remarks are a reflection of the growing xenophobic atmosphere within the Chinese military that views the United States as its main enemy.
Former State Department intelligence analyst John Tkacik said China’s military was largely to blame for mishandling the 2003 outbreak of SARS. Tkacik said there was speculation when the epidemic began that “the PLA suspects SARS had emanated from its own biological laboratories and was all the more eager to keep it secret.” China is known to have a covert biological arms program.
“Col. Dai Xu is a shameless liar when he accuses the United States of using bio weapons,” Tkacik told the Free Beacon. “He’s probably motivated by a desire to exculpate the PLA for their mishandling of the epidemic—no doubt most Chinese have happily forgotten the episode—as much as by a cynical xenophobia. But, that’s what passes for deep strategic thought at China’s National Defense University these days.”
The Pentagon has been trying with varying success to develop closer ties to the Chinese military as part of a strategy aimed at building trust. However, China’s military leaders believe the U.S. offers of closer ties are a ruse designed to contain China’s growing military buildup.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel spoke by phone with China’s Defense Minister Gen. Chang Wanquan on April 2. Chang is the No. 4 defense official after Chinese President Xi Jinping and two other generals who run the Central Military Commission, the Communist Party’s ultimate power organ.
“The leaders both expressed their intention to work together to continue to build a military-to-military relationship that serves the vision of both President Obama and President Xi,” Pentagon press secretary George Little said in a statement after the call.
“The secretary discussed the importance of focusing on areas of sustained dialogue, practical areas of cooperation, and risk reducing measures,” he said.
U.S. ties with China are strained due to China’s reluctance to rein in neighboring North Korea.
China provides North Korea with large amounts of fuel oil and other goods. However, Beijing has not taken steps to pressure Pyongyang using its economic leverage during the ongoing crisis.
The flu has lit up China’s thriving Internet, according to analysts. Over 945,600 microblog postings addressed the flu between April 8 and 9. Since the outbreak began some seven days ago, between 1.3 million and 3 million postings were put online on outlets including Sina Weibo and QQ Weibo.
Tens of thousands of users expressed doubts about the official Shanghai municipal government’s denial of any link between the dead pigs found floating last month in the region’s Huangpu River.
The proximity to the initial outbreak in Shanghai and the river has led to speculation that the pig deaths may have been linked to the flu virus jumping from animals to humans.
That speculation was fueled by reports that one of the victims of the flu was a pig butcher.
The avian flu strain is similar to an earlier outbreak with a significant difference: The current strain does not kill the birds it infects, making it more difficult to identify infected poultry.
The Shanghai government waited 20 days before announcing the first H7N9 infection on March 31.

This entry was posted in China and tagged bird flu, China. Bookmark the permalink.

THE COLLECTIVIST MIND GAME, PART 1: DEMONIZING THE NON-COMPLIANT Mind control, the shell game, and the stealth gods

“In Russia, the communists used to demonize their opponents long before the Revolution, which made it easier for them to physically eliminate the opposition later.  As soon as they were in full control of the government, they began to demonize entire segments of the society, subcultures, and classes of people whom they deemed incapable of change.”

http://countdowntozerotime.org/2013/04/10/mind-control-the-shell-game-and-the-stealth-gods/

THE COLLECTIVIST MIND GAME, PART 1: DEMONIZING THE NON-COMPLIANT

In the libertarian sci-fi classic, “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,” Robert A. Heinlein describes a successful revolution of the individualistic, free-market-oriented residents of the Moon against the Earth’s tyrannical big government.  The ins and outs of agitating and organizing the masses to fight the oppressive Authority feel just as realistic as the finer points of everyday life in the underground Lunar cities of the future.
The proposed revolutionary scenario could even serve as a workable model for similar real-life endeavors, if only the renowned futurist author hadn’t neglected to factor in the immanent function of any oppressive regime: systemic brainwashing of its subjects through the media, education, and entertainment channels.
If the tyrants on Earth were worth their salt, all the freedom-loving colonists would be subjected to an intense, manipulative indoctrination, which would shape their self-image as small and sinful “little guys” vis-à-vis  the powerful, virtuous government that serves the powerless and protects them against all enemies, including themselves.
Thus, the government’s propagandistic narrative would establish the illusion of a society divided into three major classes: the ruling government class, endowed with benevolent powers to guide or punish; the majority class of hapless losers, whose survival depended on the government’s largesse and protection; and an unquantifiable class of demonized mysterious enemies of the government and, by extension, of the people, who would be the perceived culprits of all failures, hardships, and misery of the little guys’ everyday existence.
The majority class would itself be divided into an assortment of narrow-interest groups, held together only by the glue of government’s redistributive, pacifying and equalizing powers, as well as by their shared hostility towards the designated “enemies.”
The prevailing feelings in such a society would be the collectivist fervor, envy of individual achievers, fear of chaos in the absence of the government’s protection, hatred of anti-government elements, and hope for a better future once all the hidden enemies are unveiled and eliminated.
This makes Heinlein’s scenario of a free-market revolution highly unlikely.  No self-respecting oppressive regime would start a crackdown on the rebels without priming the population with a mass-media campaign that would show how big government benefits most of the people, and how the resistance is destroying the lives of the common folk.  As a minimum, the government would parade a poor little girl crying on camera because she and her family suffered from the hands of the rebels.  Even those who didn’t hate the rebels before would hate them now.
In a society shaped by the government’s mind games of manipulative illusions, a dissenter sticks out like a sore thumb.  Once the resistance has been demonized, its members will be quickly identified and denounced by the compliant citizenry, labeled as the enemy, and be dealt with by law enforcement.
In the end, the self-preservation of modern-day totalitarianism is ensured, not so much by the secret police with its army of snitches and brutal enforcers, as by modern technologies of psychological manipulation through the media, education, and entertainment.
Perhaps, Heinlein’s tyrannical regime came off so hapless because the author had had no experience of living in a totalitarian statist system.  Writing The Moon in the early 1960s, he likely modeled the actions of the Lunar Authority on the methods used by the U.S. government against the Communists.  And, as we now know, the U.S. government failed that mission, just like the Lunar Authority did in Heinlein’s novel.
The FBI mostly relied on surveillance, infiltration, and recruiting of informants.  Occasional amateur propaganda designed to immunize Americans against the seductive statist rhetoric turned out to be a flash in the pan.  It was child’s play compared to the vast arsenal deployed by the KGB and its affiliates in Communist countries.
The United States at the time didn’t have an all-encompassing, totalitarian propaganda machine like its enemies did.  State-enforced mind control, by definition, is incompatible with the principles of living in a free world.  Statists, on the other hand, have no such limitations; playing mind games for them is a way of life.  This makes it asymmetrical warfare.
Statists, of course, would like to have everything shared — except their power.  In free democracies they always demand their share of political power — and always get what they want.  However, once they are in power, they keep it to themselves and demonize the opposition.
The Marxist ideal of Communism is an altruistic collectivist society of the future, in which there will be no need for government, family, or private property.  Freed from capitalist exploitation, people are expected to unleash their full potential and create unprecedented material abundance.  The selfish notion of the pursuit of individual happiness will wither away.  There will be no money, no greed, no deprivation, and, therefore, no crime.
However, since a society can’t directly leap from capitalism into communism, Marx reasoned that a dictatorial socialist state would be a necessary transition in order to develop the required material base, help to spread the revolution around the world, and to condition the people’s minds by uprooting greed and selfishness (or to eliminate those individuals who can’t be conditioned).
Leaving the debunking of utopian follies for another time, let’s just say that the totalitarian socialist state is where they always get bogged down.  Despite their ideal of a stateless future, the leftists invariably become ruthless and uncompromising statists.  It no longer matters whether it’s a doctrinaire Marxist socialism or “corporate” fascism; if the end result is evil, original intentions don’t count.
full story
Mind control, the shell game, and the stealth gods
by Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com
Of the many definitions of collectivism, this simple one is my favorite: “The practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it.”
When I was starting out as a reporter 30 years ago, one of my first editors sat down with me and said, “ In America, collectivism is what the government does to people to make them deaf, dumb, and blind, so the corporations can steal everything from them.”
He went on to tell me, off the record, that his paper wasn’t interested in collectivism, only the corporations. That was his line in the sand.
An early assignment was interviewing a congressman. As I sat in a tony cafe with him, an idea kept buzzing in my head: he was giving things away that weren’t his to begin with.
I couldn’t make that idea sharper. It was a stray thought, and it kept nagging at me, long after the interview was done. It somehow reminded me of the classic shell game. Three shells, one pea. Guess which shell is hiding the pea. What if the pea isn’t there at all?
I realized I was trying to understand something about collectivism, the psychology of it. Another image struck me: the old telephone game, where one person whispers a phrase to another, and that person passes it on, until the last person announces what he’s heard; and of course now it bears no resemblance to the original message.
How about starting the game with no message at all? You just make a kind of hissing mumble. And the last person in the circle emerges with “life is good.”
That’s a metaphor for collectivism.
Collectivism is a system by which people give each other what they don’t have.
If this seems like a magic trick, it is. It’s magic founded in mind control.
full story

How the looming bitcoin crash will be exploited by globalists to outlaw decentralized crypto currencies

Originally published April 10 2013

naturalnews.com

How the looming bitcoin crash will be exploited by globalists to outlaw decentralized crypto currencies

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) There's a bigger agenda happening with bitcoin that needs to be publicly stated, and this goes far beyond the issue of the financial harm that will be caused when the bitcoin bubble finally implodes.

Central banks hate bitcoin. They hate it because it doesn't allow them to loot bank accounts (Cyprus) and control the movement of capital around the globe. Bitcoin, in fact, threatens the very foundation of monetary control that underlies all the corrupt governments of the world. As such, bitcoin is a huge threat to the status quo, making it an obvious target for the globalists to attempt to destroy.

Discrediting bitcoin isn't enough, however. To really be effective, they need to make bitcoin illegal.

The plot to criminalize bitcoin

How do you criminalize bitcoin? The same way you get guns banned: Plan an attack, make sure lots of people get hurt, roll out all the victims in front of the cameras, then use the sob stories as moral justification to crack down with oppressive new laws.

This is the agenda being planned right now with bitcoin. The recipe works like this:

Step 1) Central banks buy up massive quantities of bitcoin currency, driving the prices into the stratosphere and encouraging millions of people around the world to jump on board the "get rich" bandwagon.

Step 2) Once bitcoin valuations reach a sufficient level of insanity, start a massive selloff by dumping the bitcoins you already bought onto the market, offering them for sale at any price (i.e. sell into falling prices, accelerating the loss in valuations).

Step 3) Watch panic take hold as the bitcoin crash accelerates, ending in a catastrophic wipeout of "valuation" of all bitcoins.

Step 4) Find "victims" of the bitcoin crash who can tell a good sob story for the mainstream media about how they invested little Johnny's college money in bitcoin and lost it all. Roll them out on CNN and MSNBC where they cry on camera and talk about how they were ripped off by bitcoin and now they only trust the government from now on.

Step 5) Demonize bitcoin by characterizing it as a "libertarian pyramid scheme." Lash out against both decentralized currencies and libertarians.

Step 6) Once the demonization gains traction, have traitors in the U.S. Congress announce a "Consumer Currency Protection Act" that outlaws non-central bank currencies such as bitcoin. It's all "for your safety," of course. Shut down all online bitcoin wallets and exchanges, calling them "criminal pyramid schemes" and arrest a few people using bitcoin to send a warning message to the rest.

Mission accomplished! You've now made bitcoin look like a "pyramid scheme," you've scared the public into being wary of "anti-government currencies," and you've criminalized their use by consumers.

That's the goal the central banks are trying to achieve right now. It's all be set in motion by the bitcoin bubble which will inevitably lead to a bitcoin crash.

Bitcoin is being manipulated as a pawn in the globalist scheme to destroy freedom

The bitcoin bubble is to currency freedom as the Sandy Hook shooting was to firearms freedom. In both cases, governments will use a crisis to destroy freedom while claiming to be "saving" the people.

The government WANTS bitcoin to be a disaster, and the mainstream media, which has so far refused to give bitcoin much attention, will leap all over the story like vultures once it crashes.

For the record, I'm a proponent of bitcoin and I want it to succeed in the long run, but the mania speculation happening with bitcoin right now is going to be disastrous for its reputation. It is the worst thing that could happen to bitcoin.

What we would prefer to see is a slow, steady rise that reflects stability with low volatility. Instead, we see extremely high volatility, wild price ranges, desperate purchasing patterns and even purchase queues at some exchanges where the demand for bitcoins is so high that it exceeds the limits of the services (such as Coinbase, where you now have to stand in line to buy bitcoins two days later at whatever "market" prices are offered that day).

Why the bitcoin craze is the modern-day equivalent of tulip bulb mania

Bitcoin has become a casino. It is almost a perfect reflection of the tulip bulb mania of 1637 in these two ways: 1) Most people buying bitcoins have no use for bitcoins (just like tulip bulbs), and 2) The rapid increase in bitcoin valuations cannot be substantiated in any way that reflects reality.

In other words, there is no fundamental reason why bitcoins should be 2000% more valuable today than four months ago. Nothing has changed other than the craze / mania of people buying in.

Mark my words: A bitcoin crash will occur, and a lot of people are going to be financially hurt by it. More and more, this bitcoin craze is looking like a "pump and dump" operation, where the only winners are those who are the first to sell.

When bitcoins were in the sub-$20 range, I was not concerned about any of this. I actually encouraged people to buy bitcoins and support the bitcoin movement. But alarm bells went off in my mind when it skyrocketed past $150 and headed to $200+ virtually overnight. These are not the signs of rational markets. These are warning signs of bad things yet to occur.

By the way, the simple way to prove to yourself that everything I'm saying here is true is to ask yourself this simple question: What do the people who are buying bitcoins plan to spend them on?

The answer is NOTHING! They don't plan to spend bitcoins on anything. They have no use for bitcoins. Their only play (for 90+% of those buying them) is to buy low and sell high. That's it! For them, bitcoin is nothing more than a speculative vehicle for gambling with some of their money.

Every speculative bubble market that goes up must come down. And it will usually come down at a multiple of the speed at which it went up.

The velocity of bitcoins is a huge red alert

Now, if most bitcoin buyers were actually using the currency on a day-to-day basis, purchasing things online, sending bitcoins to pay off debts, exchanging bitcoins for services, etc., then that would be different. The circulation of a currency is classically known as its velocity. The higher the velocity, the more frequently the currency is being routinely used for transactions.

But the velocity of bitcoins after the initial purchase is shockingly low. What this indicates is that people are buying lots of bitcoins but then sitting on them. Once bitcoins are purchased, in other words, they basically just sit around and aren't used for any practical purpose.

Amazon.com, for example, doesn't accept bitcoins. You can't buy gas for your truck with bitcoins. You can't shop with bitcoins at the local grocery store. Until bitcoins are more widely accepted and the velocity rises, there is no fundamental reason why their value should suddenly skyrocket.

Of course, those who are deep into bitcoins right now will call me a doom and gloomer. Sure, it's okay for them to talk about how the dollar is going to crash, or how the Fed is a criminal operation, but the minute I start invoking mathematical reality with bitcoins, suddenly I become the bad guy.

Well, my answer to the critics is that I have more faith in the laws of mathematics than the self-deluded logic of people who own millions of dollars worth of bitcoins and who therefore have a strong self-interest in promoting the bitcoin mania.

They are blinded by their own positions in bitcoins and cannot see through the fog of self delusion. In contrast to that, I own only two bitcoins worth approximately $400 or so, meaning that I have no substantial position in bitcoins to speak of. Whether bitcoins go up or down does not impact me in any meaningful way. My sole motivation in writing this is to warn others away from the extreme risks that are now clearly associated with buying bitcoins at present-day prices.

There is nothing new under the sun

As always, there will be people (we call them "noobs" or "suckers") who think they have stumbled upon the one exception in the universe to the laws of mathematics and that bitcoin somehow represents a galactic shortcut to universal wealth where everyone can become billionaires by trading each other electronic chunks of data with higher and higher numbers encoded in them. These people are fools, and history will prove them so.

After the bitcoin crash takes place, people will ask me, "Mike, how did you know bitcoin was going to crash when everybody else thought it was going to keep going up forever?" And my answer will be, "Because I believe that 2 + 2 = 4."

If you understand mathematics, you know that the bitcoin bubble is doomed. Sell while you still can and be happy with the profits you've made so far. Importantly, remember that the only reason you can sell is because there's a "greater fool" on the other side of that transaction who is buying your bitcoins.

The problem with all bubbles is that sooner or later the world runs out of greater fools.

Final notes: Why 95% have no clue what I'm writing about

Frustratingly, perhaps 95% of the people who will comment on this article in social media websites have no understanding of high-level mathematics, no understanding of economics, no understanding of free markets, no understanding of greed vs. fear psychology and no historical context through which they might understand what's happening with bitcoin. Almost no one buying bitcoins has any clue what they are. They don't even understand the meaning of the phrase "decentralized peer-to-peer crypto currency" and they have absolutely no working knowledge of public / private key cryptography. They have no idea what they are buying and they have no qualifications whatsoever to even discuss the topic.

This is a case where 95% of the people talking about bitcoin need to be told, simply, "Shut the hell up!" because they literally have no clue what they are talking about.

If you are going to talk about bitcoin, make sure you understand the fundamentals of mathematics, cryptography, free markets, economics and human psychology before opening your mouth. Otherwise, you are only announcing to the world that you're a complete fool who will soon be parted from his money.

And to all those who think they are going to "get rich" by buying bitcoin today and selling it off when bitcoin goes higher, let me offer you a piece of practical advice: After the bitcoin crash, when you are screaming bloody murder and selling your bitcoins at perhaps 1% of what you paid for them, it will be people like me who will buy them and thus receive a 99% discount on the bitcoins you once bought at a hundred times the price. That discount is called the "IQ discount."

You know how lotteries are called a "tax on people who can't do math?" The bitcoin crash will be a massive global wealth transfer from people who can't understand the dynamics of decentralized crypto-currencies to those who do understand.

If you don't follow what I'm saying here, then don't buy bitcoins. You will only be led to the mathematical slaughter.

---

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Paul McGuire -- Luciferian North Korea's EMP

Paul McGuire -- Luciferian North Korea's EMP

The Media Consensus Behind Militarism

By Jeff Cohen

Global Research, April 10, 2013

Consortiumnews 9 April 2013

Region: USA

Theme: Media Disinformation, US NATO War Agenda

While the U.S. media has some spirited debate over politics and social issues – i.e. Fox News vs. MSNBC – there remains a broad consensus about foreign adversaries whose behavior is almost always cast in the harshest light, a reality that colors how America reacts to the world.
I spent years as a political pundit on mainstream TV – at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. I was outnumbered, outshouted, red-baited and finally terminated. Inside mainstream media, I saw that major issues were not only dodged, but sometimes not even acknowledged to exist.
Today there’s an elephant in the room: a huge, yet ignored, issue that largely explains why Social Security is now on the chopping block. And why other industrialized countries have free college education and universal healthcare, but we don’t. It’s arguably our country’s biggest problem – a problem that Martin Luther King Jr. focused on before he was assassinated 45 years ago, and has only worsened since then (which was the height of the Vietnam War).

Image: The Daily Show host Jon Stewart is one of the few voices on American television who occasionally breaks with the national security consensus.
That problem is U.S. militarism and perpetual war.
In 1967, King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” – and said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Nowadays MSNBC hosts yell at Fox News hosts, and vice versa, about all sorts of issues – but when the Obama administration expanded the bloody war in Afghanistan, the shouting heads at both channels went almost silent. When Obama’s drone war expanded, there was little shouting. Not at MSNBC, not at Fox. Nor at CNN, CBS, ABC or so-called public broadcasting.
We can have raging debates in mainstream media about issues like gun control and gay marriage and minimum wage, but when the elites of both parties agree on military intervention – as they so often do – debate is nearly nonexistent. Anyone in the mainstream who goes out on a limb to loudly question this oversized creature in the middle of the room known as militarism or interventionism is likely to disappear faster than you can say “Phil Donahue.”
I know something about mainstream journalists being silenced for questioning bipartisan military adventures because I worked with Phil Donahue at MSNBC in 2002/03 when Bush was revving up the Iraq invasion with the support of Democratic leaders like Joe Biden, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid. That’s when MSNBC terminated us for the crime of JWI. Not DWI, but JWI – Journalism duringWartime while Independent.
JWI may be a crime in mainstream media, but it’s exactly the kind of unauthorized, unofficial coverage you get from quality independent media today and from un-embedded journalists like Jeremy Scahill, Dahr Jamail and Glenn Greenwald.
Unfortunately, many liberal journalists who were vocal about war, human rights and civil liberties during the Bush era lost their  voices as Obama continued and, in some cases, expanded Bush’s “War on Terror” policies. It says something about the lack of serious national debate on so-called national security that last month one of the loudest mainstream TV news questioners of the president’s right to assassinate Americans was Sean Hannity on Fox. That’s obscene.
And it says something about mainstream TV that the toughest, most consistent questioners of militarism and defenders of civil liberties are not on a news channel – they’re on the comedy channel. A few weeks ago, I watched a passionate Jon Stewart taking on the U.S. military budget: “We already spend more on defense than the next 12 countries combined, including China, including Russia. We’re like the lady on Jerry Springer who can’t stop getting breast implants.” (On screen was a photo of the Springer guest.)
What our mainstream media so obediently call the “War on Terror” is experienced in other countries as a U.S. war OF terror – kidnappings, night raids, torture, drone strikes, killing and maiming of innocent civilians – that creates new enemies for our country. Interestingly, you can easily find that reality in mainstream media of allied countries in Europe, but not in the mainstream media of our country. Needless to say, it’s our country that’s waging this global perpetual war.
In a democracy, war must be subjected to questioning and debate. And not just on the comedy channel.
Jeff Cohen is  founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College and an associate professor of journalism there. His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. He founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986. This column is adapted from remarks made April 6 at the National Conference on Media Reform in Denver.

BioTech Lies Exposed: Genetically Modified Corn is Loaded with Chemical Poisons

By Jonathan Benson

Global Research, April 10, 2013

NaturalNews

Theme: Biotechnology and GMO

A breakthrough report on the nutritional density of genetically-modified (GM) corn crops demolishes all existing claims that GMOs are “substantially equivalent” to non-GMOs. Entitled 2012 Nutritional Analysis: Comparison of GMO Corn versus Non-GMO Corn, the paper reveals not only that GMO corn is greatly lacking in vitamins and minerals compared to non-GMO corn, but also that it is highly toxic and filled with deadly crop chemicals like glyphosate (Roundup).
The owners of the blog MomsAcrossAmerica.com say the report was shared with them by De Dell Seed Company, Canada’s only non-GMO corn seed supplier, which obtained it from a Minnesota-based agricultural company called ProfitPro. Overall, the paper found that non-GMO corn is 20 times richer in nutrition, energy and protein compared to GMO corn.
Concerning energy content, as measured in terms of ERGS, non-GMO corn was found in tests to give off 3,400 times more energy per gram, per second compared to GMO corn, an astounding variance. And as far as its overall percentage of organic matter is concerned, non-GMO corn was determined to have nearly twice as much of this vital component compared to GMO corn.
Non-GMO corn contains substantially more potassium, magnesium, calcium, sulfur and manganese
The field comparison also evaluated individual nutrient deviations, which revealed some shocking facts. Potassium, which is necessary for energy production and proper cellular function, is barely even present in GMO corn, having clocked in at 0.7 parts per million (ppm). In non-GMO corn, however, potassium levels were more than 13 times higher, testing at 9.2 ppm.
The disparity was even worse for magnesium, which tested at a mere 0.2 ppm in GMO corn. In non-GMO corn, however, magnesium levels were found to be 46 times higher than in non-GMO corn. Similar variances were observed for calcium, sulfur and manganese as well, with the contents of each being 12.4, 14, and seven times higher, respectively.
On the other hand, non-GMO corn was found to be free of chlorides, formaldehyde, glyphosate, and other harmful chemicals, while in GMO corn they were identified in dangerously high levels. According to an analysis of the report by MomsAcrossAmerica.com, GMO corn contains about 19 times more glyphosate than is permitted as a maximum in drinking water by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and 130 times more glyphosate than has been found in tests to cause organ damage in animals.
Similarly, GMO corn contains dangerously high levels of formaldehyde, according to the report. A previous study conducted by Dr. Don Huber on GMOs revealed that .97 ppm of formaldehyde is toxic if ingested by animals. As it turns out, GMO corn contains 200 times more formaldehyde than this maximum safety threshold.
These shock findings are at great odds with the claims continually being made by agri-genocide giant Monsanto. On its corporate website, Monsanto claims that approved genetically-modified (GM) crops are “substantially equivalent” to non-GMOs, meaning they are not nutritionally different from non-GMO crops. But as this study shows, these claims are patently false, and indicate that Monsanto is engaged in a global agricultural scam based on complete lies.
“Glyphosate is a strong organic phosphate chelator that immobilizes positively charged minerals such as manganese, cobalt, iron, zinc, copper, etc. that are essential for normal physiological functions in soils, plants and animals,” explains Dr. Huber about how GMO crop chemicals literally destroy the nutrient content of GMO crops.
To learn more about how to avoid GMOs in the food supply, visit:
http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-foods/how-to-avoid-gmos
Sources for this article include:
http://www.momsacrossamerica.com
http://www.gmwatch.org