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Gold ATMs – First In Abu Dhabi, Soon Everywhere: Gold Is Now One Step Closer To Full Currency Status | Zero Hedge

BY TYLER DURDEN

Just in case you are worried that all those gold coins you have buried in your back yard will never be accepted as (il)legal tender, here comes Abu Dhabi with a gold ATM machine, making gold-based “currency” transactions one step closer. This is a harbinger of things to come, as people increasingly demand to transact in non-daily violatable pieces of paper.

This is also the nightmare scenario for all central banks, which have to be seeing developments in the precious metal space, and finally realizing that in the absence of prudent monetary policy, the people, as we noted yesterday, will take (non-dilutable) matters into their own hands. The Fed dilemma: recognition that the fiat “race to the bottom” has to be contained (unlikely) or confiscation of precious metals (see Roosevelt executive order 6102).

There’s no mistaking what’s in this vending machine. The well-heeled in the Gulf can now grab “gold to go” from a hotel lobby in the United Arab Emirates, when the need for a quick ingot strikes.

On Thursday, a day after its inauguration, the shiny machine attracted spectators of many different nationalities who gathered to watch whenever an enthusiast was struck with the urge to splurge on a bar of the precious metal.

Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace Hotel became the first place outside Germany to install “gold to go, the world’s first gold vending machine,” said a statement from Ex Oriente Lux AG, the German company behind the vending machine.

“In addition to one-gram, five-gram and 10-gram bars of gold, the machine also dispenses gold coins,” it added. Read more…

Source: Zero Hedge

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The Poetry of Death: Patterns of State Terror | Baltimore Chronicle

BY CHRIS FLOYD

The found poetry of state terror continues its strange mutilations of the English language. The bizarre verbal heavings of Donald Rumsfeld, for example, are rightly celebrated as choice examples of the genre. And noted English playwright David Hare once fashioned a whole play built largely on the “thought-tormented music” wrought from verbatim transcripts of the principal authors of the war crime in Iraq.

In this regard, as in almost every aspect of the Terror War, “continuity” has been the hallmark of the Obama Administration. But we would do the progressive, forward-looking president a grave disservice if we were to imply that this dynamic, historic figure has confined himself to mere continuity. No, in field after field of governmental endeavor, Barack Obama has striven mightily not just to uphold the many authoritarian and militarist innovations of the Bush Administration, but to expand them-increasing their scope and depth, codifying, normalizing and making permanent many practices which his predecessors had enshrouded with ambiguity, deception and deliberate murk. Bush and Cheney were afflicted with a vestigial embarrassment at the howling illegality and constitutional subversion of many of their Terror War policies, and seemed to fear these acts would provoke some kind of public outcry or political controversy-or even prosecution-should they be made too explicit.

But our cool, savvy and thoroughly post-postmodern president carries none of that dead lumber from our long-vanished past. Where Bush was content with smirks and hints about his assassination program, Obama is bold, sending his security chief to declare openly before Congress that the president now has the unrestricted right and power to murder anyone, Americans included, in cold blood, by the simple expedient of declaring his victim a suspected terrorist of some vague description. Whereas Bush and Cheney usually resorted to backroom bureaucratic knife-twisting or bombastic but empty public threats to try to silence and cow officials who expose high crimes of state, the Obama Administration brazenly brings down the draconian power of federal prosecution against whistleblowers. Our progressives-in-power will not just take away your government job or bluster at your editors if you give your fellow citizens a glimpse of the blood-soaked sausage-making that goes on behind the imperial curtain; no, they will put you in the penitentiary, to rot away with murderers and child abusers, which is where they rank all such treacherous tellers of truth.

So we should not be surprised to find the Obama Administration outstripping its mentors and models from the Bush years in the production of Orwellian nomenclature. Nor is it remarkable that these perversions of language are leading to further perversions of law, morality and plain common sense.

We refer to the recent story in the Los Angeles Times about the vast expansion of the CIA’s powers to murder people in Pakistan with missiles fired by robot drones. These remote-control killings were originally aimed at specific, known, named individuals suspected of being top “militant” leaders. But now, people are being targeted not because of any action they are known or alleged to have taken, but simply because they seem to fit an arbitrarily designated “pattern of life”-even if the remote-control killers don’t know the victim’s name. Read more…

Source: Baltimore-Chronicle

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15 years later, hear McVeigh’s confession | MSNBC

By msnbc.com

A new documentary about Timothy McVeigh, including never-before-heard audio of the terrorist, is stirring emotions even before it airs on msnbc to mark the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The audio, originally recorded by Buffalo News reporters Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck as part of interviews for the only authorized biography of the bomber, is likely to be received by audiences with mixed reactions.

In his own voice, McVeigh confesses to the bombings and recounts everything from his childhood in Buffalo, his time with the military during the Gulf War, his relationship with conspirator Terry Nichols, to the planning and execution of the attack that killed 168 lives and injured over 500 people.

The documentary, narrated by msnbc’s Rachel Maddow, has already provoked a strong discussion on Maddow’s blog, with viewers concerned that it might incite extremists.

“Some people will say they don’t want to hear anything about Timothy McVeigh and we respect their feelings on that,” says Herbeck. “But others are interested in hearing what made a terrorist tick.”

“[It’s an] oral blueprint of what turned one young man into one of the worst mass-murderers and terrorists in American history,” says Michel.

Michel and Herbeck received similar criticism after publishing the McVeigh biography “American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing” in 2001.

“A few of the victims were outraged by our book, and they went public with their feelings. They felt it was wrong to tell the story of a terrorist,” says Herbeck.

The authors considered releasing the interview audio to another film project at that time, but by then media interest and the national focus had changed in the aftermath of 9/11.

Maddow says she isn’t concerned that McVeigh will come across as a martyr to those who share his anti-government views. “McVeigh is profoundly unsympathetic — even repugnant —on his own terms, you don’t need to work to make him seem that way,” she says. “There’s a huge distance between the hero he is in his own mind, and how basely unheroic he seems to anyone hearing the tapes now. I personally am not a supporter of the death penalty… but hearing him talk, it’s hard not to wish him gone.”

“I was glad when he died. I will never forgive Timothy McVeigh,” says Janie Coverdale in the documentary. Coverdale lost her two grandsons, Aaron, 5, and Elijah, 2, in the building’s day care center.

Jennifer Rodgers, a first responder for the Oklahoma City Police Department in 1995, was interviewed for the documentary. She describes her feelings as “still raw… It just doesn’t seem like it was really that long ago.”

The documentary’s producer, Toby Oppenheimer, realizes he is touching a raw nerve in Oklahoma City and admits it was tough finding survivors to agree to be part of the msnbc film. “They understandably didn’t want to revisit the painful memories,” he says.

Maddow defended that this story is important now, on its own terms. “The Murrah Building bombing is the worst incident of domestic terrorism we’ve ever experienced as a nation,” she says. “ We owe pure remembrance of the date, and commemoration of the lives lost and changed. I think it’s also an appropriate occasion to talk about the threat of domestic terrorism. How strong is the threat now, 15 years after McVeigh? Are we heeding warning signs that may be out there now?”

Former President Bill Clinton, who oversaw the bombing’s recovery efforts and investigation, recently warned that there are frightening parallels between the current political tensions and the anti-government rage that preceded the 1995 attack.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, he calls the demonization of government “dangerous” and says that some of the rhetoric legitimizes violence. “We can disagree with them [elected officials], we can harshly criticize them. But when we turn them into an object of demonization, we increase the number of threats.”

“There’s no question that the militia movement is on the rise again,” says Michel. “Some of the same factors that caused McVeigh to believe he had become disenfranchised from mainstream society are again in the mix: growing government regulations, lack of employment. Those are things McVeigh would cite if he were alive.”

Source: MSNBC

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It’s Official – America Now Enforces Capital Controls | Zero Hedge

It couldn’t have happened to a nicer country. On March 18, with very little pomp and circumstance, president Obama passed the most recent stimulus act, the $17.5 billion Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (H.R. 2487), brilliantly goalseeked by the administration’s millionaire cronies to abbreviate as HIRE. As it was merely the latest in an endless stream of acts destined to expand the government payroll to infinity, nobody cared about it, or actually read it.

Because if anyone had read it, the act would have been known as the Capital Controls Act, as one of the lesser, but infinitely more important provisions on page 27, known as Offset Provisions – Subtitle A—Foreign Account Tax Compliance, institutes just that. In brief, the Provision requires that foreign banks not only withhold 30% of all outgoing capital flows (likely remitting the collection promptly back to the US Treasury) but also disclose the full details of non-exempt account-holders to the US and the IRS.

And should this provision be deemed illegal by a given foreign nation’s domestic laws (think Switzerland), well the foreign financial institution is required to close the account. It’s the law. If you thought you could move your capital to the non-sequestration safety of non-US financial institutions, sorry you lose – the law now says so. Capital Controls are now here and are now fully enforced by the law. Read more…

Source: Zero Hedge

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The Articles of Freedom | We the People Organization

This website uses the imagery of a fresco by italian artisan, Constantino Brumidi, created in 1865. The fresco was titled, “The Apotheosis of George Washington” or “Ascension of George Washington.”

Brumidi depicted George Washington rising to the heavens in glory, flanked by female figures representing Liberty and Victory/Fame. A rainbow arches at his feet, and thirteen maidens symbolizing the original states flank the three central figures. (The word “apotheosis” in the title means literally the glorification of a person as an ideal, or the raising of a person to the rank of a god; George Washington was honored as a national icon in the nineteenth century.)

This work is part of a larger fresco.

While the list is long of how a “fasci” or “fasces” or axe-blade has been used in symbolism by mankind throughout the Ages, and notably in America as well, (see wikipedia.org for an overview),  Brumidi used the axe-blade pictured here to depict the warrior power of The People.

This fresco is painted on the Ocula of the Rotunda of the Capitol Building. Suspended 180 feet above the Rotunda floor, the fresco covers an area of 4,664 square feet. The figures, up to 15 feet tall, were painted to be intelligible from close up as well as from 180 feet below.

It should be noted that the Continental Congress appointed Washington commander-in-chief of the American revolutionary forces in 1775. He later became the first President and some proposed he be made King. During President Washington’s second term, King George III asked what Washington would do next. The King was informed that Washington might return to his farm. After hearing this, King George III responded with, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

George Washington declined kingship, gave up command of the Continental Army and bowed out of a third term as President to return to his farm at Mount Vernon.

Source: We the People Organization

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Exxon Valdez Anniversary: 20 Years Later, Oil Remains | National Geographic

BY CHRISTINE DELL-AMORE

Two decades after the worst oil spill in U.S. history, huge quantities of oil still coat Alaska‘s shores with a toxic glaze, experts say.

More than 21,000 gallons of crude oil remain of the 11 million gallons of crude oil that bled from the stranded tanker Exxon Valdez on the night of March 23, 1989.

The oil—which has been detected as far as 450 miles (724 kilometers) away from the spill site in Prince William Sound—continues to harm wildlife and the livelihoods of local people, according to conservation groups. (See an Alaska map.)

Dennis Takahashi-Kelso, who was on the ground at the Exxon Valdez disaster as Alaska’s commissioner of environmental conservation, remembers wading through knee-deep pools of bubbling, thick oil. The smell of the pure oil was intense and pungent, he said.

When he returned to the same beaches years later, he found “surprisingly fresh” oil just below the sand. (Related: “Alaska Oil Spill Fuels Concerns Over Arctic Wildlife, Future Drilling”.)

“The damage that [the spill] created is something beyond anyone’s imagination,” said Michel Boufadel, Temple University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering chair, who has just completed research on why the oil persists.

Oil-Munching Bacteria

An 11,000-person crew removed oil from the beaches until 1994, when government officials decided to end the clean up effort. At that time, what was left of the the oil was naturally disintegrating at a high rate, and experts predicted it would be gone within a few years. But they were wrong.

Oil naturally “disappears” through two processes: As the tide rises over an oil patch, the water sloughs off bits of oil, which then disperse into the ocean as tiny, less harmful droplets that can biodegrade easily.

Biodegradation occurs when bacteria or other microorganisms break down oil as part of their life cycle.

But Prince William Sound is what ecologists call a closed system—it’s not exposed to big, pounding waves, so the oil has time to seep into the sand, according to Margaret Williams, who oversees conservation in the Bering Sea for the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Read more…

Source: National Geographic

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The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (Film)

Co-winner of this years Freedom of Expression Award from the National Board of Review (and one of their Five Best Documentaries of the Year), Winner of the Special Jury Award at IDFA, and in contention for the years Best Documentary Oscar, The Most Dangerous Man in America tells the story of Daniel Ellsberg, a high-level Pentagon official and Vietnam War strategist, who in 1971 concluded that the war is based on decades of lies and leaks 7,000 pages of top secret documents to The New York Times, making headlines around the world.

A riveting story of how this one mans profound change of heart created a landmark struggle involving Americas newspapers, its president and Supreme Court. With Daniel Ellsberg, Patricia Ellsberg, Tony Russo, Howard Zinn, Hedrick Smith, John Dean, and, from the secret White House tapes, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who called Ellsberg the most dangerous man in America.

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US Federal Reserve Dealing in Magic and Secrets | The International Forecaster

Fed makes money out of thin air to solve deflation with inflation, credit crisis continues, frustrations with politicians, not healthy to have over 3 trillion in t-bills held in foreign hands, Fed fights audit legislation, Threats to the Eurozone…

The dramatic and costly undertow of deflation continues unabated, as government via fiscal policy and the Federal Reserve, by creating money and credit out of thin air, proceed to overpower this deflation with massive inflation.

Unbeknownst to most the Fed and the Treasury have been maintaining this program for the past several years, accompanied by most major countries, all of which have taken the path of least resistance rather than address the underlying problems.

The current stage of problems had to be addressed 2-1/2 years ago in what has become known as a credit crisis. This continuing crisis has been accompanied by 22-1/8% current unemployment that has resulted in a perpetual fall in tax revenues and a resultant enlargement of government deficits. We might add that this condition is being experienced by many countries worldwide, which followed America’s leadership into this terrible financial and economic morass. These policies have led to massive sovereign debt policies, a hangover of the policies of 1933 and 1971.

The financial system in America is on the edge of default. A recent poll found that 92% of those surveyed wanted to unseat their current representative or Senator in Washington and only 21% believed that government enjoyed the consent of the governed. It’s very obvious people are not happy with the political, economic and financial situation presently. Eighty percent believe that government is enmeshed in partisan infighting. Not only between parties, but within parties as well. Politicians are very aware of these numbers and are frantic to get reelected. The public has recoiled in disgust. People are demanding that the power of government be curbed. People are sick and tired of paid off corrupt politicians, more than half of whom have been in office for more than ten years.

It is not healthy for a nation to have $3.3 trillion in Treasury bonds held by foreigners. China holds about $900 billion and Japan about $800 billion. We also understand that hedge funds and others also are fronting both countries, so the figures are not really reflective in their total positions. These nations for the most part are rolling their positions, but have not injected new capital into US Treasuries. That is why the Fed had to fund 80% of new Treasury debt last year.

Presently the Fed is fighting and pulling out all stops to halt legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, a private corporation, which has managed our monetary policy since 1913, under the Federal Reserve Act. On Monday the Treasury held a media conference for financial reporters and bloggers in which the Fed was discussed. The meeting had some very strange conditions. Mr. Geithner, Mr. Krueger and Mr. Sperling could be paraphrased but not quoted and what was paraphrased could not be connected to a specific official. Again, the element of secrecy to protect the guilty.

One blogger said, “Did they get the ground rules from Al Qaeda?” The meeting was a travesty. How can government officials demand secrecy in public briefings? It is no wonder that 90% of the public and 317 members of Congress want more Treasury transparency and an audit and investigation of the Fed. This is the same gang run by Geithner and Bernanke that are currently running the gold suppression scheme. When you have a criminal cabal involved you have no transparency. That is why the audit of the Fed is so important. Such an exercise would expose exactly what both have been doing in the markets.

The Fed and Treasury have lied for years about what they have been up too in behalf of their Illuminist friends. It is not only about the actions of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, but the funding of Watergate, Saddam Hussein, who they supposedly conveniently hung, the countries that secretly received loans, how much, who got them and what was the collateral? Were currency swaps with foreign control banks used to strengthen the dollar by the Fed and for those foreign control banks to purchase Treasury and Agency paper?

How about all the inside information funneled to Wall Street and banking for almost a century from both the Fed and Treasury? Their lies are legion. They both are manipulating every market in the world 24/7 and the American people want it stopped. We also want an audit of America’s gold and the testing of the gold bars held. There is much we want to know, so we can save our country and our freedom.

Investors continue to chase yields, which is a dumb practice. Interest rates are at 80-year lows and can only stay the same or rise. People are grabbing junk bond yields that will come back to haunt them.

At least for now Greece and euro problems are being shuffled into the background. You can imagine this is not the last of the eurozone problems. The PIIGS will be back one by one to cause never-ending problems until they are forced to leave the eurozone. That will cause a eurozone breakup, probably by the end of next year.

This is the first real threat to the eurozone since its beginning ten years ago, and we think they will find that their rules are so restrictive that weak members will be forced to leave. The monetary policy and interest rates may be singular, but fiscal policy is not. Exchange rates for the euro must fit all members, but rates and methods of growth vary widely. With one currency sovereignty has effectively been lost. Public debt to GDP has to be under 3%, while most are over 3%: Greece is at 10.7%.

There is also a public debt limit of 60% of GDP, which all nations in the zone have broken. All precepts have not and cannot be met. There is no effective policy because there is no way to enforce the rules. In addition most have current account deficits and the zone effectively has been carried by Germany from this aspect. The bottom line is a few have growth, the rest do not. As a result there is pressure, due to poor growth in some of the nations, for austerity measures to reduce fiscal deficits at the worst possible time. Greece comes first along with Ireland and the rest will follow.

Just as an example, Spain has a fiscal deficit of 10% of GDP that has to fall to 3% within three years, which is virtually impossible just as it is in Greece. Their current account deficit is 4.5% of GDP. In a recessionary/depressionary world getting into the plus column is a tall order. This dilemma is the result in part of the housing collapse caused by Spanish banks and inattention by the Bank for International Settlements. We see consumption continuing to fall in the face of 20% unemployment, which worsens by the day. The PIIGS and a present total of 19 nations are effectively bankrupt. We do not believe they can survive without devaluation and debt default. That is why we expect that to happen next year. Read more…

Source: International Forecaster

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The War on Consciousness | Awaken in the Dream

BY PAUL LEVY

We are truly in a war. It is not the war we imagine we are in, which is the way our true adversaries want it. It is not a foreign war against a foreign enemy. It is a war on consciousness, a war on our own minds. The global war on terror that is being fought around the world is an embodied reflection in the material world of a deeper, more fundamental war that is going on in the realm of consciousness itself.

We have the most criminal regime in all of our history wreaking unspeakable horror on the entire planet, while simultaneously waging war on the consciousness of its own citizens – US. If we aren’t aware of this, we are unwittingly playing into, supporting and complicit in the evil that is being perpetrated in our name.

A government’s war on the consciousness of its own citizens is by no means unique to the Bush administration. Abusing power over others so as to limit their freedom is an archetypal process that has been endlessly re-enacted by governments throughout history in various forms. With the Bush administration, however, the pathological aspect of this process has become so exaggerated and amped up to such a degree that it is just about impossible not to notice its staggering malignancy. With the Bush administration, the underlying evil that has played out in our government over many years is becoming overwhelmingly obvious for all to see. With the Bush administration, the underlying evil that informs systems of government that are based on “power over” instead of “liberty for” is coming out from hiding in the shadows. Instead of being acted out underground, our government is acting out this evil above ground, in plain sight for all who are courageous enough to look.

Impeaching Bush and Co. ultimately won’t change anything unless we deal with the corrupt powers which control and direct them. George Bush is just a finger-puppet of the hidden hand which animates him. Bush only has apparent power, as he himself is a minion of far more powerful predator-like forces whose nefarious interests he serves. Whether we call it the illuminati, the global elite, a shadow government, or a secret cabal, there is no doubt that there are darker, self-serving forces that have insinuated themselves into and taken over our government. The terrorists that we should be worried about are domestic terrorists who are actually implementing their agendas from deep within our very system of government itself.

The United States Government itself has become a “front” for the underlying military-industrial-financial crime syndicate that animates it. This is not to say that there aren’t many good, well-meaning people in our government – they are simply prohibited by the very nature of the corrupt system they are in from reforming it. Our system of government is rigged in such a way so that there is no way to transform the system within the system itself.

The underlying core of our government has become rotten such that the entire operation simply feeds into and is an expression of the same underlying corruption. All of the scandals continually coming out are like the superficial skin rash of a much deeper systemic disease, like a cancer that is infecting the greater body politic. Citizens who are not aware of our government’s insidious intrusions into our lives are unwittingly feeding the corruption they are looking away from in their very act of looking away.

The “powers” that have taken over our government have become concentrated and centralized in just a few elite hands, proving how easy it is for the few to control the many. They almost control all the levers of power: financial, political and judicial. In this war on consciousness, these powers-that-be are using the most advanced mind-control technology that our world has ever known to make its takeover complete. The essence of mind-control is information control, which is one thing our overly secretive current administration is very good at. Read more…

Source: Awaken in the Dream

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CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens’ rights | Political Ticker

Fifty-six percent of Americans say the government poses an immediate threat to individual rights and freedoms.Washington (CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.

The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.

According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken – though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what’s broken can be fixed.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.

Source: Political Ticker