COMMODITY FUTURES
VALUE CHANGE % CHANGE
Oil 101.74 0.16 0.16
Gold 925.10 3.60 0.39
Natural Gas 10.03 -0.07 -0.72
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Muslims More Numerous than Catholics: Vatican
Sun Mar 30, 2008 2:29pm BST
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.
Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent.
"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.
He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world's population -- or about 2 billion people.
The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion.
Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world's population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.
He said the data on Muslim populations had been compiled by individual countries and then released by the United Nations, adding the Vatican could only vouch for its own statistics.
(Reporting by Silvia Aloisi; editing by Andrew Roche)
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.
Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent.
"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.
He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world's population -- or about 2 billion people.
The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion.
Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world's population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.
He said the data on Muslim populations had been compiled by individual countries and then released by the United Nations, adding the Vatican could only vouch for its own statistics.
(Reporting by Silvia Aloisi; editing by Andrew Roche)
Spiritual Warfare Dream
Saturday, March 29, 2008
interesting dream, spiritual warfare?
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural
Was away for awhile, traveling to take care of some stuff, and while away had a very interesting dream.
In the dream there were 3 people after me on a rooftop.. large rooftop, one of the people, a guy, had me knocked down on my back on the rooftop, and his two cronies, they didn’t seem male to me, were on the roof as well, but further away. He was attempting to kill me.
Propping myself up on my elbows off the rooftop i began kicking the guy in the nuts over and over again... this was my most opportune target in that position as he was leering over me, so i just kept kicking him, hard... karate type kicks.
He stopped attacking because he was debilitated.
When i awoke i was kicking into the air and all of the blankets were kicked off the bed! heheh
I figure that I know in the Spirit who these three were... and for their sakes i hope they don’t come around attacking again.
interesting dream, spiritual warfare?
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural
Was away for awhile, traveling to take care of some stuff, and while away had a very interesting dream.
In the dream there were 3 people after me on a rooftop.. large rooftop, one of the people, a guy, had me knocked down on my back on the rooftop, and his two cronies, they didn’t seem male to me, were on the roof as well, but further away. He was attempting to kill me.
Propping myself up on my elbows off the rooftop i began kicking the guy in the nuts over and over again... this was my most opportune target in that position as he was leering over me, so i just kept kicking him, hard... karate type kicks.
He stopped attacking because he was debilitated.
When i awoke i was kicking into the air and all of the blankets were kicked off the bed! heheh
I figure that I know in the Spirit who these three were... and for their sakes i hope they don’t come around attacking again.
Two More States Take a Stand on the North American Union
By: JBS Staff
March 31, 2008
Although it is more difficult to get state resolutions introduced and passed in even-numbered years due to fewer states being in session and election-year shortened schedules, the state legislatures in Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Utah have been considering anti-NAU, repeal NAFTA, and anti-illegal-immigration resolutions inspired by the John Birch Society this year. As has become usual in recent years, Utah leads the way with five such resolutions introduced and, so far, the impressive record of three bills passed (anti-NAU in House and Senate and anti-illegal immigration in the Senate), one defeated (repeal NAFTA in the House), and one bill pending (anti-illegal immigration in the House). There’s no accident about Utah’s successes. Members and allies of the JBS have worked long and hard to build rapport with their state legislators for several years now.
In late February both the Senate and House of South Dakota passed an anti-NAU, anti-NAFTA Superhighway resolution by votes of 24 to 9 and 56 to 13 respectively. With Utah and South Dakota joining Idaho, Montana, and Oklahoma, this means five states have now passed anti-NAU resolutions in both houses during the 2007-2008 time period. The total of states introducing anti-NAU resolutions has risen to 21 for these two years.
Hearings and/or votes on one or more of these NAU, NAFTA, and illegal-immigration resolutions are still scheduled in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, and New Hampshire. To keep up to date on the status of these state resolutions, see the “Update on the Status of Anti-NAU, Repeal NAFTA, and Anti-Illegal Immigration Resolutions in State Legislatures, 2007/2008” at
www.jbs.org/node/3430.
March 31, 2008
Although it is more difficult to get state resolutions introduced and passed in even-numbered years due to fewer states being in session and election-year shortened schedules, the state legislatures in Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Utah have been considering anti-NAU, repeal NAFTA, and anti-illegal-immigration resolutions inspired by the John Birch Society this year. As has become usual in recent years, Utah leads the way with five such resolutions introduced and, so far, the impressive record of three bills passed (anti-NAU in House and Senate and anti-illegal immigration in the Senate), one defeated (repeal NAFTA in the House), and one bill pending (anti-illegal immigration in the House). There’s no accident about Utah’s successes. Members and allies of the JBS have worked long and hard to build rapport with their state legislators for several years now.
In late February both the Senate and House of South Dakota passed an anti-NAU, anti-NAFTA Superhighway resolution by votes of 24 to 9 and 56 to 13 respectively. With Utah and South Dakota joining Idaho, Montana, and Oklahoma, this means five states have now passed anti-NAU resolutions in both houses during the 2007-2008 time period. The total of states introducing anti-NAU resolutions has risen to 21 for these two years.
Hearings and/or votes on one or more of these NAU, NAFTA, and illegal-immigration resolutions are still scheduled in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, and New Hampshire. To keep up to date on the status of these state resolutions, see the “Update on the Status of Anti-NAU, Repeal NAFTA, and Anti-Illegal Immigration Resolutions in State Legislatures, 2007/2008” at
www.jbs.org/node/3430.
"Earth Hour" Turns the Light Out on Humanity
Inconvenient Truth
March 30, 2008
http://www.henrymakow.com
by Henry Makow Ph.D.
At 8 p.m. on March 29, millions of people around the world obeyed Big Brother and shut off their lights for an hour to "conserve energy and fight climate change."
Organized by the elite World Wildlife Fund, "Earth Hour" was a psy-op designed to remind us we are a burden on the ecosystem. The event was organized by elite who represent one percent of the world's population yet own over 40% of the resources.
From the elite perspective, we're superfluous-which is the real message of 'Earth Hour." Have they ever done anything to celebrate human life?
If we are energy challenged. it is because the Illuminati banking cartel has been suppressing non-polluting free-energy technology for almost a century. At the same time, this cartel has been fomenting wasteful and tragic wars. Why not end war for the sake of the Earth? How about Al Gore's record on the use of depleted uranium?
Millions of people in 26 countries participated on March 29. Whole city skylines went dark. What better symbol of the New World Order!
"It's a way for people to stand up in a positive way, not just feel guilty about it," explains Josh Laughren of World Wildlife Fund-Canada.
"But if this begins and ends with Earth Hour and we go back to ordinary life...it will not have been a success. There are ways we can all reduce our carbon footprint to ensure every hour in future is Earth Hour."
A MODEST PROPOSAL
If people feel they are such a burden, why not kill themselves? Is there a more effective way to say you care about the planet? Erase your "carbon footprint" altogether.
We will need some time to get our affairs in order, and say our goodbyes, but perhaps next Spring, the World Wildlife Fund could sponsor a "Kill-Yourself-for-the-Earth Day." Families, companies, cities and countries could offer sacrifices to the Environmental God. With proper promotion, millions might volunteer.
Why dither with symbolic gestures when we can make a real difference?
As former US vice-president Al Gore said last year in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize: "We are what is wrong and we must make it right!"
No, Al Gore. You and your Illuminati henchmen are the problem. Please consider my modest proposal.
-----
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can find this article permanently at http://www.henrymakow.com/next_kill_yourself_for_the_ear.html
March 30, 2008
http://www.henrymakow.com
by Henry Makow Ph.D.
At 8 p.m. on March 29, millions of people around the world obeyed Big Brother and shut off their lights for an hour to "conserve energy and fight climate change."
Organized by the elite World Wildlife Fund, "Earth Hour" was a psy-op designed to remind us we are a burden on the ecosystem. The event was organized by elite who represent one percent of the world's population yet own over 40% of the resources.
From the elite perspective, we're superfluous-which is the real message of 'Earth Hour." Have they ever done anything to celebrate human life?
If we are energy challenged. it is because the Illuminati banking cartel has been suppressing non-polluting free-energy technology for almost a century. At the same time, this cartel has been fomenting wasteful and tragic wars. Why not end war for the sake of the Earth? How about Al Gore's record on the use of depleted uranium?
Millions of people in 26 countries participated on March 29. Whole city skylines went dark. What better symbol of the New World Order!
"It's a way for people to stand up in a positive way, not just feel guilty about it," explains Josh Laughren of World Wildlife Fund-Canada.
"But if this begins and ends with Earth Hour and we go back to ordinary life...it will not have been a success. There are ways we can all reduce our carbon footprint to ensure every hour in future is Earth Hour."
A MODEST PROPOSAL
If people feel they are such a burden, why not kill themselves? Is there a more effective way to say you care about the planet? Erase your "carbon footprint" altogether.
We will need some time to get our affairs in order, and say our goodbyes, but perhaps next Spring, the World Wildlife Fund could sponsor a "Kill-Yourself-for-the-Earth Day." Families, companies, cities and countries could offer sacrifices to the Environmental God. With proper promotion, millions might volunteer.
Why dither with symbolic gestures when we can make a real difference?
As former US vice-president Al Gore said last year in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize: "We are what is wrong and we must make it right!"
No, Al Gore. You and your Illuminati henchmen are the problem. Please consider my modest proposal.
-----
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can find this article permanently at http://www.henrymakow.com/next_kill_yourself_for_the_ear.html
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Treasury Dept. Plan Would Give FED Wide New Power
March 29, 2008
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.
The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation’s hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they set off what is now the worst financial calamity in decades.
Democratic lawmakers are all but certain to say the proposal does not go far enough in restricting the kinds of practices that caused the financial crisis. Many of the proposals, like those that would consolidate regulatory agencies, have nothing to do with the turmoil in financial markets. And some of the proposals could actually reduce regulation.
According to a summary provided by the administration, the plan would consolidate an alphabet soup of banking and securities regulators into a powerful trio of overseers responsible for everything from banks and brokerage firms to hedge funds and private equity firms.
While the plan could expose Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds to greater scrutiny, it carefully avoids a call for tighter regulation.
The plan would not rein in practices that have been linked to the housing and mortgage crisis, like packaging risky subprime mortgages into securities carrying the highest ratings.
The plan would give the Fed some authority over Wall Street firms, but only when an investment bank’s practices threatened the entire financial system.
And the plan does not recommend tighter rules over the vast and largely unregulated markets for risk sharing and hedging, like credit default swaps, which are supposed to insure lenders against loss but became a speculative instrument themselves and gave many institutions a false sense of security.
Parts of the plan could reduce the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with maintaining orderly stock and bond markets and protecting investors. The plan would merge the S.E.C. with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates exchange-traded futures for oil, grains, currencies and the like.
The blueprint also suggests several areas where the S.E.C. should take a lighter approach to its oversight. Among them are allowing stock exchanges greater leeway to regulate themselves and streamlining the approval of new products, even allowing automatic approval of securities products that are being traded in foreign markets.
The proposal began last year as an effort by Henry M. Paulson Jr., secretary of the Treasury, to make American financial markets more competitive against overseas markets by modernizing a creaky regulatory system.
His goal was to streamline the different and sometimes clashing rules for commercial banks, savings and loans and nonbank mortgage lenders.
“I am not suggesting that more regulation is the answer, or even that more effective regulation can prevent the periods of financial market stress that seem to occur every 5 to 10 years,” Mr. Paulson will say in a speech on Monday, according to a draft. “I am suggesting that we should and can have a structure that is designed for the world we live in, one that is more flexible.”
Congress would have to approve almost every element of the proposal, and Democratic leaders are already drafting their own bills to impose tougher supervision over Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds and the fast-growing market in derivatives like credit default swaps.
But Mr. Paulson’s proposal for the Fed echoes ideas championed by Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
Both see the Fed overseeing risk across the entire financial spectrum, but Mr. Frank is likely to favor a stronger Fed role and to subject investment banks to the same rules that commercial banks now must follow, especially for capital reserves.
The Treasury plan would let Fed officials examine the practices and even the internal bookkeeping of brokerage firms, hedge funds, commodity-trading exchanges and any other institution that might pose a risk to the overall financial system.
That would be a significant expansion of the central bank’s regulatory mission.
When Fed officials agreed this month to rescue Bear Stearns, once the nation’s fifth-largest investment bank, they pointedly noted that the Fed never had the authority to monitor its financial condition or order it to bolster its protections against a collapse.
In two unprecedented moves, the Fed engineered a marriage between JPMorgan Chase and Bear Stearns, lending $29 billion to JPMorgan to prevent a Bear bankruptcy and a chain of defaults that might have felled much of the financial system.
For the first time since the 1930s, the Fed also agreed to let investment banks borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from its discount window, an emergency lending program reserved for commercial banks and other depository institutions.
But Mr. Paulson’s proposal would fall well short of the kind of regulation that Democrats have been proposing. Mr. Frank and other senior Democrats have argued that investment banks and other lightly regulated institutions now compete with commercial banks and should be subject to similar regulation, including examiners who regularly pore over their books and quietly demand changes in their practices.
In a recent interview, Mr. Frank said he realized the need for tighter regulation of Wall Street firms after a meeting with Charles O. Prince III, then chairman of Citigroup.
When Mr. Frank asked why Citigroup had kept billions of dollars in “structured investment vehicles” off the firm’s balance sheet, he recalled, Mr. Prince responded that Citigroup, as a bank holding company, would have been at a disadvantage because investment firms can operate with higher debt and lower capital reserves.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has taken a similar stance.
“Commercial banks continue to be supervised closely, and are subject to a host of rules meant to limit systemic risk,” Mr. Schumer wrote in an op-ed article on Friday in The Wall Street Journal. “But many other financial institutions, including investment banks and hedge funds, are regulated lightly, if at all, even though they act in many ways like banks.”
Mr. Paulson’s proposal is likely to provoke bruising turf battles in Congress among agencies and rival industry groups that benefit from the current regulations.
Administration officials acknowledged on Friday that they did not expect the proposal to become law this year, but said they hoped it would help frame a policy debate that would extend well after the elections in November.
In a nod to the debacle in mortgage lending, the administration proposed a Mortgage Origination Commission to evaluate the effectiveness of state governments in regulating mortgage brokers and protecting consumers.
The bulk of the proposal, however, was developed before soaring mortgage defaults set off a much broader credit crisis, and most of the proposals are geared to streamlining regulation.
This plan would consolidate a large number of regulators into roughly three big new agencies.
Bank supervision, now divided among five federal agencies, would be led by a Prudential Financial Regulator, which could send examiners into any bank or depository institution that is protected by either federal deposit insurance or other federal backstops. It would eliminate the distinction between “banks” and “thrift institutions,” which are already indistinguishable to most consumers, and shut down the Office of Thrift Supervision.
Any effort to merge the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with the S.E.C. is likely to provoke battles.
Yet another proposal would, for the first time, create a national regulator for insurance companies, an industry that state governments now oversee.
Administration officials argue that a national system would eliminate the inefficiencies of having 50 different state regulators, who have jealously guarded their powers and are likely to fight any federal encroachment.
Arthur Levitt, a former S.E.C. chairman who has long pushed for stronger investor protection, said his first impression of the plan was positive. Even though the S.E.C.’s powers might be reduced, Mr. Levitt said, the plan would create a broader agency to regulate business conduct in all financial services.
“It’s a thoughtful document,” he said. “I’m intrigued by the fact that it puts an emphasis on investor protection, and that it establishes an agency specifically for that purpose, which would operate across all markets. I think that’s a very constructive first step.”
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.
The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation’s hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they set off what is now the worst financial calamity in decades.
Democratic lawmakers are all but certain to say the proposal does not go far enough in restricting the kinds of practices that caused the financial crisis. Many of the proposals, like those that would consolidate regulatory agencies, have nothing to do with the turmoil in financial markets. And some of the proposals could actually reduce regulation.
According to a summary provided by the administration, the plan would consolidate an alphabet soup of banking and securities regulators into a powerful trio of overseers responsible for everything from banks and brokerage firms to hedge funds and private equity firms.
While the plan could expose Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds to greater scrutiny, it carefully avoids a call for tighter regulation.
The plan would not rein in practices that have been linked to the housing and mortgage crisis, like packaging risky subprime mortgages into securities carrying the highest ratings.
The plan would give the Fed some authority over Wall Street firms, but only when an investment bank’s practices threatened the entire financial system.
And the plan does not recommend tighter rules over the vast and largely unregulated markets for risk sharing and hedging, like credit default swaps, which are supposed to insure lenders against loss but became a speculative instrument themselves and gave many institutions a false sense of security.
Parts of the plan could reduce the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with maintaining orderly stock and bond markets and protecting investors. The plan would merge the S.E.C. with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates exchange-traded futures for oil, grains, currencies and the like.
The blueprint also suggests several areas where the S.E.C. should take a lighter approach to its oversight. Among them are allowing stock exchanges greater leeway to regulate themselves and streamlining the approval of new products, even allowing automatic approval of securities products that are being traded in foreign markets.
The proposal began last year as an effort by Henry M. Paulson Jr., secretary of the Treasury, to make American financial markets more competitive against overseas markets by modernizing a creaky regulatory system.
His goal was to streamline the different and sometimes clashing rules for commercial banks, savings and loans and nonbank mortgage lenders.
“I am not suggesting that more regulation is the answer, or even that more effective regulation can prevent the periods of financial market stress that seem to occur every 5 to 10 years,” Mr. Paulson will say in a speech on Monday, according to a draft. “I am suggesting that we should and can have a structure that is designed for the world we live in, one that is more flexible.”
Congress would have to approve almost every element of the proposal, and Democratic leaders are already drafting their own bills to impose tougher supervision over Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds and the fast-growing market in derivatives like credit default swaps.
But Mr. Paulson’s proposal for the Fed echoes ideas championed by Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
Both see the Fed overseeing risk across the entire financial spectrum, but Mr. Frank is likely to favor a stronger Fed role and to subject investment banks to the same rules that commercial banks now must follow, especially for capital reserves.
The Treasury plan would let Fed officials examine the practices and even the internal bookkeeping of brokerage firms, hedge funds, commodity-trading exchanges and any other institution that might pose a risk to the overall financial system.
That would be a significant expansion of the central bank’s regulatory mission.
When Fed officials agreed this month to rescue Bear Stearns, once the nation’s fifth-largest investment bank, they pointedly noted that the Fed never had the authority to monitor its financial condition or order it to bolster its protections against a collapse.
In two unprecedented moves, the Fed engineered a marriage between JPMorgan Chase and Bear Stearns, lending $29 billion to JPMorgan to prevent a Bear bankruptcy and a chain of defaults that might have felled much of the financial system.
For the first time since the 1930s, the Fed also agreed to let investment banks borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from its discount window, an emergency lending program reserved for commercial banks and other depository institutions.
But Mr. Paulson’s proposal would fall well short of the kind of regulation that Democrats have been proposing. Mr. Frank and other senior Democrats have argued that investment banks and other lightly regulated institutions now compete with commercial banks and should be subject to similar regulation, including examiners who regularly pore over their books and quietly demand changes in their practices.
In a recent interview, Mr. Frank said he realized the need for tighter regulation of Wall Street firms after a meeting with Charles O. Prince III, then chairman of Citigroup.
When Mr. Frank asked why Citigroup had kept billions of dollars in “structured investment vehicles” off the firm’s balance sheet, he recalled, Mr. Prince responded that Citigroup, as a bank holding company, would have been at a disadvantage because investment firms can operate with higher debt and lower capital reserves.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has taken a similar stance.
“Commercial banks continue to be supervised closely, and are subject to a host of rules meant to limit systemic risk,” Mr. Schumer wrote in an op-ed article on Friday in The Wall Street Journal. “But many other financial institutions, including investment banks and hedge funds, are regulated lightly, if at all, even though they act in many ways like banks.”
Mr. Paulson’s proposal is likely to provoke bruising turf battles in Congress among agencies and rival industry groups that benefit from the current regulations.
Administration officials acknowledged on Friday that they did not expect the proposal to become law this year, but said they hoped it would help frame a policy debate that would extend well after the elections in November.
In a nod to the debacle in mortgage lending, the administration proposed a Mortgage Origination Commission to evaluate the effectiveness of state governments in regulating mortgage brokers and protecting consumers.
The bulk of the proposal, however, was developed before soaring mortgage defaults set off a much broader credit crisis, and most of the proposals are geared to streamlining regulation.
This plan would consolidate a large number of regulators into roughly three big new agencies.
Bank supervision, now divided among five federal agencies, would be led by a Prudential Financial Regulator, which could send examiners into any bank or depository institution that is protected by either federal deposit insurance or other federal backstops. It would eliminate the distinction between “banks” and “thrift institutions,” which are already indistinguishable to most consumers, and shut down the Office of Thrift Supervision.
Any effort to merge the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with the S.E.C. is likely to provoke battles.
Yet another proposal would, for the first time, create a national regulator for insurance companies, an industry that state governments now oversee.
Administration officials argue that a national system would eliminate the inefficiencies of having 50 different state regulators, who have jealously guarded their powers and are likely to fight any federal encroachment.
Arthur Levitt, a former S.E.C. chairman who has long pushed for stronger investor protection, said his first impression of the plan was positive. Even though the S.E.C.’s powers might be reduced, Mr. Levitt said, the plan would create a broader agency to regulate business conduct in all financial services.
“It’s a thoughtful document,” he said. “I’m intrigued by the fact that it puts an emphasis on investor protection, and that it establishes an agency specifically for that purpose, which would operate across all markets. I think that’s a very constructive first step.”
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
US 'deploys nuclear sub to Persian Gulf'
An American nuclear submarine has crossed the Suez Canal to join the US fleet stationed in the Persian Gulf, Egyptian sources say.
Egyptian officials reported that the nuclear submarine crossed the canal along with a destroyer on Friday and Egyptian forces were put on high alert when the navy convoy was passing through the canal.
An American destroyer recently left the Persian Gulf, heading towards the Mediterranean Sea; earlier Thursday, a US Navy rescue ship crossed the canal to enter the Red Sea.
The deployment comes as recent reports allege that US Vice President Dick Cheney is seeking to rally the support of Middle Eastern states for launching an attack on Iran.
This is while US officials deny that Cheney's Mideast tour is linked to a possible military attack on Iran.
According to the latest reports, in recent months a major part of the US Navy has been deployed in and around the Persian Gulf.
The fleet is armed with nuclear weapons and cruise missiles and carries hundreds of aircraft and rapid reaction forces.
Egyptian officials reported that the nuclear submarine crossed the canal along with a destroyer on Friday and Egyptian forces were put on high alert when the navy convoy was passing through the canal.
An American destroyer recently left the Persian Gulf, heading towards the Mediterranean Sea; earlier Thursday, a US Navy rescue ship crossed the canal to enter the Red Sea.
The deployment comes as recent reports allege that US Vice President Dick Cheney is seeking to rally the support of Middle Eastern states for launching an attack on Iran.
This is while US officials deny that Cheney's Mideast tour is linked to a possible military attack on Iran.
According to the latest reports, in recent months a major part of the US Navy has been deployed in and around the Persian Gulf.
The fleet is armed with nuclear weapons and cruise missiles and carries hundreds of aircraft and rapid reaction forces.
The Die is Cast, The Cast Will Die
Darryl Robert Schoon
Mar 24, 2008
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, (i.e., the "business cycle") the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States 1801-1809
If Thomas Jefferson were running for the US presidency and spoke the words he uttered two centuries ago, he would be marginalized by today's press just as Ron Paul has been marginalized in his campaign for the US presidency.
Today, private bankers control not only the issuance of money in America, but the corporations (that will grow up around the bankers) control what Americans see, read, and hear because of their influence in the media. The clear and present dangers Jefferson warned about two centuries ago are now clearly present.
America threw off the yoke of British dominion in 1776 only to institute the very form of that dominion in 1913 when US banking and corporate interests - the same forces Jefferson warned about - recreated the British credit-based banking system in the US in the form of the Federal Reserve Bank - a system whereby private bankers control the issuance of the public currency; and, just as Jefferson had warned, America's freedoms are now at risk.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson, 1816
In 1913, Woodrow Wilson was President of the US when the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law. Too late, Wilson recognized the damage he had done; and his own words haunt us today as it is now clear what his approval of the Federal Reserve Act set in motion:
A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men...We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world - no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.
Today, Americans are looking to the Fed to protect them against the financial chaos threatening our economy. This is tantamount to the Jews in 1930s Germany looking to the Nazis to stave off a possible holocaust. The Fed cannot help America with its economic problems because the Fed is itself the cause of those problems.
While it is understandable that slaves would look to their masters to save them, it is futile to believe they will do so when their masters' only concern is to save themselves.
A PRIMER ON JEFFERSON'S WARNING
In capital credit-based systems, credit is fed into the economy in a process whereby producers and savers are indebted and bankers are enriched. Because credit is an integral part of capital systems, as the economy expands the debt and the interest it produces benefits bankers. The debt and the compounding interest on that debt in turn enslaves producers and savers.
Like parasites, bankers cannot exist without producers and savers. In capital credit-based systems, producers and savers cannot exist without bankers. In savings-based systems where gold and silver are money as was the US prior to 1913, producers and savers can and do prosper without central bank credit and debt.
Over time, in capital credit-based systems, producers and savers become so indebted that the economy is no longer able to service and retire previously created debt. This is where the US economy is today. Homeowners cannot pay their mortgages, consumers cannot pay their credit cards, and governments cannot pay their obligations without issuing even more obligations.
The banker's credit money system is now everywhere as are their resultant unsustainable debts; and those who profit by that system, the bankers (and the corporations that grew up around them) now control the media, the political process, and the agencies charged with overseeing and regulating the economy - the US Federal Reserve Bank, the SEC, the US Treasury, and indeed the US government itself: the Presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Court.
THE US GOVERNMENT, SUSAN WONES, & JP MORGAN CHASE
Susan Wones is one of many millions of Americans with credit cards. James Dimon is the chairman and CEO of Wall Street bank JP Morgan Chase which issued a credit card to Susan Wones at 0% interest. Then, one month later Mr. Dimon's bank JP Morgan Chase suddenly and without explanation raised the interest rates on Ms. Wones credit card to 23%.
Last week, Ms. Wones traveled from Denver to Washington DC where she and other upset credit card users were to testify before Congress about how they had been treated by the banks that issued their credit cards.
But when they reached Washington DC, Ms. Wones and the others were told the Republicans would not let them testify unless they first agreed to allow the banks to discuss their personal financial history in any forum at any time. Not willing to have their privacy rights invaded, Susan Wones and the majority of the witnesses chose to not testify.
As a consequence, Americans never heard about how Susan Wones' bank, JP Morgan Chase, had without notice or explanation raised her interest rate on her credit card to usurious levels. Instead they heard the media recount how JP Morgan Chase had bought Bear Stearns investment bank at the urging of the US Fed, a purchase underwritten and guaranteed up to $30 billion by American taxpayers such as Susan Wones.
What happened to Susan Wones and the others who had traveled to Washington DC was a victory for the credit card companies, the banks (JP Morgan Chase in particular), their lobbyists and the Washington DC power structure.
It was, however, a loss for the American people. But it was a loss in a war Americans have been losing since 1913, the year when private bankers took control of a once free nation and its once free markets. The prediction of Thomas Jefferson has come true.
The bankers sold us credit
By catering to our dreams
Then they sold us debts
With promised income streams
But then they raised our interest rates
And our debts could not be paid
We found too late 'twas sex they'd sold
And us the bankers had laid
YESTERDAY TODAY & TOMORROW
Last year, I wrote an article predicting an economic crisis would happen in the summer of 2007. The following is excerpted from Subprime America Infects Asia And Europe posted May 5, 2007.
http://www.drschoon.com/articles%5CSubprimeAmericaInfectsAsiaandEurope.pdf [pdf]
...Thailand's economy went into apoplectic shock and its currency and stock market fell by 50% in 1997 when international currency flows suddenly changed direction. America may soon be in for the same.
And if America falters and falls, the consequences of such will be felt around the world. Today, afternoon tea and scotch flow freely in The City as does dim sum in Hong Kong and Shanghai and sushi in Tokyo around their respective bourses. Soon, however, the risks that have lain dormant beneath globalization's foundation are about to erupt and a reordering of the world's financial geography is about to ensue.
It's spring 2007 and the sun is shining in the US, backyard BBQs are being cleaned in anticipation of summer's use A severe financial crisis, however, is in the offing; a crisis as unexpected as the Golden State Warriors' last minute streak to the NBA playoffs.
An unexpected financial crisis, however, will be much more consequential than Don Nelson's magical resurrection of the Warriors' NBA hopes. There, at least, the Warriors will have a fighting chance. But because most people don't know a financial crisis is in progress, they will have little chance of survival. This summer, America's subprime CDOs are coming home to roost, and not just to the US.
The financial crisis I predicted happened in August 2007 and is now gaining momentum. Central bankers in Europe, Asia, and America have made available billions of dollars in credit in a failed attempt to restart a stalled and faltering global economy. The central bankers have only succeeding it delaying the coming day of reckoning they themselves set in motion.
Credit leads to debt as well as to expansion and today the expansion has slowed but the debts have compounded. Central banks are the very institution that Thomas Jefferson warned about. Their role in today's problems is misunderstood, an error as fatal as in misdiagnosing a growing cancer.
Americans and indeed the world are looking to central banks to stabilize world markets. But central banks won't and can't because central banks are themselves the destabilizing force that first issued the credit that has now becoming the defaulting debt that can't be traded.
Central banks are the mechanism by which private bankers create the credit that turns into debt, debt that US homeowners, US consumers, and the US government can't afford to repay; and the global banks, pension funds, and insurance companies that bought those debts for their expected income streams are now becoming stuck with IOUs/sic investments as worthless as today's subprime CDOs.
The international currency flows I referred to in my article Subprime America Infects Asia And Europe will be affected by the inability of US consumers to pay back debts now bundled as investments that are now in the portfolios of banks, pension funds, and insurance companies.
And when international currency flows turn away from America, the spigot of credit which allowed and encouraged Americans to live beyond their means will be turned off. The consequences of such will be felt first in America and then in the world, a world which has come to depend on the credit-driven consumption of the US for its profits.
THE COLLAPSING US ECONOMY AND THE RISING PRICE OF GOLD
One year ago on March 21, 2007, gold was at $660. Today, the price of gold is $919. Gold has not seen its top nor has the US economy yet seen its bottom. Both gold and the US economy are currently in a correction. The difference is gold's correction will last days and the economy's correction will continue for years.
When the dot.com bubble burst in 2000, in 2001/2002 the Fed cut interest rates in a similar attempt to restart a slowing economy. They succeeded but in so doing created an even greater bubble, the largest residential and commercial property bubble in history.
Now that the property bubble is deflating and the economy again slowing, once again the Fed is lowering interest rates as it attempts to restart the economy. But this time as it pours liquidity and even more credit into world markets, the consequences will be far greater and far more dangerous than even the property bubble it inadvertently set in motion in 2002-2006.
The trick bag of central bankers is almost empty as they relentlessly pursue the only avenue kreditmeisters have at their disposal, issuing more credit. But this time, instead of a property bubble, the kreditmeisters are running the very real risk of igniting the greatest danger of all - hyperinflation, a hyperinflation which will result in the complete destruction of the US dollar - and if gold went to $850 an ounce in 1980 when inflation reached 13.91%, the price of gold will go through the roof if and when inflation turns into its most feared offspring, hyperinflation
...the United States has experienced high rates of inflation in the past and appears to be running the same type of fiscal policies that engendered hyperinflations in 20 countries over the past century.
Laurance Kotlikoff, Federal Reserve Bank
Review St Louis July/Aug 2006
RISK ANALYSIS REDUX
The dangers Thomas Jefferson warned about are upon us. Bankers and corporations control America's finances; the US Treasury is their bank, their credit money is now our debts and, as a consequence, the fate of the US is sealed.
We are but a shadow of the magnificent nation we once were. Our patrimony spent, our liberties reduced to sound bites and echoes of once tangible rights, America stands today on the bankers' gallows of debt, waiting for the bottom to give way as it someday will.
We can do no better than to repeat and reread the words of US President Woodrow Wilson who signed the despicable Federal Reserve Act into law. Those words were uttered and written almost one century ago. His words were true then; they are even truer today.
We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world - no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.
Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States 1913-1921
Today, we are no more able to stop the bankers and corporations in their continuing shake-down of America than the Nazis could be stopped in 1930s Germany. History is being played out in America as it was then in Germany. But times change and America will change in the future as Germany changed in the past.
Tomorrow will bring a better day. But until then, we can only persist and pray (and buy gold) until the bankers and corporations finish destroying and consuming what remains of the once-great nation known as America.
Darryl Robert Schoon
email: emailmedrs@yahoo.com
website: www.drschoon.com
website: www.survivethecrisis.com
About Darryl Robert Schoon
In college, I majored in political science with a focus on East Asia (B.A. University of California at Davis, 1966). My in-depth study of economics did not occur until much later.
In the 1990s, I became curious about the Great Depression and in the course of my study, I realized that most of my preconceptions about money and the economy were just that - preconceptions. I, like most others, did not really understand the nature of money and the economy. Now, I have some insights and answers about these critical matters.
In October 2005, Marshall Thurber, a close friend from law school convened The Positive Deviant Network (the PDN), a group of individuals whom Marshall believed to be "out-of-the-box" thinkers and I was asked to join. The PDN became a major catalyst in my writings on economic issues.
When I discovered others in the PDN shared my concerns about the US economy, I began writing down my thoughts. In March 2007 I presented my findings to the Positive Deviant Network in the form of an in-depth 148-page analysis, "How to Survive the Crisis and Prosper In The Process."
The reception to my presentation, though controversial, generated a significant amount of interest; and in May 2007, "How To Survive The Crisis And Prosper In The Process" was made available at www.survivethecrisis.com and I began writing articles on economic issues.
The interest in the book and my writings has been gratifying. During its first two months, www.survivethecrisis.com was accessed by over 10,000 viewers from 93 countries. Clearly, we had struck a chord and www.drschoon.com, has been created to address this interest.
Mar 24, 2008
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, (i.e., the "business cycle") the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States 1801-1809
If Thomas Jefferson were running for the US presidency and spoke the words he uttered two centuries ago, he would be marginalized by today's press just as Ron Paul has been marginalized in his campaign for the US presidency.
Today, private bankers control not only the issuance of money in America, but the corporations (that will grow up around the bankers) control what Americans see, read, and hear because of their influence in the media. The clear and present dangers Jefferson warned about two centuries ago are now clearly present.
America threw off the yoke of British dominion in 1776 only to institute the very form of that dominion in 1913 when US banking and corporate interests - the same forces Jefferson warned about - recreated the British credit-based banking system in the US in the form of the Federal Reserve Bank - a system whereby private bankers control the issuance of the public currency; and, just as Jefferson had warned, America's freedoms are now at risk.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson, 1816
In 1913, Woodrow Wilson was President of the US when the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law. Too late, Wilson recognized the damage he had done; and his own words haunt us today as it is now clear what his approval of the Federal Reserve Act set in motion:
A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men...We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world - no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.
Today, Americans are looking to the Fed to protect them against the financial chaos threatening our economy. This is tantamount to the Jews in 1930s Germany looking to the Nazis to stave off a possible holocaust. The Fed cannot help America with its economic problems because the Fed is itself the cause of those problems.
While it is understandable that slaves would look to their masters to save them, it is futile to believe they will do so when their masters' only concern is to save themselves.
A PRIMER ON JEFFERSON'S WARNING
In capital credit-based systems, credit is fed into the economy in a process whereby producers and savers are indebted and bankers are enriched. Because credit is an integral part of capital systems, as the economy expands the debt and the interest it produces benefits bankers. The debt and the compounding interest on that debt in turn enslaves producers and savers.
Like parasites, bankers cannot exist without producers and savers. In capital credit-based systems, producers and savers cannot exist without bankers. In savings-based systems where gold and silver are money as was the US prior to 1913, producers and savers can and do prosper without central bank credit and debt.
Over time, in capital credit-based systems, producers and savers become so indebted that the economy is no longer able to service and retire previously created debt. This is where the US economy is today. Homeowners cannot pay their mortgages, consumers cannot pay their credit cards, and governments cannot pay their obligations without issuing even more obligations.
The banker's credit money system is now everywhere as are their resultant unsustainable debts; and those who profit by that system, the bankers (and the corporations that grew up around them) now control the media, the political process, and the agencies charged with overseeing and regulating the economy - the US Federal Reserve Bank, the SEC, the US Treasury, and indeed the US government itself: the Presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Court.
THE US GOVERNMENT, SUSAN WONES, & JP MORGAN CHASE
Susan Wones is one of many millions of Americans with credit cards. James Dimon is the chairman and CEO of Wall Street bank JP Morgan Chase which issued a credit card to Susan Wones at 0% interest. Then, one month later Mr. Dimon's bank JP Morgan Chase suddenly and without explanation raised the interest rates on Ms. Wones credit card to 23%.
Last week, Ms. Wones traveled from Denver to Washington DC where she and other upset credit card users were to testify before Congress about how they had been treated by the banks that issued their credit cards.
But when they reached Washington DC, Ms. Wones and the others were told the Republicans would not let them testify unless they first agreed to allow the banks to discuss their personal financial history in any forum at any time. Not willing to have their privacy rights invaded, Susan Wones and the majority of the witnesses chose to not testify.
As a consequence, Americans never heard about how Susan Wones' bank, JP Morgan Chase, had without notice or explanation raised her interest rate on her credit card to usurious levels. Instead they heard the media recount how JP Morgan Chase had bought Bear Stearns investment bank at the urging of the US Fed, a purchase underwritten and guaranteed up to $30 billion by American taxpayers such as Susan Wones.
What happened to Susan Wones and the others who had traveled to Washington DC was a victory for the credit card companies, the banks (JP Morgan Chase in particular), their lobbyists and the Washington DC power structure.
It was, however, a loss for the American people. But it was a loss in a war Americans have been losing since 1913, the year when private bankers took control of a once free nation and its once free markets. The prediction of Thomas Jefferson has come true.
The bankers sold us credit
By catering to our dreams
Then they sold us debts
With promised income streams
But then they raised our interest rates
And our debts could not be paid
We found too late 'twas sex they'd sold
And us the bankers had laid
YESTERDAY TODAY & TOMORROW
Last year, I wrote an article predicting an economic crisis would happen in the summer of 2007. The following is excerpted from Subprime America Infects Asia And Europe posted May 5, 2007.
http://www.drschoon.com/articles%5CSubprimeAmericaInfectsAsiaandEurope.pdf [pdf]
...Thailand's economy went into apoplectic shock and its currency and stock market fell by 50% in 1997 when international currency flows suddenly changed direction. America may soon be in for the same.
And if America falters and falls, the consequences of such will be felt around the world. Today, afternoon tea and scotch flow freely in The City as does dim sum in Hong Kong and Shanghai and sushi in Tokyo around their respective bourses. Soon, however, the risks that have lain dormant beneath globalization's foundation are about to erupt and a reordering of the world's financial geography is about to ensue.
It's spring 2007 and the sun is shining in the US, backyard BBQs are being cleaned in anticipation of summer's use A severe financial crisis, however, is in the offing; a crisis as unexpected as the Golden State Warriors' last minute streak to the NBA playoffs.
An unexpected financial crisis, however, will be much more consequential than Don Nelson's magical resurrection of the Warriors' NBA hopes. There, at least, the Warriors will have a fighting chance. But because most people don't know a financial crisis is in progress, they will have little chance of survival. This summer, America's subprime CDOs are coming home to roost, and not just to the US.
The financial crisis I predicted happened in August 2007 and is now gaining momentum. Central bankers in Europe, Asia, and America have made available billions of dollars in credit in a failed attempt to restart a stalled and faltering global economy. The central bankers have only succeeding it delaying the coming day of reckoning they themselves set in motion.
Credit leads to debt as well as to expansion and today the expansion has slowed but the debts have compounded. Central banks are the very institution that Thomas Jefferson warned about. Their role in today's problems is misunderstood, an error as fatal as in misdiagnosing a growing cancer.
Americans and indeed the world are looking to central banks to stabilize world markets. But central banks won't and can't because central banks are themselves the destabilizing force that first issued the credit that has now becoming the defaulting debt that can't be traded.
Central banks are the mechanism by which private bankers create the credit that turns into debt, debt that US homeowners, US consumers, and the US government can't afford to repay; and the global banks, pension funds, and insurance companies that bought those debts for their expected income streams are now becoming stuck with IOUs/sic investments as worthless as today's subprime CDOs.
The international currency flows I referred to in my article Subprime America Infects Asia And Europe will be affected by the inability of US consumers to pay back debts now bundled as investments that are now in the portfolios of banks, pension funds, and insurance companies.
And when international currency flows turn away from America, the spigot of credit which allowed and encouraged Americans to live beyond their means will be turned off. The consequences of such will be felt first in America and then in the world, a world which has come to depend on the credit-driven consumption of the US for its profits.
THE COLLAPSING US ECONOMY AND THE RISING PRICE OF GOLD
One year ago on March 21, 2007, gold was at $660. Today, the price of gold is $919. Gold has not seen its top nor has the US economy yet seen its bottom. Both gold and the US economy are currently in a correction. The difference is gold's correction will last days and the economy's correction will continue for years.
When the dot.com bubble burst in 2000, in 2001/2002 the Fed cut interest rates in a similar attempt to restart a slowing economy. They succeeded but in so doing created an even greater bubble, the largest residential and commercial property bubble in history.
Now that the property bubble is deflating and the economy again slowing, once again the Fed is lowering interest rates as it attempts to restart the economy. But this time as it pours liquidity and even more credit into world markets, the consequences will be far greater and far more dangerous than even the property bubble it inadvertently set in motion in 2002-2006.
The trick bag of central bankers is almost empty as they relentlessly pursue the only avenue kreditmeisters have at their disposal, issuing more credit. But this time, instead of a property bubble, the kreditmeisters are running the very real risk of igniting the greatest danger of all - hyperinflation, a hyperinflation which will result in the complete destruction of the US dollar - and if gold went to $850 an ounce in 1980 when inflation reached 13.91%, the price of gold will go through the roof if and when inflation turns into its most feared offspring, hyperinflation
...the United States has experienced high rates of inflation in the past and appears to be running the same type of fiscal policies that engendered hyperinflations in 20 countries over the past century.
Laurance Kotlikoff, Federal Reserve Bank
Review St Louis July/Aug 2006
RISK ANALYSIS REDUX
The dangers Thomas Jefferson warned about are upon us. Bankers and corporations control America's finances; the US Treasury is their bank, their credit money is now our debts and, as a consequence, the fate of the US is sealed.
We are but a shadow of the magnificent nation we once were. Our patrimony spent, our liberties reduced to sound bites and echoes of once tangible rights, America stands today on the bankers' gallows of debt, waiting for the bottom to give way as it someday will.
We can do no better than to repeat and reread the words of US President Woodrow Wilson who signed the despicable Federal Reserve Act into law. Those words were uttered and written almost one century ago. His words were true then; they are even truer today.
We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world - no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.
Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States 1913-1921
Today, we are no more able to stop the bankers and corporations in their continuing shake-down of America than the Nazis could be stopped in 1930s Germany. History is being played out in America as it was then in Germany. But times change and America will change in the future as Germany changed in the past.
Tomorrow will bring a better day. But until then, we can only persist and pray (and buy gold) until the bankers and corporations finish destroying and consuming what remains of the once-great nation known as America.
Darryl Robert Schoon
email: emailmedrs@yahoo.com
website: www.drschoon.com
website: www.survivethecrisis.com
About Darryl Robert Schoon
In college, I majored in political science with a focus on East Asia (B.A. University of California at Davis, 1966). My in-depth study of economics did not occur until much later.
In the 1990s, I became curious about the Great Depression and in the course of my study, I realized that most of my preconceptions about money and the economy were just that - preconceptions. I, like most others, did not really understand the nature of money and the economy. Now, I have some insights and answers about these critical matters.
In October 2005, Marshall Thurber, a close friend from law school convened The Positive Deviant Network (the PDN), a group of individuals whom Marshall believed to be "out-of-the-box" thinkers and I was asked to join. The PDN became a major catalyst in my writings on economic issues.
When I discovered others in the PDN shared my concerns about the US economy, I began writing down my thoughts. In March 2007 I presented my findings to the Positive Deviant Network in the form of an in-depth 148-page analysis, "How to Survive the Crisis and Prosper In The Process."
The reception to my presentation, though controversial, generated a significant amount of interest; and in May 2007, "How To Survive The Crisis And Prosper In The Process" was made available at www.survivethecrisis.com and I began writing articles on economic issues.
The interest in the book and my writings has been gratifying. During its first two months, www.survivethecrisis.com was accessed by over 10,000 viewers from 93 countries. Clearly, we had struck a chord and www.drschoon.com, has been created to address this interest.
Cult figure killed by Napa man, defense says
Napa Valley Register, USA
Mar. 24, 2008
Marsha Dorgan
www.napavalleyregister.com
The trial of a young Napa man accused of shooting an elderly male acquaintance in 2007 got under way Monday with opening statements from defense attorney Jess Raphael and Napa County Deputy District Attorney Gary Van Camp.
Van Camp told the jury of 12 that Alex Taylor, 26, deliberately and intentionally shot George Davis, 62, on April 22, 2007, at Davis’ home in a retirement apartment complex on Redwood Road.
Raphael repeatedly stressed to the jury that Davis, who taught Taylor and others about witchcraft and ran a cult of sorts, had a “hold” over Taylor and used his “powers” to control him.
Taylor has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but Van Camp said Taylor should be held responsible.
“The defendant shot the victim five times at the victim’s apartment. He left the apartment, changed his clothes and hid the weapon in a shed,” Van Camp said.
“He’s blaming his mental illness and his ruined military career for this,” Van Camp said. “Mr. Taylor owed money to the victim.”
Van Camp also told the jury that Davis had talked about suicide and suggested Taylor assist in him ending his life.
Both Van Camp and Raphael noted to the jury that Davis practiced witchcraft and had several young people sign a contract stating that Davis had power over their lives.
Taylor told investigators that he believed Davis could put a curse on a person’s life, said Raphael, a deputy in the Napa County Public Defenders Office.
Although jurors saw pictures Davis had of men without their shirts on, Raphael stated that none of the men associated with Davis said he made any sexual advances toward them.
Since Taylor has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, his trial will have two phases. He first will be tried by a jury that will determine if Taylor is guilty of murder. If Taylor is found guilty, the same jury will listen to mere evidence to decide if he was sane at the time of the killing.
The trial is expected to last about six weeks.
If found guilty, Taylor is facing 25 years to life in prison.
Napa County Superior Judge Ray Guadagni is presiding over the trial.
Davis’ body was discovered by another acquaintance. The man called 911 after finding Davis in the bedroom with gunshot wounds to his head. Taylor showed up at the apartment some time later and consented to be interviewed at the police station. He was arrested after the interview.
Mar. 24, 2008
Marsha Dorgan
www.napavalleyregister.com
The trial of a young Napa man accused of shooting an elderly male acquaintance in 2007 got under way Monday with opening statements from defense attorney Jess Raphael and Napa County Deputy District Attorney Gary Van Camp.
Van Camp told the jury of 12 that Alex Taylor, 26, deliberately and intentionally shot George Davis, 62, on April 22, 2007, at Davis’ home in a retirement apartment complex on Redwood Road.
Raphael repeatedly stressed to the jury that Davis, who taught Taylor and others about witchcraft and ran a cult of sorts, had a “hold” over Taylor and used his “powers” to control him.
Taylor has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but Van Camp said Taylor should be held responsible.
“The defendant shot the victim five times at the victim’s apartment. He left the apartment, changed his clothes and hid the weapon in a shed,” Van Camp said.
“He’s blaming his mental illness and his ruined military career for this,” Van Camp said. “Mr. Taylor owed money to the victim.”
Van Camp also told the jury that Davis had talked about suicide and suggested Taylor assist in him ending his life.
Both Van Camp and Raphael noted to the jury that Davis practiced witchcraft and had several young people sign a contract stating that Davis had power over their lives.
Taylor told investigators that he believed Davis could put a curse on a person’s life, said Raphael, a deputy in the Napa County Public Defenders Office.
Although jurors saw pictures Davis had of men without their shirts on, Raphael stated that none of the men associated with Davis said he made any sexual advances toward them.
Since Taylor has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, his trial will have two phases. He first will be tried by a jury that will determine if Taylor is guilty of murder. If Taylor is found guilty, the same jury will listen to mere evidence to decide if he was sane at the time of the killing.
The trial is expected to last about six weeks.
If found guilty, Taylor is facing 25 years to life in prison.
Napa County Superior Judge Ray Guadagni is presiding over the trial.
Davis’ body was discovered by another acquaintance. The man called 911 after finding Davis in the bedroom with gunshot wounds to his head. Taylor showed up at the apartment some time later and consented to be interviewed at the police station. He was arrested after the interview.
gold coming back up
COMMODITY FUTURES
VALUE CHANGE % CHANGE
Oil 102.85 1.63 1.61
Gold 944.70 9.70 1.04
Natural Gas 9.46 0.04 0.41
VALUE CHANGE % CHANGE
Oil 102.85 1.63 1.61
Gold 944.70 9.70 1.04
Natural Gas 9.46 0.04 0.41
Monday, March 24, 2008
Doomsday cult leader faces criminal charges
TV Novosti / Russia Today, Russia
Mar. 24, 2008
A criminal case for inciting religious and national hatred has been launched against the leader of the doomsday cult group, Pyotr Kuznetsov, in Russia’s Penza region.
Around thirty of his followers, including children, barricaded themselves in an underground bunker last November and are still believed to be there.
They have been waiting for the end of the world, which they said is due in May.
They claim to have enough supplies to last till then.
The group have threatened to blow themselves up if any attempt is made to remove them by force.
Earlier, there were reports that some of the cult members might have left the hideout as local residents spotted unusual movement around the cave, but no official confirmation has followed.
Meanwhile, Kuznetsov himself is being held in a psychiatric institution.
Pyotr Kuznetsov, doomsday
Carolyn Jessop talks about her Escape from the FLDS
Carolyn Jessop was born into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a group splintered from and renounced by the Mormon Church, and spent most of her life in Colorado City, Arizona, the main base of the FLDS.
Since leaving the group in 2003, she has lived in West Jordan, Utah, with her eight children. Jessop is the author of Escape, the first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman’s flight to freedom with her children.
In this video, filmed at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, Colorado, Jessop talks about her the background on ‘Escape,’ reads a chapter from the book, and answers questions from the audience.
Since leaving the group in 2003, she has lived in West Jordan, Utah, with her eight children. Jessop is the author of Escape, the first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman’s flight to freedom with her children.
In this video, filmed at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, Colorado, Jessop talks about her the background on ‘Escape,’ reads a chapter from the book, and answers questions from the audience.
Church of Scientology buys castle in Johannesburg
Church of Scientology has acquired the famous Johannesburg landmark, the Kyalami Castle, to be the home of its new advanced spiritual retreat.
This marks a significant step for the Scientologists who until now had to travel all the way to the US, Australia or England for their higher spiritual progress, said Paul Sondergaard, National Director of the Church’s Public Affairs Office .
“For all African Scientologists, this is a dream finally come true,” Sondergaard said, adding “It means a lot for the future expansion of the Church in Africa . ”
The 64,000-square-foot castle on 22 acres of land will be providing religious services to followers throughout the continent. It is the latest acquisition of the 66 buildings the Church has purchased internationally over the past five years to accommodate the Church’s expansion.
Sondergaard said “The Kyalami Castle is the best yet and a fitting tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Church in Southern Africa.”
This marks a significant step for the Scientologists who until now had to travel all the way to the US, Australia or England for their higher spiritual progress, said Paul Sondergaard, National Director of the Church’s Public Affairs Office .
“For all African Scientologists, this is a dream finally come true,” Sondergaard said, adding “It means a lot for the future expansion of the Church in Africa . ”
The 64,000-square-foot castle on 22 acres of land will be providing religious services to followers throughout the continent. It is the latest acquisition of the 66 buildings the Church has purchased internationally over the past five years to accommodate the Church’s expansion.
Sondergaard said “The Kyalami Castle is the best yet and a fitting tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Church in Southern Africa.”
10,000 year old structure found in Canadian lake
In the Spring of 2005, Canadian divers conducting a project in MacDonald Lake at the Haliburton Forest and Wild Life Reserve, came upon an ancient stone structure - 40 feet below the present lake level. Initially the structure was considered to have been ferried by glaciers created during the last ice age, thousands of years ago and dumped where they happened to melt at the end of one of the more recent cold-freezes.
There’s been several ice ages in the history of the Earth. What’s commonly called ‘the ice age,’ is actually the most recent one, which began about two million years ago, and was characterized by cold, and relatively warm phases. Out of that, there have been four major continental glaciations recorded in North America. The last began about 70,000 years ago, and ended about 8,000 BC. At the peak of the last glaciation, approximately 97% of Canada was covered by ice.
We’re currently in an interglacial phase that could last for another 10,000 or more years.
The discovery of this mystery rock formation (an assembly of now seven rocks) were thought to be compound perched erratics (found in northern North America), where 2 or even 3 rocks happened to land on top of each other, leaving behind a natural structure. However, when geologists and archaeologists saw images of the object - a 1,000 pound, elongated and south pointing rock sitting on baseball-sized stones at each end, which in turn, were resting on a massive, several thousand pound slab on top of the ledge, they expressed doubts about its natural origin.
Foremost, the straight edges and lack of roundness, as would characterize rocks scoured by glaciers, prompted them to discard the erratic theory. But could the structure be of human origin? If so, how could that be established?
Subsequent dives closely examined the structure for any signs of the use of tools, decorative images or other irregularities, to no avail. The thick layer of silt covering the vertical surfaces suggests that certainly within living memory no human has ever touched the structure.
Geologists have now pointed to a dramatic drought, which gripped Eastern North America between 9000 and 7000 BCE. Conditions were so dry during that time that lake levels in the Great Lakes were up to 50 meters lower and inland lakes, like McDonald Lake, which were still fed by spring melt and summer rain water, were assumed several dozen feet lower than their present water levels.
Many questions remain about the site, but knowing that this structure is possibly 11,000 years old, will it go overlooked?
Will it go without much notice, as the Indian site of Poompuhur has been, where a possibly man-made ancient structure lies hidden at the bottom of the Bay of Bengal? Will it be ignored as Japan’s ancient underwater megaliths have been; stone formations resembling a step pyramid, that lie just off the coast of Yonaguni Jima, an island in Japan’s Ryukyu archipelago? A structure, that if proven man-made could only have been built approximately 10,000 years ago, when that area of the world lay above the sea.
What about the ruins found in Lima, Peru, described as the ‘Tropical Stonehenge,’ an astronomical observatory; giant stone carvings, apparently 4,200 years old, that align with sunrise and sunset on Dec. 21? Findings like these don’t correlate well, with what you’ve been taught, and for some reason, it seems almost forbidden to know. Is it not obvious that history changing archeology is passed off as irrelevant when found to not fit the current historical mold? Not a second thought given, but why?
Is it not possible to imagine an advanced culture - forgotten in myth? Has it not been man that from 1 AD to 2000 AD, went from horses and swords, to airplanes and nuclear bombs? It took two thousand years for man to develop the power to level cities at the push of a switch. Our current historical graph states we’ve had that opportunity five times, but, if there’s evidence that man has been around longer, how many other opportunities have we had to develop into an advanced society? How much of the ‘legends’ can we believe to be true?
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Burning the candle at both ends
By Rachel Ehrenfeld & Alyssa A. Lappen
March 22, 2008
With the U.S. economy “obviously going through a tough time,” America should welcome capital investments even from foreign sovereign wealth funds, President George W. Bush asserted on March 14, 2008 at New York's Economic Club.
“It's our money to begin with,” he added, referring to roughly $95 trillion in OPEC holdings of U.S. dollars and investments accumulated largely through oil sales. Contending that we can “protect our people against investments that jeopardize our national security,” Mr. Bush added, “Seems like we ought to let it come back.” But President Bush is ignoring some basic principles of U.S. capitalism and democracy: personal and corporate ownership rights are nearly sacrosanct.
Dollars may be “coming back,” but they do so with strings attached, giving foreigners huge leverage and control over the U.S. currency and economy. Of the world's 86 million barrels in daily crude oil output, the Middle East produces only 25.6 percent. With escalating prices, crude oil now runs $111 per barrel, putting $2.4 billion daily in Middle East pockets.
Unlike President Bush, market observers don't think we can burn the candle at both ends. Legendary investor and Vanguard Group founder John Bogle blasted the “orgy of speculation” that granted foreign investors excessive influence over the U.S. economy. “We should have never let ourselves get into this position where so many dollars are . . . held by foreign countries and bought by foreign countries that are enemies,” he stated also on March 14. “Friend or enemy, they have a lot of control over what happens here,'' he said.
Indeed, major Middle East oil producers have a different understanding than Americans of economics and ownership. The October 2006 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) “Mecca Declaration” is but one, albeit pointed example of this fundamental difference. Islam views all property owned by Muslims as held “in trust for Allah.” The Qur'an decrees, “The land belongs to Allah, He gives it as a heritage to those of His devotees whom He pleases” (15:128). Therefore, Muslim property “shall be subject to the terms and conditions established by their owners.” While OPEC and the Saudis blame the Bush administration for high oil prices, by “mismanaging” the U.S. economy, in fact OPEC policies cause the escalation.
In a significant indication of brazen Saudi determination to undermine the U.S. and Western economies with petrodollars, King Abdullah rebuffed President Bush's recent appeal to boost production and lower prices.
“I would hope, as OPEC considers different production levels, that they understand that if... one of their biggest consumers' economy suffers, it will mean less purchases, less gas and oil sold,” the President pleaded. Without hesitating, however, Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi responded, “We will raise production when the market justifies it.” Considering the effects on U.S. markets, the Saudi strategy should be recognized as economic warfare.
Despite protracted violence against the United States, West and Israel since 1979, only the September 11 attacks forced America to recognize the Islamic holy war (jihad) waged by al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.
What will it take for the United States to recognize the far more dangerous and important part of that jihadeconomic warfare (financial jihad, or al-jihad bi-al-mal)-which the Saudis and Gulf States now aggressively also pursue? Shari'a mandates that Muslims fund jihad: Qur'an 61:10-11, “strive for the cause of Allah with your wealth and your lives. . . .” And Qur'an 49:15, “(true) believers are only those who…strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah.” “Financial Jihad [is] … more important … than self-sacrificing,” says Saudi Islamic cleric and Muslim Brother Hamud bin Uqla al-Shuaibi.
This open economic warfare, however, has effected U.S. economic or foreign policies, much less media coverage or presidential election campaigns or debates.
While the U.S. currency weakens and Saudi and Gulf interests continue their binge buying of strategic U.S. assets and financial institutions, their petrodollars lure more and more ignorant, and even desperate American bankers and investors into the purported glimmer of shari'a banking — a gold-plated Islamic money pit.
The president and his economic advisors should heed Jack Bogle. Without emergency measures to redirect U.S. economic policy and market regulations, the petrodollar- and shari'a-driven takeover of America will indeed endanger national and global security.
Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is director of the American Center for Democracy and member of the Committee on the Present Danger. Alyssa A. Lappen, Senior Fellow at the ACD, is a former editor for Forbes, Corporate Finance, Working Woman and Institutional Investor.
March 22, 2008
With the U.S. economy “obviously going through a tough time,” America should welcome capital investments even from foreign sovereign wealth funds, President George W. Bush asserted on March 14, 2008 at New York's Economic Club.
“It's our money to begin with,” he added, referring to roughly $95 trillion in OPEC holdings of U.S. dollars and investments accumulated largely through oil sales. Contending that we can “protect our people against investments that jeopardize our national security,” Mr. Bush added, “Seems like we ought to let it come back.” But President Bush is ignoring some basic principles of U.S. capitalism and democracy: personal and corporate ownership rights are nearly sacrosanct.
Dollars may be “coming back,” but they do so with strings attached, giving foreigners huge leverage and control over the U.S. currency and economy. Of the world's 86 million barrels in daily crude oil output, the Middle East produces only 25.6 percent. With escalating prices, crude oil now runs $111 per barrel, putting $2.4 billion daily in Middle East pockets.
Unlike President Bush, market observers don't think we can burn the candle at both ends. Legendary investor and Vanguard Group founder John Bogle blasted the “orgy of speculation” that granted foreign investors excessive influence over the U.S. economy. “We should have never let ourselves get into this position where so many dollars are . . . held by foreign countries and bought by foreign countries that are enemies,” he stated also on March 14. “Friend or enemy, they have a lot of control over what happens here,'' he said.
Indeed, major Middle East oil producers have a different understanding than Americans of economics and ownership. The October 2006 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) “Mecca Declaration” is but one, albeit pointed example of this fundamental difference. Islam views all property owned by Muslims as held “in trust for Allah.” The Qur'an decrees, “The land belongs to Allah, He gives it as a heritage to those of His devotees whom He pleases” (15:128). Therefore, Muslim property “shall be subject to the terms and conditions established by their owners.” While OPEC and the Saudis blame the Bush administration for high oil prices, by “mismanaging” the U.S. economy, in fact OPEC policies cause the escalation.
In a significant indication of brazen Saudi determination to undermine the U.S. and Western economies with petrodollars, King Abdullah rebuffed President Bush's recent appeal to boost production and lower prices.
“I would hope, as OPEC considers different production levels, that they understand that if... one of their biggest consumers' economy suffers, it will mean less purchases, less gas and oil sold,” the President pleaded. Without hesitating, however, Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi responded, “We will raise production when the market justifies it.” Considering the effects on U.S. markets, the Saudi strategy should be recognized as economic warfare.
Despite protracted violence against the United States, West and Israel since 1979, only the September 11 attacks forced America to recognize the Islamic holy war (jihad) waged by al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.
What will it take for the United States to recognize the far more dangerous and important part of that jihadeconomic warfare (financial jihad, or al-jihad bi-al-mal)-which the Saudis and Gulf States now aggressively also pursue? Shari'a mandates that Muslims fund jihad: Qur'an 61:10-11, “strive for the cause of Allah with your wealth and your lives. . . .” And Qur'an 49:15, “(true) believers are only those who…strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah.” “Financial Jihad [is] … more important … than self-sacrificing,” says Saudi Islamic cleric and Muslim Brother Hamud bin Uqla al-Shuaibi.
This open economic warfare, however, has effected U.S. economic or foreign policies, much less media coverage or presidential election campaigns or debates.
While the U.S. currency weakens and Saudi and Gulf interests continue their binge buying of strategic U.S. assets and financial institutions, their petrodollars lure more and more ignorant, and even desperate American bankers and investors into the purported glimmer of shari'a banking — a gold-plated Islamic money pit.
The president and his economic advisors should heed Jack Bogle. Without emergency measures to redirect U.S. economic policy and market regulations, the petrodollar- and shari'a-driven takeover of America will indeed endanger national and global security.
Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is director of the American Center for Democracy and member of the Committee on the Present Danger. Alyssa A. Lappen, Senior Fellow at the ACD, is a former editor for Forbes, Corporate Finance, Working Woman and Institutional Investor.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Good Friday pilgrims follow Biblical footsteps
Security tight amid terror fears as Christians gather in Jerusalem
Fri., March. 21, 2008
JERUSALEM - Thousands of Christians from around the world crowded the stone alleyways of Jerusalem's Old City to mark Good Friday, retracing the route the Bible says Jesus took to his crucifixion.
Some pilgrims carried large wooden crosses as they walked down the Via Dolorosa, or Way of Sorrows, stopping at 14 stations that commemorate events that Christians believe befell Jesus as he was led to his death.
Many pilgrims prayed in the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which tradition holds was the site of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. Some chanted hymns, while others prostrated themselves on a smooth stone slab marking the spot where Jesus' body was believed to have been placed after being removed from the cross.
The crowd in one of the Old City's streets included two dozen members of an American church group from Ohio, dressed in white. Eileen Joiner, 43, from Akron, said she was moved to be in Jerusalem.
"You see a picture and it looks impressive. You see it in person, and it's always so much more," she said.
'Presence of God'
The group's pastor, Janice Skeen, said a recent shooting attack in Jerusalem had not deterred them. "You can't escape the feeling and the presence of God here. This is his special land," she said.
The March 6 attack by a Palestinian gunman killed eight young students at a Jewish seminary in the city.
Police said thousands of security personnel were deployed around Jerusalem for Good Friday and the Jewish festival of Purim, which also falls this weekend. Jews celebrate Purim by dressing up in costumes and reading the Book of Esther, which recounts a victory by the Jews over their enemies in ancient Persia.
At a Purim celebration just outside the walls of the Old City, hundreds of Jewish children dressed up as angels, superheroes and rabbits, and were entertained by jugglers and clowns.
Police are also on high alert because of fears of a revenge attack for the February slaying of a high-ranking commander in the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Israel denied involvement, but Hezbollah threatened to avenge his death with an attack on Israeli targets. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the alert level Friday was one below the maximum.
Attacks feared
Israel banned West Bank residents from entering Israel for fear militants might carry out attacks, but the closure also meant many Palestinian Christians couldn't make it to Jerusalem.
Samir Helou, an engineering lecturer from east Jerusalem, said there were markedly fewer local Christians in the Old City this year.
"We pray every year for a better situation, and then every year becomes worse," he said.
Anita Ekka, a Catholic nun from Madhya Pradesh, India, said she appealed for an end to conflict.
"We pray here for the peace of the world, of the heart and of the mind," she said.
Fri., March. 21, 2008
JERUSALEM - Thousands of Christians from around the world crowded the stone alleyways of Jerusalem's Old City to mark Good Friday, retracing the route the Bible says Jesus took to his crucifixion.
Some pilgrims carried large wooden crosses as they walked down the Via Dolorosa, or Way of Sorrows, stopping at 14 stations that commemorate events that Christians believe befell Jesus as he was led to his death.
Many pilgrims prayed in the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which tradition holds was the site of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. Some chanted hymns, while others prostrated themselves on a smooth stone slab marking the spot where Jesus' body was believed to have been placed after being removed from the cross.
The crowd in one of the Old City's streets included two dozen members of an American church group from Ohio, dressed in white. Eileen Joiner, 43, from Akron, said she was moved to be in Jerusalem.
"You see a picture and it looks impressive. You see it in person, and it's always so much more," she said.
'Presence of God'
The group's pastor, Janice Skeen, said a recent shooting attack in Jerusalem had not deterred them. "You can't escape the feeling and the presence of God here. This is his special land," she said.
The March 6 attack by a Palestinian gunman killed eight young students at a Jewish seminary in the city.
Police said thousands of security personnel were deployed around Jerusalem for Good Friday and the Jewish festival of Purim, which also falls this weekend. Jews celebrate Purim by dressing up in costumes and reading the Book of Esther, which recounts a victory by the Jews over their enemies in ancient Persia.
At a Purim celebration just outside the walls of the Old City, hundreds of Jewish children dressed up as angels, superheroes and rabbits, and were entertained by jugglers and clowns.
Police are also on high alert because of fears of a revenge attack for the February slaying of a high-ranking commander in the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Israel denied involvement, but Hezbollah threatened to avenge his death with an attack on Israeli targets. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the alert level Friday was one below the maximum.
Attacks feared
Israel banned West Bank residents from entering Israel for fear militants might carry out attacks, but the closure also meant many Palestinian Christians couldn't make it to Jerusalem.
Samir Helou, an engineering lecturer from east Jerusalem, said there were markedly fewer local Christians in the Old City this year.
"We pray every year for a better situation, and then every year becomes worse," he said.
Anita Ekka, a Catholic nun from Madhya Pradesh, India, said she appealed for an end to conflict.
"We pray here for the peace of the world, of the heart and of the mind," she said.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Vision: America O America
By Swarna Jha,
FOR AUDIO: CLICK HERE
http://www.twango.com/media/SWARNAJHA.public/SWARNAJHA.10001
GREETINGS IN THE NAME OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
A WARM WELCOME TO YOU TO-TELL-A-VISION
PRAYER
Father I pray, in the Name of Jesus Christ, for all those who are listening to this vision.
Lord, I pray that their love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;
That they may approve things that are excellent; that they may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ.
11Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God. Amen
This is the first audio vision in the TELL-A-VISION SERIES
Vision: America O America
I was shown this vision part after part, from the 5th to the 11th of August. On the 6th of August 2007, late that night, I was lifted up by the Beak of The Dove, by a bone in my shoulder, and flown over the land of America . There was so much to see, and yet, inspite of all that I share here, it is but a glimpse.
The sky over America was grey. Around the land of America , this is what I saw:
I saw money but no wealth
food but no health
knowledge but no wisdom
Morals, in some churches, which are of no avail in the Kingdom
I saw eyes glued to see the American dream, but blind to the Kingdom vision
Greedy leaders seeking money, depending not on God’s Provision.
I saw breasts running dry, that could not feed others,
Deceivers were milking the Christian sisters and brothers
The richest nation was yet in debt. I saw a large vault door, marked the Nation’s gold. Inside, it was empty. There was no gold there.
I saw beds in houses, but no sleep. The sheets looked unslept in, the bedroom carpets of some looked worn from pacing to and fro, in deep anxiety.
I saw many at the dining table, with a plateful of multi-colored capsules and tablets, decorating the plate as dressing. I saw that some were mere ‘vanity pills’.
I saw fear, confusion, anxiety in the Nation and in the church in America .
Erosion erosion erosion.
Mess mess mess.
I saw false security, false confidence.
Many beautiful eagles, had turned to vultures.
I saw church leaders who had received a call from God to ‘Go on a sabbatical’, refuse, and choose rather to stay and ‘run their corporations’.
I heard the Lord Say, “ I Gave America , leaders, pioneers, families.”
I asked , ‘Lord where are they?”
“ They aborted them,” came the Reply.
There were abortions in abortion clinics, and abortions in the church.
I saw people beaten black and blue, thrown out of church to where the dustbins lay. A few managed to crawl their way to the main road, and were divinely revived.
I saw some women, sitting in churches, with dark glasses putting on make up very carefully. They were wearing dark gray polo neck sweaters, hiding scars, of abuse. I saw that the sun glasses were to hide the severely bruised eyes. The make-up was to prevent people from noticing that they were women who suffered abuse. Underneath the sweater were further wounds that they were hiding. I saw oppression on their faces.
Across on the horizon, I saw the statue of liberty. As I gazed at it, looking puzzled, I was told, “ Liberty is not a statue”.
As I was flown over the land of America , I saw T.V. studios, shooting plotted/scripted ‘reality’ shows, I saw in homes, unnatural foods and unnatural relationships.
I saw young adults/ children in garages and hidden buildings, experimenting on making home-made bombs.
I saw murderers, rapists, child abusers, dangerous criminals, being given a small piece of paper such as one sees cocaine wrapped in. They were to read a short prayer scribbled on this little chit of paper, after making a donation, and were immediately declared Christians by these greedy leaders. These criminals had a gold color cross placed around their necks by these leaders and sent through a door, where there was a passage that was dark within. These unredeemed sat in churches, with the redeemed. They were like a time bomb ready to explode. They spoke christianese fluently. They were Christians, not by having repented, but just by a prayer that they had said by rote.
I saw various piles of wood ready for the sacrifice unto the Lord, but the people who had before been ready to sacrifice their lives, unto the Lord, were now playing ping pong, tennis/games or swimming in adjacent streams. They would not lay down what was precious to them. These were those God had GREAT plans for, but they just could not come out of their leisure mode.
Sacrifice had now become an unfamiliar word to them.
Their games would soon end, for the Lord in His Grace and Mercy would be chastising them, yet deal graciously with them.
In the west, I saw a giant pile of marijuana and drugs burning, and the smoke from this was wafting all over the country giving people new highs.
I saw what seemed like the spiritual environment, in the Book of Judges, ‘every man doing that which was right in his own eyes’, and when the oppression was too great, a leader was raised up to usher in a ‘revival’.
When that ‘high’ evaporated, many went back to’ business as usual’, and talked of ‘the good ole days of revival’.
I saw many nation-wide gatherings, calling the church and nation to repentance.
Many of the leaders who had preached doctrinal errors, spoken false prophecies, fleeced their Christian brothers and sisters for personal gain, etc, stood on the forefront, and confessed everyone else’s sins, but never their own biblical errors, or hidden sin. They just did not RECANT.
I saw many Christian ‘ideas’ for ‘doing church’, rise and fizzle, and it was back to ‘business as usual’, for many.
People met in physical squares and cyber squares and thrashed out ‘biblical concepts’, and discussed and argued biblical matters to death. Conspiracy theories abounded in the church and in the nation.
God lovers though, continued their lives, distancing themselves from the corruption around, much as if they lived in another country, though they were on American soil.
Then suddenly, I heard the word ‘requisitioning’. Like the army in war requisitions property/vehicles etc. Requisitioning.
I saw the seats of the mega churches shake, the leaders stood on stage, under the bright lights but the people/congregations were shaking, in their seats. Those who went bankrupt approached the leaders of these mega churches for financial help.
The leaders, instead of extending a helping hand, like Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France , said, “If you can’t find bread, eat cake!”
The people were pleading, “But for years we have tithed to you”.
The plea fell on deaf ears.
Disillusioned disillusioned disillusioned.
All over America I saw many disillusioned.
Suddenly, everything was changing. People from world over were rushing to their aid.
Looking at the rapid changes/the upheavals around them, the changes and circumstances they could not cope with, there were those who became disillusioned by God. They felt humiliated, rather than humbled.
But through the dark dismal smoke of disillusionment with the church leaders and government, the shock of the sudden changes, I saw many turn to the Lord, and others re-dedicate their lives to the Lord.
I saw elsewhere, people as ‘rabbits caught in the headlights’. They were ‘frozen’ under a bright light that was blinding them.
These had a strange understanding of Who God is. They stood frozen stiff, as if the God they served was holding a gun at their heads outside a Seven Eleven, Saying ‘One false move and you’re dead”.
The microwave mentality of leaders was trying to ‘grow’ and ‘cook’ people to force them into a ‘maturity’.
Guilt and condemnation was binding such as these. They felt that they had to be picture perfect before they could begin serving God. For years they had been this way. They could not serve God, because all the preaching they heard, made them feel guilty, condemned, filthy…….and on the instructions of messages coming from world-wide, they were waiting to be ‘picture perfect’ before they dared to even think of serving God, Whom, through all the preaching they had heard was a hard task-master.
I saw that the Lord was releasing such as these from the years of bondage emanating from such condemnatory messages.
Next:
I was shown some, who as it were in near death and death itself experience, coming out, raised to their feet, by the Lord, made ready to serve Him.
In dustbins, outside many churches, I saw covenants/commitments that God had led many to make, broken and discarded. These were now carelessly thrown in the bins, as if they were meaningless.
Yet, I also saw others absolved and freed by the Lord from unrighteous commitments / vows / covenants.
I was reminded of the Scripture, from Luke 23:11,12 11Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate. 12That day Herod and Pilate became friends—before this they had been enemies.
I saw the Pilates strike up friendships with the Herods, whenever the truth was to be crucified.
I saw the Judases at work,
Money/cash/assets were being washed away, by the sea, in wave after wave and flowing on to distant shores. I saw that people and assets leaving to go world wide.
I saw some investors who had chased short term gains, now thinking long-term.
I saw at a distance away, a cold distance growing between people and government.
People had a mistrust of their government such as never before seen in their history.
Priorities were constantly changing in the land.
America seemed no more the invincible nation, it once thought it was. America was now a vulnerable nation.
Sometimes a gush of problems came like a forcefully running faucet, other times, it was like a dripping tap, drip, drip, drip after torturous drip.
At the times when it dripped, the false prophets would look skyward and say, “Look, the Glory of the Lord, over the most-loved nation on earth.” This was the time, when the undiscerning would be lured into a false sense of security.
The market place at times appeared more adaptable to change, than the church.
On the personal level, I saw rapid declines and rapid promotions.
Greedy leaders were following market trends and down-sizing.
Some leaders in the church and government were busy sneaking out their money to other shores for better returns. Bur inside America they preached /propagated that all was well with America , and people needed to have confidence in their fine nation.
I saw America being lured. Often times, the foreign policies of the nation, were such that they worked to the advantage of the neighbors of America ’s targeted nations/or those nations with vested interest. So in a sense, America , was serving the purposes of crafty nations, for free.
I heard the creaking of tall trees. The axe had hit them, it was but a matter of time and they would crash.
Within the vision I was reminded of a vision I had seen many many months ago. White Eagles And The Signet Rings
In that vision I had seen white eagles go all over the world and in each nation give thick, solid gold signet rings to people. These signet rings had also been given in America . These watchmen world over were to warn their people of the deception coming from the American shores.
The watchmen in America were authorized by this signet ring to stop exports of deceptive teachings going world wide. I saw barbed wire around the ships that exported/imported such deceptive teachings.
All those with signet rings were busy at their work.
NEXT:
I saw in disasters/calamities, many would not wait for the government to help. I saw communities communities communities, growing over painful time after time. I saw there was much one-another-ing in America , in difficult/traumatic situations.
The more this happened I saw that there were many people who seemed more relieved than distressed about such a thing happening.
Before my very eyes, I saw the America of today fading away. The old America was as it were, gone. A new America was evolving. The Texan-type obsession with ‘Big’ was dissipating. A great move had begun to simplify life and be rid of the sham. I saw people though they could well afford it, were choosing a simpler less plastic life, and were becoming more interested rather in philanthropy.
A change of historic proportion was taking place in America . There was upheaval in society, Defense, industry, the market place, and the seats of learning, to adapt/change to the changing, ever fluid environment.
For the business world, it was time to get back to the drawing board.
I saw food/medical habits changing nation wide. Healthy food and effective medicine were entering America .
I heard many corporate men and women shout, “Change the advertisements, the people are changing.” A glimpse of the past ‘plastic America ’ was making many nauseous.
Business, communications, all were changing, from deep within, not visible to the naked eye at first, but it was changing. The ground beneath was gurgling and churning with change. The businesses that could not quickly plan to assimilate change were going under.
Americans were now re-defining the word-rich. Quality rather than quantity was becoming the focus of many. Not that poverty was being advocated; rather I saw people interested to learn and understand what contentment meant.
Nonetheless, there were those who could not let go the past, and they became as little olde type colonies within the nation, extolling and aping the days of yore. Fighting/luring others, to keep the old America together.
I saw a mammoth clash/a huge tussle throughout. The old American wineskins versus the New American wineskins.
As a tussle, as between Esau and Jacob in the womb.
The beginning of the rapid end, of the old America , had commenced.
A new leaner, trimmer America would emerge. I saw people in the distance walking upright, with a stick in their hand. Upon the stick was written : MORAL AUTHORITY
As I looked around, I saw unbelievers were shaming believers by having experiences and making confessions/statements, based on the Scripture ‘what profits man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul……….”
Yet, there remained a number of profiteering prophets, who sold ‘ready-mix-quick-fix’ potions to those who chose to be deluded.
I heard many say, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord………….you choose what you want to do”, they said to the rebellious, “we have chosen to follow Him”.
The rebellious had other plans. They would fight to keep America in harlotry.
Though the church in America seemed in turmoil, the Lord has His people who know Him, not through crusades, T.V., one to one or any kind of evangelism. The Lord has revealed Himself to many people of varied religious background. These would only be revealed at a divine hour.
Across the seas, I saw the countries of the U.K. and the U.S. shake hands and much evil passed through to each from the other. As the two shook hands, off the arms of both were creepy crawlies that transferred from one arm to the other. Both were picking up the worst from each other, and their friendship would at times prove worse than enmity.
For the nation and the church of both countries, the message was………..the enemy is within.
I saw high places, and men standing alone, trying to bring down these high places, by hurling stones, but to no avail……….I was shown that later a multitude would gather as one man, and tear down many of those high places.
Many prophets who for a time and been raised up from within, and without, to prophecy to America , faded away and the Lord returned them to other work.
Leaders such as the prophet Zechariah, bringing the message to build build build, were being trained in hiding, and at God’s most appropriate hour they would be revealed.
Now I saw that no more were there ‘pockets of revival, with a ‘revival-expiry date’, for those earnestly seeking God. The change to come was reformation for life. The kind of change where there’s no looking back. A daily revival within. Ever on fire, ever ready to sacrifice everything to the Lord, ever ready to say, “Here I am Lord, I will go”.
The Christian intelligentsia was offended, by the changes in the church, as were those who preached ‘fairy tales’. There was no pleasing either.
The tussle between the two Americas continued.
Now, here I saw quite a few leaders publicly confess/repent/recant their erroneous doctrines and ways.
The opponents of God’s ways, continued like ‘pick-pockets’ doing all they could to keep the public distracted, and occupied in what they called, ‘yet a better way’.
In the far distance I heard the chant, WE WANT BARABBAS, WE WANT BARABBAS”.
I saw from the world over, a few leaders of the caliber of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi were being raised.
To America , the old leader, Martin Luther King had said, “ I have a dream.”
To America , God’s chosen would come, and say, “ I have a Kingdom vision”.
I heard the enemies of America , shout……….fall fall America , fall at our feet.
I heard friends of America , within and without, say, “fall fall fall America , fall prostrate, at Lord Jesus Christ’s Feet!
Ezekiel 16:38-44 (NEW King James Version)
38 And I will judge you as women who break wedlock or shed blood are judged; I will bring blood upon you in fury and jealousy. 39 I will also give you into their hand, and they shall throw down your shrines and break down your high places. They shall also strip you of your clothes, take your beautiful jewelry, and leave you naked and bare.
40 “They shall also bring up an assembly against you, and they shall stone you with stones and thrust you through with their swords. 41 They shall burn your houses with fire, and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women; and I will make you cease playing the harlot, and you shall no longer hire lovers. 42 So I will lay to rest My fury toward you, and My jealousy shall depart from you. I will be quiet, and be angry no more. 43 Because you did not remember the days of your youth, but agitated Me[a] with all these things, surely I will also recompense your deeds on your own head,” says the Lord GOD. “And you shall not commit lewdness in addition to all your abominations.
44 “Indeed everyone who quotes proverbs will use this proverb against you: ‘Like mother, like daughter!’
Psalm 94 (NEW King James Version)
9 He who planted the ear, shall He not hear?
He who formed the eye, shall He not see?
10 He who instructs the nations, shall He not correct,
He who teaches man knowledge?
11 The LORD knows the thoughts of man,
That they are futile.
12 Blessed is the man whom You instruct, O LORD,
And teach out of Your law,
13 That You may give him rest from the days of adversity,
Until the pit is dug for the wicked.
14 For the LORD will not cast off His people,
Nor will He forsake His inheritance.
15 But judgment will return to righteousness,
And all the upright in heart will follow it.
16 Who will rise up for me against the evildoers?
Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?
17 Unless the LORD had been my help,
My soul would soon have settled in silence.
18 If I say, “My foot slips,”
Your mercy, O LORD, will hold me up.
19 In the multitude of my anxieties within me,
Your comforts delight my soul.
20 Shall the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law,
Have fellowship with You?
21 They gather together against the life of the righteous,
And condemn innocent blood.
22 But the LORD has been my defense,
And my God the rock of my refuge.
Bombay-India
Swarna Jha
THIS AUDIO IS COPYRIGHTED AND IS NOT TO BE SOLD. YOU CAN CONTACT ME AT:
jhaswarna@gmail.com
FOR AUDIO: CLICK HERE
http://www.twango.com/media/SWARNAJHA.public/SWARNAJHA.10001
GREETINGS IN THE NAME OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
A WARM WELCOME TO YOU TO-TELL-A-VISION
PRAYER
Father I pray, in the Name of Jesus Christ, for all those who are listening to this vision.
Lord, I pray that their love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;
That they may approve things that are excellent; that they may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ.
11Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God. Amen
This is the first audio vision in the TELL-A-VISION SERIES
Vision: America O America
I was shown this vision part after part, from the 5th to the 11th of August. On the 6th of August 2007, late that night, I was lifted up by the Beak of The Dove, by a bone in my shoulder, and flown over the land of America . There was so much to see, and yet, inspite of all that I share here, it is but a glimpse.
The sky over America was grey. Around the land of America , this is what I saw:
I saw money but no wealth
food but no health
knowledge but no wisdom
Morals, in some churches, which are of no avail in the Kingdom
I saw eyes glued to see the American dream, but blind to the Kingdom vision
Greedy leaders seeking money, depending not on God’s Provision.
I saw breasts running dry, that could not feed others,
Deceivers were milking the Christian sisters and brothers
The richest nation was yet in debt. I saw a large vault door, marked the Nation’s gold. Inside, it was empty. There was no gold there.
I saw beds in houses, but no sleep. The sheets looked unslept in, the bedroom carpets of some looked worn from pacing to and fro, in deep anxiety.
I saw many at the dining table, with a plateful of multi-colored capsules and tablets, decorating the plate as dressing. I saw that some were mere ‘vanity pills’.
I saw fear, confusion, anxiety in the Nation and in the church in America .
Erosion erosion erosion.
Mess mess mess.
I saw false security, false confidence.
Many beautiful eagles, had turned to vultures.
I saw church leaders who had received a call from God to ‘Go on a sabbatical’, refuse, and choose rather to stay and ‘run their corporations’.
I heard the Lord Say, “ I Gave America , leaders, pioneers, families.”
I asked , ‘Lord where are they?”
“ They aborted them,” came the Reply.
There were abortions in abortion clinics, and abortions in the church.
I saw people beaten black and blue, thrown out of church to where the dustbins lay. A few managed to crawl their way to the main road, and were divinely revived.
I saw some women, sitting in churches, with dark glasses putting on make up very carefully. They were wearing dark gray polo neck sweaters, hiding scars, of abuse. I saw that the sun glasses were to hide the severely bruised eyes. The make-up was to prevent people from noticing that they were women who suffered abuse. Underneath the sweater were further wounds that they were hiding. I saw oppression on their faces.
Across on the horizon, I saw the statue of liberty. As I gazed at it, looking puzzled, I was told, “ Liberty is not a statue”.
As I was flown over the land of America , I saw T.V. studios, shooting plotted/scripted ‘reality’ shows, I saw in homes, unnatural foods and unnatural relationships.
I saw young adults/ children in garages and hidden buildings, experimenting on making home-made bombs.
I saw murderers, rapists, child abusers, dangerous criminals, being given a small piece of paper such as one sees cocaine wrapped in. They were to read a short prayer scribbled on this little chit of paper, after making a donation, and were immediately declared Christians by these greedy leaders. These criminals had a gold color cross placed around their necks by these leaders and sent through a door, where there was a passage that was dark within. These unredeemed sat in churches, with the redeemed. They were like a time bomb ready to explode. They spoke christianese fluently. They were Christians, not by having repented, but just by a prayer that they had said by rote.
I saw various piles of wood ready for the sacrifice unto the Lord, but the people who had before been ready to sacrifice their lives, unto the Lord, were now playing ping pong, tennis/games or swimming in adjacent streams. They would not lay down what was precious to them. These were those God had GREAT plans for, but they just could not come out of their leisure mode.
Sacrifice had now become an unfamiliar word to them.
Their games would soon end, for the Lord in His Grace and Mercy would be chastising them, yet deal graciously with them.
In the west, I saw a giant pile of marijuana and drugs burning, and the smoke from this was wafting all over the country giving people new highs.
I saw what seemed like the spiritual environment, in the Book of Judges, ‘every man doing that which was right in his own eyes’, and when the oppression was too great, a leader was raised up to usher in a ‘revival’.
When that ‘high’ evaporated, many went back to’ business as usual’, and talked of ‘the good ole days of revival’.
I saw many nation-wide gatherings, calling the church and nation to repentance.
Many of the leaders who had preached doctrinal errors, spoken false prophecies, fleeced their Christian brothers and sisters for personal gain, etc, stood on the forefront, and confessed everyone else’s sins, but never their own biblical errors, or hidden sin. They just did not RECANT.
I saw many Christian ‘ideas’ for ‘doing church’, rise and fizzle, and it was back to ‘business as usual’, for many.
People met in physical squares and cyber squares and thrashed out ‘biblical concepts’, and discussed and argued biblical matters to death. Conspiracy theories abounded in the church and in the nation.
God lovers though, continued their lives, distancing themselves from the corruption around, much as if they lived in another country, though they were on American soil.
Then suddenly, I heard the word ‘requisitioning’. Like the army in war requisitions property/vehicles etc. Requisitioning.
I saw the seats of the mega churches shake, the leaders stood on stage, under the bright lights but the people/congregations were shaking, in their seats. Those who went bankrupt approached the leaders of these mega churches for financial help.
The leaders, instead of extending a helping hand, like Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France , said, “If you can’t find bread, eat cake!”
The people were pleading, “But for years we have tithed to you”.
The plea fell on deaf ears.
Disillusioned disillusioned disillusioned.
All over America I saw many disillusioned.
Suddenly, everything was changing. People from world over were rushing to their aid.
Looking at the rapid changes/the upheavals around them, the changes and circumstances they could not cope with, there were those who became disillusioned by God. They felt humiliated, rather than humbled.
But through the dark dismal smoke of disillusionment with the church leaders and government, the shock of the sudden changes, I saw many turn to the Lord, and others re-dedicate their lives to the Lord.
I saw elsewhere, people as ‘rabbits caught in the headlights’. They were ‘frozen’ under a bright light that was blinding them.
These had a strange understanding of Who God is. They stood frozen stiff, as if the God they served was holding a gun at their heads outside a Seven Eleven, Saying ‘One false move and you’re dead”.
The microwave mentality of leaders was trying to ‘grow’ and ‘cook’ people to force them into a ‘maturity’.
Guilt and condemnation was binding such as these. They felt that they had to be picture perfect before they could begin serving God. For years they had been this way. They could not serve God, because all the preaching they heard, made them feel guilty, condemned, filthy…….and on the instructions of messages coming from world-wide, they were waiting to be ‘picture perfect’ before they dared to even think of serving God, Whom, through all the preaching they had heard was a hard task-master.
I saw that the Lord was releasing such as these from the years of bondage emanating from such condemnatory messages.
Next:
I was shown some, who as it were in near death and death itself experience, coming out, raised to their feet, by the Lord, made ready to serve Him.
In dustbins, outside many churches, I saw covenants/commitments that God had led many to make, broken and discarded. These were now carelessly thrown in the bins, as if they were meaningless.
Yet, I also saw others absolved and freed by the Lord from unrighteous commitments / vows / covenants.
I was reminded of the Scripture, from Luke 23:11,12 11Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate. 12That day Herod and Pilate became friends—before this they had been enemies.
I saw the Pilates strike up friendships with the Herods, whenever the truth was to be crucified.
I saw the Judases at work,
Money/cash/assets were being washed away, by the sea, in wave after wave and flowing on to distant shores. I saw that people and assets leaving to go world wide.
I saw some investors who had chased short term gains, now thinking long-term.
I saw at a distance away, a cold distance growing between people and government.
People had a mistrust of their government such as never before seen in their history.
Priorities were constantly changing in the land.
America seemed no more the invincible nation, it once thought it was. America was now a vulnerable nation.
Sometimes a gush of problems came like a forcefully running faucet, other times, it was like a dripping tap, drip, drip, drip after torturous drip.
At the times when it dripped, the false prophets would look skyward and say, “Look, the Glory of the Lord, over the most-loved nation on earth.” This was the time, when the undiscerning would be lured into a false sense of security.
The market place at times appeared more adaptable to change, than the church.
On the personal level, I saw rapid declines and rapid promotions.
Greedy leaders were following market trends and down-sizing.
Some leaders in the church and government were busy sneaking out their money to other shores for better returns. Bur inside America they preached /propagated that all was well with America , and people needed to have confidence in their fine nation.
I saw America being lured. Often times, the foreign policies of the nation, were such that they worked to the advantage of the neighbors of America ’s targeted nations/or those nations with vested interest. So in a sense, America , was serving the purposes of crafty nations, for free.
I heard the creaking of tall trees. The axe had hit them, it was but a matter of time and they would crash.
Within the vision I was reminded of a vision I had seen many many months ago. White Eagles And The Signet Rings
In that vision I had seen white eagles go all over the world and in each nation give thick, solid gold signet rings to people. These signet rings had also been given in America . These watchmen world over were to warn their people of the deception coming from the American shores.
The watchmen in America were authorized by this signet ring to stop exports of deceptive teachings going world wide. I saw barbed wire around the ships that exported/imported such deceptive teachings.
All those with signet rings were busy at their work.
NEXT:
I saw in disasters/calamities, many would not wait for the government to help. I saw communities communities communities, growing over painful time after time. I saw there was much one-another-ing in America , in difficult/traumatic situations.
The more this happened I saw that there were many people who seemed more relieved than distressed about such a thing happening.
Before my very eyes, I saw the America of today fading away. The old America was as it were, gone. A new America was evolving. The Texan-type obsession with ‘Big’ was dissipating. A great move had begun to simplify life and be rid of the sham. I saw people though they could well afford it, were choosing a simpler less plastic life, and were becoming more interested rather in philanthropy.
A change of historic proportion was taking place in America . There was upheaval in society, Defense, industry, the market place, and the seats of learning, to adapt/change to the changing, ever fluid environment.
For the business world, it was time to get back to the drawing board.
I saw food/medical habits changing nation wide. Healthy food and effective medicine were entering America .
I heard many corporate men and women shout, “Change the advertisements, the people are changing.” A glimpse of the past ‘plastic America ’ was making many nauseous.
Business, communications, all were changing, from deep within, not visible to the naked eye at first, but it was changing. The ground beneath was gurgling and churning with change. The businesses that could not quickly plan to assimilate change were going under.
Americans were now re-defining the word-rich. Quality rather than quantity was becoming the focus of many. Not that poverty was being advocated; rather I saw people interested to learn and understand what contentment meant.
Nonetheless, there were those who could not let go the past, and they became as little olde type colonies within the nation, extolling and aping the days of yore. Fighting/luring others, to keep the old America together.
I saw a mammoth clash/a huge tussle throughout. The old American wineskins versus the New American wineskins.
As a tussle, as between Esau and Jacob in the womb.
The beginning of the rapid end, of the old America , had commenced.
A new leaner, trimmer America would emerge. I saw people in the distance walking upright, with a stick in their hand. Upon the stick was written : MORAL AUTHORITY
As I looked around, I saw unbelievers were shaming believers by having experiences and making confessions/statements, based on the Scripture ‘what profits man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul……….”
Yet, there remained a number of profiteering prophets, who sold ‘ready-mix-quick-fix’ potions to those who chose to be deluded.
I heard many say, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord………….you choose what you want to do”, they said to the rebellious, “we have chosen to follow Him”.
The rebellious had other plans. They would fight to keep America in harlotry.
Though the church in America seemed in turmoil, the Lord has His people who know Him, not through crusades, T.V., one to one or any kind of evangelism. The Lord has revealed Himself to many people of varied religious background. These would only be revealed at a divine hour.
Across the seas, I saw the countries of the U.K. and the U.S. shake hands and much evil passed through to each from the other. As the two shook hands, off the arms of both were creepy crawlies that transferred from one arm to the other. Both were picking up the worst from each other, and their friendship would at times prove worse than enmity.
For the nation and the church of both countries, the message was………..the enemy is within.
I saw high places, and men standing alone, trying to bring down these high places, by hurling stones, but to no avail……….I was shown that later a multitude would gather as one man, and tear down many of those high places.
Many prophets who for a time and been raised up from within, and without, to prophecy to America , faded away and the Lord returned them to other work.
Leaders such as the prophet Zechariah, bringing the message to build build build, were being trained in hiding, and at God’s most appropriate hour they would be revealed.
Now I saw that no more were there ‘pockets of revival, with a ‘revival-expiry date’, for those earnestly seeking God. The change to come was reformation for life. The kind of change where there’s no looking back. A daily revival within. Ever on fire, ever ready to sacrifice everything to the Lord, ever ready to say, “Here I am Lord, I will go”.
The Christian intelligentsia was offended, by the changes in the church, as were those who preached ‘fairy tales’. There was no pleasing either.
The tussle between the two Americas continued.
Now, here I saw quite a few leaders publicly confess/repent/recant their erroneous doctrines and ways.
The opponents of God’s ways, continued like ‘pick-pockets’ doing all they could to keep the public distracted, and occupied in what they called, ‘yet a better way’.
In the far distance I heard the chant, WE WANT BARABBAS, WE WANT BARABBAS”.
I saw from the world over, a few leaders of the caliber of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi were being raised.
To America , the old leader, Martin Luther King had said, “ I have a dream.”
To America , God’s chosen would come, and say, “ I have a Kingdom vision”.
I heard the enemies of America , shout……….fall fall America , fall at our feet.
I heard friends of America , within and without, say, “fall fall fall America , fall prostrate, at Lord Jesus Christ’s Feet!
Ezekiel 16:38-44 (NEW King James Version)
38 And I will judge you as women who break wedlock or shed blood are judged; I will bring blood upon you in fury and jealousy. 39 I will also give you into their hand, and they shall throw down your shrines and break down your high places. They shall also strip you of your clothes, take your beautiful jewelry, and leave you naked and bare.
40 “They shall also bring up an assembly against you, and they shall stone you with stones and thrust you through with their swords. 41 They shall burn your houses with fire, and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women; and I will make you cease playing the harlot, and you shall no longer hire lovers. 42 So I will lay to rest My fury toward you, and My jealousy shall depart from you. I will be quiet, and be angry no more. 43 Because you did not remember the days of your youth, but agitated Me[a] with all these things, surely I will also recompense your deeds on your own head,” says the Lord GOD. “And you shall not commit lewdness in addition to all your abominations.
44 “Indeed everyone who quotes proverbs will use this proverb against you: ‘Like mother, like daughter!’
Psalm 94 (NEW King James Version)
9 He who planted the ear, shall He not hear?
He who formed the eye, shall He not see?
10 He who instructs the nations, shall He not correct,
He who teaches man knowledge?
11 The LORD knows the thoughts of man,
That they are futile.
12 Blessed is the man whom You instruct, O LORD,
And teach out of Your law,
13 That You may give him rest from the days of adversity,
Until the pit is dug for the wicked.
14 For the LORD will not cast off His people,
Nor will He forsake His inheritance.
15 But judgment will return to righteousness,
And all the upright in heart will follow it.
16 Who will rise up for me against the evildoers?
Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?
17 Unless the LORD had been my help,
My soul would soon have settled in silence.
18 If I say, “My foot slips,”
Your mercy, O LORD, will hold me up.
19 In the multitude of my anxieties within me,
Your comforts delight my soul.
20 Shall the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law,
Have fellowship with You?
21 They gather together against the life of the righteous,
And condemn innocent blood.
22 But the LORD has been my defense,
And my God the rock of my refuge.
Bombay-India
Swarna Jha
THIS AUDIO IS COPYRIGHTED AND IS NOT TO BE SOLD. YOU CAN CONTACT ME AT:
jhaswarna@gmail.com
Good WoRD From Brother THOMAS
http://www.justthinkoutloud.com
March 18, 2008
A Concentrate Effort To Make You Hate . . .
Posted in Uncategorized — by thomas on March 18th, 2008
There is a concerted effort . . . to make you hate; to make you yearn for revenge and wish the suffering of others.
“Gang-stalking” . . . is part of a universal methodology by the enemy to infiltrate, corner, divide and marginalize the faithful. The enemy knows that where two or more are gathered, in His name, great power arises and is available . . . so the tactic is to keep true fellowship from happening, coalescing.
One of the tactics used by the enemy is to infiltrate a group (of ie., sincere fellowshipping Believers) , . . . gain trust within that group as one of the members……[and note that the enemy is very patient in such things……the operative will take whatever time necessary–be it days, months or even years! to gain the trust of the targets] . . . . and then will draw off into individual relationships, separate, of the targeted members.
Then intrigues will be created, “he says, she says, they say” etc., with a primary purpose being to create friction and distrust and strife between the members of the targeted group.
Meanwhile, the proven techniques of disruption and coup are applied, as described by Saul Alinsky to disarm the watchmen of a group, so that defenses will be down. Here are two powerful rules used to effect the disarming of the targeted group:
— Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
— This rule carries within it another rule: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.
————————-
Especially when attacking Christian fellowships, the enemy infiltrators and/or outside critics of the fellowship will use RIDICULE to try to inflame and enrage the targeted members. Then the agent will come back with the technique of accusing the subsequently enraged “Christian” of “not being Christian” because of the angry response. It is a powerful technique and difficult to avoid falling into the trap, unless you recognize the operation from the get-go, knowing that neutralization techniques are being used.
On the supernatural plane . . . the intent is to foment discord, anger, resentment, self-righteousness among the individual members….hopefully stirring up trouble between them . .. . . so that the whole energy and emotional position of the group is one of distrust, anger, hurt pride etc.; for all of this is about CHANGING CONSCIOUSNESS from Christ consciousness to the lower levels of animal/carnal consciousness, typified by fight/flight . . . fear/attack . . . anger/revenge . . . .
As the one world religion and political dictatorship moves into place . . . . there are hired hands, “gang-stalkers” of all types, some blatant, others subtle, which are tasked with infiltrating and disrupting ESPECIALLY Christian fellowships.
When you see critics of the fellowship or loose group/congregation RIDICULING members, and especially any leaders of the group……then you can be fairly certain that an operation is being run.
This and other accusations are meant to keep the members of the targeted group, and certain of its more prominent members ON THE DEFENSE–in a self-defending position, hopefully (from the enemy agent’s perspective) provoking anger and return ridicule . . . which, as outlined by Saul’s rule above, then can be specified as the target “not acting Christian” by being angry and returning ridicule.
There is a concentrated effort in several dimensions to make you angry, violent, vengeful, hurt, self-pitying, isolated . . . .
We are actually to have joy, practice compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, LOVE, service and self-sacrifice.
Do not let yourself be baited. Enemies seek your destruction and the destruction of your friends and fellow Believers. There is a very purposeful effort, organized and long-term to infiltrate, mock and ruin.
Just be aware of what’s going on. Forgive them, for truly they know not what they do. Do not let them drag your consciousness down to the carnal/reactive level. Otherwise, THEY WIN.
Just thought you should know . . . . .
March 18, 2008
A Concentrate Effort To Make You Hate . . .
Posted in Uncategorized — by thomas on March 18th, 2008
There is a concerted effort . . . to make you hate; to make you yearn for revenge and wish the suffering of others.
“Gang-stalking” . . . is part of a universal methodology by the enemy to infiltrate, corner, divide and marginalize the faithful. The enemy knows that where two or more are gathered, in His name, great power arises and is available . . . so the tactic is to keep true fellowship from happening, coalescing.
One of the tactics used by the enemy is to infiltrate a group (of ie., sincere fellowshipping Believers) , . . . gain trust within that group as one of the members……[and note that the enemy is very patient in such things……the operative will take whatever time necessary–be it days, months or even years! to gain the trust of the targets] . . . . and then will draw off into individual relationships, separate, of the targeted members.
Then intrigues will be created, “he says, she says, they say” etc., with a primary purpose being to create friction and distrust and strife between the members of the targeted group.
Meanwhile, the proven techniques of disruption and coup are applied, as described by Saul Alinsky to disarm the watchmen of a group, so that defenses will be down. Here are two powerful rules used to effect the disarming of the targeted group:
— Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
— This rule carries within it another rule: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.
————————-
Especially when attacking Christian fellowships, the enemy infiltrators and/or outside critics of the fellowship will use RIDICULE to try to inflame and enrage the targeted members. Then the agent will come back with the technique of accusing the subsequently enraged “Christian” of “not being Christian” because of the angry response. It is a powerful technique and difficult to avoid falling into the trap, unless you recognize the operation from the get-go, knowing that neutralization techniques are being used.
On the supernatural plane . . . the intent is to foment discord, anger, resentment, self-righteousness among the individual members….hopefully stirring up trouble between them . .. . . so that the whole energy and emotional position of the group is one of distrust, anger, hurt pride etc.; for all of this is about CHANGING CONSCIOUSNESS from Christ consciousness to the lower levels of animal/carnal consciousness, typified by fight/flight . . . fear/attack . . . anger/revenge . . . .
As the one world religion and political dictatorship moves into place . . . . there are hired hands, “gang-stalkers” of all types, some blatant, others subtle, which are tasked with infiltrating and disrupting ESPECIALLY Christian fellowships.
When you see critics of the fellowship or loose group/congregation RIDICULING members, and especially any leaders of the group……then you can be fairly certain that an operation is being run.
This and other accusations are meant to keep the members of the targeted group, and certain of its more prominent members ON THE DEFENSE–in a self-defending position, hopefully (from the enemy agent’s perspective) provoking anger and return ridicule . . . which, as outlined by Saul’s rule above, then can be specified as the target “not acting Christian” by being angry and returning ridicule.
There is a concentrated effort in several dimensions to make you angry, violent, vengeful, hurt, self-pitying, isolated . . . .
We are actually to have joy, practice compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, LOVE, service and self-sacrifice.
Do not let yourself be baited. Enemies seek your destruction and the destruction of your friends and fellow Believers. There is a very purposeful effort, organized and long-term to infiltrate, mock and ruin.
Just be aware of what’s going on. Forgive them, for truly they know not what they do. Do not let them drag your consciousness down to the carnal/reactive level. Otherwise, THEY WIN.
Just thought you should know . . . . .
Obama Speech in Full
from Drudge Report
OBAMA SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNION
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008/ 10:17:53 ET
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
END
OBAMA SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNION
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008/ 10:17:53 ET
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
END
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