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Other • Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out

Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out
May 17, 2013

What happens to everyone in the ruling Elites and those desperately trying to join the ruling Elites when the debt-serfs stop paying and the tax donkeys drift away to lower-cost, lower-income lifestyles?

Turn on, tune in, drop out was a famous slogan of the 1960s counterculture popularized by Timothy Leary, who stated that slogan was "given to him" by Marshall McLuhan during a lunch in New York City in 1966.

Tune in referred to gaining an awareness of the countercultural spectrum of ideas and values, turn on referred to mind-expansion via psychedelics and drop out meant to drop out of conventional society; Leary later explained that "drop out meant self-reliance, a discovery of one’s singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change."

In 1967, Leary modified the slogan thusly: Drop out. Turn on. Drop in.

Here at oftwominds.com, the slogan has been updated to Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out: tune in means to become aware the status quo is unsustainable and deranging; turn on means to become engaged in self-reliance and taking control of one’s life and livelihood, and opting out means opting out of supporting our financialized cartel-state Neofeudal Debtocracy by being a compliant debt-serf and tax donkey.

People all over the world are tuning in to alternative narratives, turning on to self-reliance and low-cost/low-impact living and opting out of the status quo culture of consumerism, debt and complicity with a parasitic, exploitive financial-state Aristocracy/Plutocracy/Oligarchy/Kleptocracy (take your pick–it’s still the same rapacious Elite whatever name you choose).

The most direct path to an alternative way of living is to opt out of debt and the associated consumerist fantasies of store-bought selfhood: multiple university degrees, brand name clothing, luxury autos, etc. This renunciation of consumerist consumption and debt is called Degrowth (May 9, 2013).

Once you opt out of debt and excess consumption, you need a lot less money to live; that means one can work less and have more time for family, gardening, self-cultivation, entrepreneural enterprises, etc.

For many, the cash economy and generous state benefits beckon. I am not recommending any particular lifestyle or set of choices here, I am simply stating what can easily be observed in any developed nation should you remove the mainstream media/state propaganda blinders: people are earning their livelihood in the informal cash economy, avoiding VAT and sales taxes, and many are drawing some sort of state benefit for one reason or another: unemployment, disability, early retirement, etc.

Others are occupying housing units without paying rent or the mortgage, i.e. squatting. A tide of squatters spreads in Spain in wake of foreclosures:

A 285-unit apartment complex in Parla, less than half an hour’s drive from Madrid, should be an ideal target for investors seeking cheap property in Spain. Unfortunately, two thirds of the building generates zero revenue because it’s overrun by squatters.
“This is happening all over the country,” said Jose Maria Fraile, the town’s mayor, who estimates only 100 apartments in the block built for the council have rental contracts, and not all of those tenants are paying either. “People lost their jobs, they can’t pay mortgages or rent so they lost their homes and this has produced a tide of squatters.”

As I have ceaselessly explained here for years, this is the inevitable result of financialization and state-enforced rentier arrangements in a Neofeudal Debtocracy:

Bernanke’s Neofeudal Rentier Economy (May 7, 2013)

The Fatal Disease of the Status Quo: Diminishing Returns (May 1, 2013)

College Grads: It’s a Different Economy (May 3, 2013)

Why Krugman and the Keynesians Are Lackeys for the Neofeudal Debtocracy (April 24, 2013)

What happens to everyone in the ruling Elites and those desperately trying to join the ruling Elites when the debt-serfs stop paying and the tax donkeys drift away to lower-cost, lower-income lifestyles? The ruling kleptocratic financiers and the vast political class of toadies, lackeys, apparatchiks and grifters that do their bidding will be like a bloated general staff who finds their malnourished army of conscripts has slipped away into the night; their parasitic empire will implode because nobody is left to do their bidding.

If you think Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out sounds ludicrous, check back in four years (2017) and eight years (2021) and see how many of your fellow debt-serfs and tax donkeys have quietly abandoned the bloated cost-structure, debt and derangement of the Neofeudal Debtocracy’s twisted consumerist dream.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

Statistics: Posted by yoda — Fri May 17, 2013 12:14 am


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Business • Will the last buyers please turn out the lights?

Will the last buyers please turn out the lights?
Posted on 14 May 2013

How long can global stock markets rise on the back of money printing by central banks while their underlying economies show very little sign of recovery and far from preparing for lift-off look every bit as likely to fall back into recession?

Global stock markets have continued on up into May, defying the short sellers and cries of ’sell in May and go away’. But the last few sessions have looked weak to negative. Will the last buyers please turn out the lights?

Extreme bullishness

One thing we do know about stock market bullishness is that it eventually fizzles out. You need a constant stream of new buyers to keep the show on the road. The market might look to be rising on the hot air of media output but in fact you do have to have money buying stocks.

Why would anybody buy at a new all-time high? Buy cheap, sell expensive, that’s how you make money as an investor, especially more after more than four years of rising prices.

If there is some kind of genuine economic revival going on in the world then ArabianMoney can perhaps be forgiven for missing it. Strip away inflation and there’s not been much advance in national GDPs since the global financial crisis and many nations have gone backwards, not forwards.

The Financial Times commented recently that the latest profit and sales figures have been lacklustre in both the US and UK with companies ‘bearish about the future’ and ‘talking down earnings’ at the fastest rate since 2001.

Investment madness

Low interest rates have left investors so desperate for income yield that they accept lower and lower returns as they bid share prices higher. There has to come a tipping point when the huge downward risk to share prices outweighs the tiny dividends available in the current environment of central bank manipulation.

Then those buyers will sell and put a market reversal into place. When markets have risen higher and higher with almost no underlying economic justification they do generally reverse quite dramatically.

Of course behaving like Chicken Little of the children’s fable and running around saying that the sky is falling in does make you look stupid, until you are right!

http://www.arabianmoney.net/us-stocks/2 … he-lights/

Statistics: Posted by yoda — Tue May 14, 2013 6:14 am


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Will the Last ObamaCare Supporter Please Turn off the Lights?

Michael F. Cannon

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) was the primary author of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known colloquially and affectionately as ObamaCare. Today, he predicted his own law would cause a “huge train wreck” when the federal government begins implementing it fully later this year. He’s not the only one who’s worried. Other Democratic senators have expressed concerns. An Obama administration official recently offered this vote of confidence:

We are under 200 days from open enrollment, and I’m pretty nervous…The time for debating about the size of text on the screen or the color or is it a world-class user experience, that’s what we used to talk about two years ago…Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.

How could Baucus come to fear his own bill? Maybe because he never read it, as he admitted to his Libby, Montana, constituents in 2010:

Naturally, a Baucus flack later clarified what he meant:

Senator Baucus wrote the bill that passed the Finance Committee and then worked with his colleagues to write the health care bill that is law today. He has spent years crafting this policy and hundreds of hours reading and perfecting it. There is simply no question that he understands the provisions in the health care law…

If so, perhaps Baucus could explain the law to his colleague, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Rockefeller may have spent more time studying health care than any other U.S. senator, Baucus included. For example, Rockefeller founded the Alliance for Health Reform and headed the organization for more than a decade. And yet Rockefeller finds ObamaCare to be “the most complex piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress” and “just beyond comprehension”:

But can we really blame Baucus if ObamaCare supporters – including himself – didn’t understand the bill they were passing? After all, he warned us that not all of them would understand it:

So to recap: Baucus wrote an early draft of the law, helped to write subsequent drafts, didn’t read the final law, totally understands it, and now fears it.

Will the last ObamaCare supporter please turn off the lights?

View full post on Cato @ Liberty

Canadian • Could Canada turn out like Cyprus?

Could Canada turn out like Cyprus?

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/2253349347001

Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Mon Apr 01, 2013 12:02 am


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Dept of Justice Tries to Turn FedEx and UPS into Cops, Big Pharma Applauds

dr RX cc

The Department of Justice and the pharmaceutical industry are not keen on pharmaceutical mail order. According the the DOJ the concern is that people are ordering illegal drugs through the mail from overseas pharmacies. No doubt this is true.

But millions of people order perfectly legal drugs through the mail to save on the cost of their medication. Because of the wall pharma has sought to erect around the United States through the use of law, many completely legitimate meds are much more expensive inside of the United States than outside. Some people take buses across the border to Canada to get their medications. Others use the Internet.

As the article points out, each patient using vendors outside of the United States represents a potential loss to the pharmaceutical industry.

We should not be surprised therefore that the Department of Justice is now leaning on FedEx and UPS to search packages for medications from all pharmacies, not just ones identified as “rogue.” It would be illegal if the DOJ was specific about abusers.

Sorry, the cost of shipping just went up and your medication got that much harder to get.  Good thing the government is looking out for us.

(From FFF.org)

Now the Department of Justice (DOJ) is trying to institute the shipping version of a “no fly” list on behalf of the big pharmaceutical companies and in the name of the war on drugs. The DOJ wants America’s two largest courier/delivery services to open and report on the shipments from online pharmacies, allegedly to staunch the flow of illegal pharmaceuticals. Here’s the catch: the DOJ wants packages opened even when there is no reason to suspect illegal contents.

FedEx spokesman Patrick Fitzgerald explained, “sealed packages … are being sent by, as far as we can tell, licensed pharmacies. These are medicines with legal prescriptions written by licensed physicians.” Fitzgerald added, “We are a transportation company that picks up and delivers close to 10 million packages every day. They are sealed packages, so we have no way of knowing specifically what’s inside and we have no interest in violating the privacy rights of our customers.”

Click here for the article.

The post Dept of Justice Tries to Turn FedEx and UPS into Cops, Big Pharma Applauds appeared first on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org.

View full post on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org

Police State • Video: Dianne Feinstein Says Prepare to Turn in Your Guns

Video: Dianne Feinstein Says Prepare to Turn in Your Guns

Democrat Senator: “Mr. and Mrs. America… turn ‘em all in.”
Alex Jones
Infowars.com
January 31, 2012
Dianne Feinstein: “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States, for an outright ban, picking up [every gun]… Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein’s ultimate plan has always been to have Mr. and Mrs. America turn in their guns to the government, period. Feinstein has admitted that the bill is about gun confiscation.
She tells us a gun ban is about saving the children and reducing crime, but her comments on 60 Minutes in 1995 reveal her true plan is to disarm the American people.
On Thursday, Feinstein will introduced her dream bill to disarm the American people. The legislation is open-ended and includes provisions to re-register firearms and submit the fingerprints of law-abiding Americans as if they’re sex offenders.
Feinstein’s bill will also include a buy-back provision that will allow the government to confiscate all firearms. Both Feinstein and New York governor Andrew Cuomo have said that is their plan.
It is a gun confiscation bill.
It’s no coincidence that the communist Chinese, the biggest holders of U.S. debt, have demanded the American people be disarmed. It is the simple action of the authoritarian.
For more on Feinstein’s gun-grabbing legislation, see these articles:
Feinstein Vows to Introduce Assault Weapons Ban Bill
Obama to Put “Full Weight” Behind Feinstein Gun Confiscation Plan
Feinstein and Fellow Gun-Grabbers Are Going For Broke
Feinstein & Cuomo Admit Planning Australian Style Government Gun Buy Back

http://www.infowars.com/video-dianne-fe … your-guns/

Statistics: Posted by yoda — Mon Dec 31, 2012 10:41 am


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Firearms • When They Come For Your Guns, You Will Turn Them Over

When They Come For Your Guns, You Will Turn Them Over

By Jim Karger Aug 1st, 2012

“When they come for my gun, they will have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands,” is a common refrain I often hear from the Neo-Cons when there is a threat, credible or otherwise, that the US government is going to take their firearms.

And, when I hear this crazy talk, I agree with them openly. “You are right. They will pry your gun from your cold dead hands,” which I often follow with the question, “And where will that leave you except face down in a pool of your own blood the middle of the street, just another dead fool resisting the State?”

This is not a question they are comfortable with, if only because the intent of their saber-rattling was to imply they would fight to keep their weapons, and win.

Nice fantasy. It’s not happening.

If the federal government decides to disarm the public, and one of these (see photo below) rolls down your street after a not-so-subtle request that you kindly turn over your firearms and ammunition “for the common good,” it will be nothing less than suicide by cop to do anything other than what you are told.

The militarization of US police forces is ongoing and escalating. Many cities and towns now own tanks, armed personnel carriers, even attack helicopters, and almost all are outfitted with military weapons not available to the general public.

And, it is not just your hometown cops who are getting new boy-toys. The military itself is buying up weaponry not just for use in the current or next scheduled war, but to deal with the likes of you, citizens who don’t seem to understand that the Bill of Rights has been overruled, and that specifically includes, but is not limited to, the right to protest and engage in civil disobedience.

Also ignored (as if it didn’t even exist) is the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which generally bars the military from law enforcement activities within the United States.

According to Public Intelligence:

“…for the last two years, the President’s Budget Submissions for the Department of Defense have included purchases of a significant amount of combat equipment, including armored vehicles, helicopters and even artillery, under an obscure section of the FY2008 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the purposes of “homeland defense missions, domestic emergency responses, and providing military support to civil authorities.” Items purchased under the section include combat vehicles, tanks, helicopters, artillery, mortar systems, missiles, small arms and communications equipment. Justifications for the budget items indicate that many of the purchases are part of routine resupply and maintenance, yet in each case the procurement is cited as being “necessary for use by the active and reserve components of the Armed Forces for homeland defense missions, domestic emergency responses, and providing military support to civil authorities” under section 1815 of the FY 2008 NDAA.” (Emphasis supplied.)

And, they are not just arming cops and weekend warriors for domestic purposes. Active duty Marines are now being trained for law enforcement operations all over the world (of which the US remains a part) specifically to deal with civil uprisings, and the US government knows that civil uprisings are coming to a town near you just as soon as the fantasy of a healing economy is shattered, the US dollar fails, and unemployment goes to 30%+ in real numbers.

And, to you tough-talking Neo-Cons with your AR-15 rifles and a few thousand rounds of ammo, here is reality: they will take your guns, and no, all your Second Amendment bluster aside, you are not going to do anything about it. You are not going to take on a platoon of Marines with state of the art automatic weapons and the best body armor you cannot buy protected by armed personnel carriers and attack helicopters unless you choose to die that day — for nothing.
You will either be in the country or out, and if you are in, you will stay in and you will comply.

That is your choice… for the moment.

Regards,

Jim Karger

http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/when-the … them-over/

Statistics: Posted by yoda — Wed Aug 01, 2012 4:06 pm


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If One Storm Can Turn D.C. Dark For Several Days, What Would A Massive EMP Burst Do?

Sometimes we all get a little reminder of just how completely and totally dependent we are on the power grid.  Massive thunderstorms that ripped through Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C. and Virginia left millions without power over the weekend.  At this point it is being projected that some people may not get power back until the end of the week.  The “super derecho” storm that pounded the Washington D.C. area on Friday night with hurricane-force winds is being called unprecedented.  But the truth is that there are other events that could happen that would be far more damaging to our power grid.  For example, a substantial EMP burst over a major U.S. city would fry virtually all of the electronics in the city and take the power grid in the area down indefinitely.  A gigantic EMP burst over the entire country (caused by a massive solar storm or a very large nuclear explosion high in the atmosphere) could theoretically take down the entire national power grid.  Just try to imagine a world where nobody has any electricity, nobody can pump gas, nobody can use their credit cards or get any more money, where most vehicles won’t start, where nobody has the Internet, where all cell phones are dead and where nobody can heat or cool their homes.  That is how serious an EMP burst could potentially be.  We are talking about an event that could be millions of times worse than 9/11.

Hopefully this latest storm has reminded Americans about how vulnerable our power grid really is and about how close we really are to being knocked back to the late 1800s.

Let’s review some of the damage that this “super derecho” storm caused to the D.C. area….

-Thousands of businesses have been forced to close temporarily because they cannot operate without electricity

-Many federal agencies were closed on Monday because there was no power

-Many 911 call centers throughout Northern Virginia were down over the weekend and could not respond to emergencies

-Without electricity, many families have not been able to cook warm meals

-Without warm water, many families have not been able to take hot showers

-A “boil water advisory” was put into effect for several areas of northern Virginia

-Many families that still do not have power are in danger of losing much of the food in their refrigerators and freezers

-Many gas stations were not able to operate because of a lack of electricity and so this has made filling up the gas tank a major hassle for many families

-Hundreds of traffic lights are still out and this is making commuting a major problem in some areas

-Without air conditioning many families are absolutely sweltering as high temperatures remain well above 90 degrees

-During the power outage some people have been without cell phone service because many cell phone towers were inoperable

-Without electricity, thousands upon thousands of people have not been able to use their computers for several days and this is causing a lot of frustration

-Several major websites were totally knocked offline by the storms as Robert McMillan of Wired Magazine explained….

Hurricane-like storms knocked an Amazon data center in Ashburn, Virginia, offline last night, and a chunk of the internet felt it. The six-hour incident temporarily cut off a number of popular internet services, including Netflix, Pinterest, Heroku, and Instagram.

But to be honest this was not a major disaster.

After a few days the damage will be fixed and people will start to forget what just happened.

Well, what if the damage was permanent and the entire nation had to go without electricity for the foreseeable future?  The following is from a USA Today article by Dan Vergano….

The sky erupts. Cities darken, food spoils and homes fall silent. Civilization collapses.

End-of-the-world novel? A video game? Or could such a scenario loom in America’s future?

There is talk of catastrophe ahead, depending on whom you believe, because of the threat of an electromagnetic pulse triggered by either a supersized solar storm or terrorist A-bomb, both capable of disabling the electric grid that powers modern life.

As I have written about previously, an EMP attack could fundamentally change life in America in a single instant.

What would you do if such a scenario happened?

Would you try to go somewhere?  Even if the electronics in your car were not totally fried, you would not be able to pump more gas anywhere.

Would you try to call someone?  Most phones would be totally dead and all normal communications networks would be down.  So who would you call?

Would you bunker down and try to survive on what you have at home?  Most of the food in your refrigerator and freezer would rapidly go bad and most Americans only have enough food to last a few days or a few weeks.  In addition, most Americans would no longer be able to heat or cool their homes, so extreme cold and extreme heat would become huge problems very quickly.

How in the world would any of us survive in a world without electricity?

In past centuries our forefathers knew how to survive in such a world, but most of us do not have the same skills or resources that they had.

The following is how an article in the Wall Street Journal once described what a massive EMP burst would do to this nation….

No American would necessarily die in the initial attack, but what comes next is potentially catastrophic. The pulse would wipe out most electronics and telecommunications, including the power grid. Millions could die for want of modern medical care or even of starvation since farmers wouldn’t be able to harvest crops and distributors wouldn’t be able to get food to supermarkets. Commissioner Lowell Wood calls EMP attack a “giant continental time machine” that would move us back more than a century in technology to the late 1800s.

What would you do if you were suddenly cut off from all electricity, all money, all modern forms of communication, all modern forms of transportation and all modern forms of shopping?

Don’t think that it can’t happen.

Scientists tell us that massive EMP bursts generated by gigantic solar storms have hit our planet in the past and that it is inevitable that it will happen again.

In addition, nations all over the planet are aware of what an EMP burst can do and have been developing “Super-EMP” weapons that can take power grids down in a single strike.

The following is a short excerpt from a statement by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry to the United States Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security on March 8th, 2005….

Russian and Chinese military scientists in open source writings describe the basic principles of nuclear weapons designed specifically to generate an enhanced-EMP effect, that they term “Super-EMP” weapons. “Super-EMP” weapons, according to these foreign open source writings, can destroy even the best protected U.S. military and civilian electronic systems.

That doesn’t sound good.

But perhaps even more troubling is that North Korea has been reportedly developing this type of weapon.  In fact, it has been reported that North Korea may have tested a “Super-EMP” weapon all the way back in 2009….

North Korea’s last round of tests, conducted in May 2009, appear to have included a “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting enough gamma rays to disable the electric power grid across most of the lower 48 states

In time, these kinds of weapons will get into more and more hands.

Will someone try to use this kind of weapon at some point?

Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, believes that a single EMP burst could potentially end up killing the vast majority of the population of the United States….

“Within a year of that attack, nine out of 10 Americans would be dead, because we can’t support a population of the present size in urban centers and the like without electricity”

Once you understand these kinds of threats, it makes it a lot easier to understand why preppers are so busy preparing for the future.

Our world is becoming incredibly unstable.  Another major economic crisis could hit us at any time, war in the Middle East could erupt without warning, earthquakes and other natural disasters are becoming more frequent and society seems to get a little crazier with each passing day.

The era of tremendous peace and prosperity that we have all been enjoying is rapidly coming to an end.  In a world filled with instability and chaos, it only seems prudent to take some precautions.

You might want to get prepared while you still have time.

View full post on The Economic Collapse

Turn Out The Lights – The Largest U.S. Cities Are Becoming Cesspools Of Filth, Decay And Wretchedness

Once upon a time, the largest U.S. cities were the envy of the entire world.  Sadly, that is no longer the case.  Sure, there are areas of New York City, Boston, Washington and Los Angeles that are still absolutely beautiful but for the most part our major cities are rapidly rotting and decaying.  Cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis and Oakland were all once places where middle class American workers thrived and raised their families.  Today, all of those cities are rapidly being transformed into cesspools of filth, decay and wretchedness.  Millions of good jobs have left our major cities in recent decades and poverty has absolutely exploded.    Basically, you can turn out the lights because the party is over.  In fact, some major U.S. cities are literally turning out the lights.  In Detroit, about 40 percent of the streetlights are already broken and the city cannot afford to repair them.  So Mayor Bing has come up with a plan to cut the number of operating streetlights almost in half and leave vast sections of the city totally in the dark at night.  I wonder what that will do to the crime rate in the city.  But don’t look down on Detroit too much, because what is happening in Detroit will be happening where you live soon enough.

A recent Bloomberg article described Mayor Bing’s plan to eliminate nearly half of Detroit’s streetlights….

Detroit, whose 139 square miles contain 60 percent fewer residents than in 1950, will try to nudge them into a smaller living space by eliminating almost half its streetlights.

As it is, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are broken and the city, whose finances are to be overseen by an appointed board, can’t afford to fix them. Mayor Dave Bing’s plan would create an authority to borrow $160 million to upgrade and reduce the number of streetlights to 46,000. Maintenance would be contracted out, saving the city $10 million a year.

What this means is that there are going to be a lot of neighborhoods that will have the lights turned off permanently.

So which neighborhoods will those be?

According to one top Detroit official, “distressed areas” are going to be on the low end of the totem pole….

“You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population,” said Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer. “We’re not going to light distressed areas like we light other areas.”

City officials know that they cannot force people to move from “distressed areas”, so they are going to encourage them to leave by cutting off services.

But turning off the lights is not the only way that Detroit is trying to save money.

Recently, officials in Detroit announced that all police stations in the city will be closed to the public for 16 hours a day.

It is so sad to see what is happening to what was once such a great city.

Back in the old days, Detroit had a teeming middle class population.

Today, 53.6% of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.

Back in the old days, Detroit was a shining example of what America was doing right.

Today, 47 percent of all people living in the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.

Back in the old days, middle class neighborhoods sprouted like mushrooms all over Detroit.

Today, the median price of a home in Detroit is just $6000.

Needless to say, crime is exploding in Detroit and many families live in constant fear.

Many have taken justice into their own hands.  Justifiable homicide in Detroit rose by a staggering 79 percent during 2011.

But Detroit is only one example of a national trend.

For example, a recent article by Jim Quinn entitled “More Than 30 Blocks Of Grey And Decay” described the filth, decay and wretchedness in West Philadelphia.  Quinn refers to the drive through this area as “the 30 Blocks of Squalor”….

The real unemployment rate exceeds 50%, murder is the number one industry, with drugs a close second.

As you drive down the 30 Blocks of Squalor you meet the ghost of Squalor future for West Chester Pike. The population along this corridor is ignorant, dependent, and represents the dregs of our society.

But this area was once home to middle class families.  There were once many beautiful homes in West Philly, but most of them are now either gone or are crumbling badly.  According to Quinn, the physical decay is matched by the social decay….

The once proud homes are in shambles. Bags of garbage dot the landscape. Most of the people who live here are parasites on society. Personal responsibility, work ethic, education and marriage are unknown concepts in this community. Even though more than 50% of the students in West Philly drop out of high school and the SAT scores of West Philly High students are lower than whale ****, the bankrupt school district spent $70 million to build a new high school/prison to babysit derelicts and future prison inmates. The windows do not have steel bars yet, as the architect was smart to put all windows at least eight feet above street level.

One of the great things about the article is that Quinn pointed out how the retail stores in the area reflect the things that the population of the community truly values….

The Chestnut Plaza truly represents what is important to this community. This Squalor Center, as opposed to Power Center, includes a video porn store, cash checking/payday loan outlet, smoke shop, donut shop, Laundromat, and liquor store. No need for a wedding ring store or resume writing service.

Sadly, there are communities like this all over the country.  As I wrote about recently, the entire state of California is slowly being transformed into one gigantic cesspool.

Yes, there are still a few areas where the wealthy play that are absolutely beautiful.  If you stay in the wealthy enclaves you might never even know that the rest of the state is badly decaying.

There are really good reasons why millions of people are moving out of California.  For example, a reader named Peter left the following comment on one of my recent articles….

I am a native Californian ( Im 61) and have lived here all but two years of my life. I can tell you absolutely that this state is not what it was 30 years ago. Cities like San Francisco have gone from being world-class tourist attractions to national disgraces. Los Angeles is a third-world city. San Diego is bankrupt. Even Silicon Valley, despite the recent improvements, is no way what it was in the 90?s. The retail trade is all but dead in this state. Even high-end malls like Rodeo Drive and Ocean Ave in Carmel are full of vacancies.

Throughout the state, good businesses are shutting down and hard working families are selling their homes.  The void that is being created is being filled by crime and gangs.  The following is a comment that a reader named Roberta left on that same article….

Yep we lived in Oroville CA back in 2007 and it was just starting to get bad then. Montgomery Wards closed, then McMahan’s furniture closed and NOW McDonalds is closing this July along with a grand slam of well known businesses are all folding and pulling out of Oroville or folding lock-stock-n-barrell. It’s turning into a gang town with wide spread rampant drug use. I feel sorry for family and friends that are still their clinging onto the hope that thnigs “will” get better. But I don’t think so.

Perhaps things are still quite good where you live.

Perhaps you think that you will be immune from all this.

Sadly, the truth is that this is just the beginning.

The U.S. economy is actually performing much better than it should be thanks to the trillions of borrowed dollars that Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress have been spending into the economy.

When our debt-fueled prosperity ends, a lot more cities are going to end up looking just like Detroit.

America cannot prosper without middle class jobs, and those kinds of jobs are rapidly disappearing.

Just this week HP announced that it is going to lay off 27,000 workers.

We are losing middle class jobs at a time when we desperately need more of them.

Last year, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.

Yet our politicians continue to pursue the same foolish policies over and over.

So things are going to continue to get worse and America is going to continue to descend into squalor.

You better get ready.

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Why Is It Necessary For The Federal Government To Turn The United States Into A Prison Camp?

There has been no society in the history of the world that has ever been 100% safe.  No matter how much money the federal government spends on “homeland security”, the truth is that bad things will still happen.  Our world is a very dangerous place and it is becoming increasingly unstable.  The federal government could turn the entire country into one giant prison camp, but that would still not keep us safe.  It is inevitable that bad stuff will happen in life.  But we have a choice.  We can choose to live in fear or we can choose to live as free men and women.  Our forefathers intended to establish a nation where liberty and freedom would be maximized.  But today we are told that we have to give up our liberties and our freedoms and our privacy for increased security.  But is such a trade really worth it?  Just think of the various totalitarian societies that we have seen down throughout history.  Have any of them ever really thrived?  Have their people been happy?  Unfortunately, the U.S. federal government has decided that the entire country needs to be put on lock down.  Nearly everything that we do today is watched and tracked, and personal privacy is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  Many of the things that George Orwell wrote about in 1984 are becoming a reality, and that is a very frightening thing.  The United States is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Sadly, we are rapidly becoming the exact opposite of that.

I don’t know about you, but I never signed up to live in North Korea.  When I was growing up I was taught that repressive regimes such as North Korea are “the bad guys” and that America is where “the good guys” live.

So why do we want to be just like North Korea?

When they put in the naked body scanners at U.S. airports and started having TSA agents conduct “enhanced pat-downs” of travelers, I decided that I was not going to fly anymore unless absolutely necessary.

Then I heard about how “random bag checks” were being conducted at Metro train stations in the Washington D.C. area, and I was glad that I was no longer taking the train into D.C. anymore.

But now the TSA is showing up everywhere.  Down in Houston, undercover TSA agents and police officers will now “ride buses, perform random bag checks, and conduct K-9 sweeps, as well as place uniformed and plainclothes officers at Transit Centers and rail platforms to detect, prevent and address latent criminal activity or behavior.”

So now I have another thing to add to my list of things that I can’t do anymore.

No more riding buses for me.

But the truth is that you can’t escape this expanding security grid no matter how hard you try.

In fact, TSA “VIPR teams” conduct approximately 8,000 “unannounced security screenings” every year at bus terminals, train stations, ports and highway rest stops throughout the United States.

Look, every society needs some level of security.  There are always bad guys out there that want to harm innocent people.

But in the United States we must demand that those in charge of our security do their jobs in a way that does not compromise our dignity, our liberties or our freedoms.

Does having TSA thugs touch the private parts of old women and young children before they get on their flights keep us any safer?

Of course not.

But it does move our country in a very dangerous direction.

The reality is that this “Big Brother control grid” that is being constructed all around us is expanding in a thousand different ways.

For example, a new bill before the U.S. Congress would require black box data recorders to be installed in all new vehicles starting in 2015.  These black box data recorders will be able to constantly transmit data about everything that your car is  doing to the government and to the insurance companies.  The following is from a recent article by Eric Peters….

And naturally, they – the government, insurance companies – will be able to track your every move, noting (and recording) where you’ve been and when. This will create a surveillance net beyond anything that ever existed previously. Some will not sweat this: After all, if you’ve got nothing to hide, why worry? Except for the fact that, courtesy of almost everything we do being either “illegal” or at least “suspicious” we all have a great deal to hide. The naivety of the Don’t Worry, it’s No Big Deal crowd is breathtaking. Did the average Soviet citizen also “not have anything to hide,” and hence why worry?

But the last possibility is probably the creepiest possibility: EDRs tied into your car’s GPS will give them – the government and its corporate **** ******* (edited for language) – literal physical control over (hack) “your” vehicle. This is not conspiracy theorizing. It is technological fact. Current GM vehicles equipped with the same technology about to be mandated for every vehicle can be disabled remotely. Just turned off. All the OnStar operator has to do is send the appropriate command over the GPS to your car’s computer, which controls the engine. It is one of the features touted by OnStar – of course, as a “safety” feature.

In the future, it will be used to limit your driving – for the sake of “energy conservation” or perhaps, “the environment.” It will be the perfect, er, vehicle, for implementing U.N. Agenda 21 – the plan to herd all of us formerly free-range tax cattle into urban feedlots. So much easier to control us this way. No more bailing out to the country or living off the grid – unless you get there (and to your work) by walking.

Even when you are sitting at home you are still being watched and monitored in countless ways.

For example, every single call you make on your cell phone is intercepted and monitored by the government.

Your Internet activity is tracked and monitored by a whole host of government agencies as well.  If you doubt this, just read this article.

Now CISPA would expand government surveillance of the Internet even further.  The following description of CISPA comes from the Electronic Frontier Foundation website….

CISPA creates an exception to all privacy laws to permit companies to share our information with each other and with the government in the name of cybersecurity…. CISPA’s ‘information sharing’ regime allows the transfer of vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like internet use history or the content of emails, to any agency in the government including military and intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency or the Department of Defense Cyber Command. Once in government hands, this information can be used for any non-regulatory purpose so long as one significant purpose is for cybersecurity or to protect national security.

Frightening stuff, eh?

I want you to imagine a scenario for a moment.  Imagine that the government assigned two “watchers” to you that followed you everywhere you went and stared directly into your face the entire time.

Would you feel comfortable?

Why not?

You don’t have anything to hide, do you?

Well, of course the truth is that none of us would like having our privacy constantly invaded.  It is not pleasant to constantly feel like you are being watched.

That is why all of these new “security measures” are so alarming.  A system is being set up where all of us are being constantly watched and monitored 24 hours a day.

And most Americans have no idea how fast the transition to full martial law could potentially be.

Barack Obama recently updated an old executive order that has been around for decades that would enable him to take charge of all food, all energy, all health resources and all transportation resources in the United States with the stroke of a pen.  This new update would allow him to do it even in “non-emergency” situations.

The following is what U.S. Representative Kay Granger recently had to say about this executive order….

This means all of our water resources, construction services and materials (steel, concrete, etc.), our civil transportation system, food and health resources, our energy supplies including oil and natural gas – even farm equipment – can be taken over by the President and his cabinet secretaries.  The Government can also draft U.S. citizens into the military and force U.S. citizens to fulfill “labor requirements” for the purposes of “national defense.”  There is not even any Congressional oversight, only briefings are required.

Later on in her letter, Representative Granger even used the phrases “martial law” and “government takeover” to describe the power that Barack Obama potentially has under this executive order….

It is still unclear why this order was signed now, and what the consequences are for our nation – especially during times of peace.  This type of Martial Law imposes a government takeover on U.S. citizens that is typically reserved for national emergencies, not in a time of relative peace.

Do you trust Barack Obama with that kind of power?

Unfortunately, considering the really bad decisions that all of our government officials regularly make, it is really hard to trust any of them to do the right thing at this point.

The American people need to let their voices be heard on these issues.  If not, the federal government will continue to strip away our privacy, our liberties and our freedoms until everything is gone.

Do you want your children to grow up in a country that has been turned into a giant prison camp and that more closely resembles North Korea than it does the nation that our forefathers originally founded?

If not, please do what you can to speak out against these abuses.

The truth is that the federal government does not really even care about our national security anyway.

If they did, they would secure our borders.  Just today I read that the National Guard is withdrawing 900 troops from the U.S.-Mexico border.  Our border security is already a total joke and now it is going to be even worse.

Over the past several decades, tens of millions of people have crossed that border illegally.  Every single day, terrorists, drug dealers, gang members, sexual predators and a whole host of other “bad guys” could be crossing that border and we would never even know about it because we aren’t doing anything to stop it.

For nearly 60 years, the U.S. government has successfully protected the border between South Korea and North Korea, but the U.S. government flatly refuses to protect our own borders.

Until the federal government decides to do what the U.S. Constitution requires them to do and start protecting our borders, then the federal government should not be asking any of us to make a single sacrifice in the name of “security”.

The truth is that we can have a reasonable level of security in this nation without giving up the liberties and the freedoms that millions of Americans have shed their blood to protect.

We do not need to turn the United States into a giant prison camp.  America is supposed to be the land of the free, and we need to work hard to get that dream back.

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