How real is man-made climate change? Here are the facts…

Ever since the 1980s, hardly a week has passed without some new report warning about the apocalyptic effects of man-made climate change. However, these reports routinely exclude data that might cast doubt on their conclusions.

The hypothesis of man-made climate change states than when human beings burn fossil fuels, the resulting carbon dioxide gases insulate the planet to an unnatural extent.  This then causes the planet to warm and the polar ice caps to melt.  While few people deny that the planet seems to be about a degree and a half warmer than it was a century ago, the link between rising temperatures and rising carbon dioxide levels is not nearly as obvious as all the climate doomsayers would have you believe.

According to NASA Earth Observatory, Earth’s average temperature increased by almost one degree Fahrenheit between 1918 and 1941.  Over the same period carbon dioxide levels increased 5 percent.  Between 1941 and 1978 carbon dioxide levels increased another 5 percent, while temperatures decreased by about half a degree.

The media at the time were raging about global cooling, only to see temperatures increase another degree between 1978 and 1998.  Since 1978, carbon dioxide levels have risen fifteen percent, but global temperatures have remained stable.

These facts cast serious doubt on the theory that burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of the planet’s 0ne-degree temperature rise over the past century.  Government-funded scientists are ignoring evidence that global warming does not correlate to carbon dioxide emissions, and that no warming has been recorded for the past nineteen years.  They are also ignoring the evidence proving that Earth has experienced higher temperatures than at present — before sources of carbon emissions were even invented.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, natural factors play an insignificant role in climate change compared to the man-made factors.  But in order to believe this, you have to ignore reams of data from ice cores, dripstones, tree rings, and ocean sediment cores.  The vast storehouses of scientific evidence all indicate that Earth naturally alternates between warm and cold phases in roughly 1000-year cycles.  During the warm period prior to the one we are now in, the Earth warmed 800 years before the start of the Industrial Revolution and its accompanying carbon dioxide increases.

The evidence demonstrates very clearly, in fact, that carbon dioxide emissions, while certainly contributing to climate change, are insignificant when compared to effects from the sun.  As solar activity increased from 1900 to 1940 and decreased from 1940 to 1970, this correlates much more closely with global temperatures than with levels of carbon dioxide.

Our rabid climate scientists — and we use the term “scientists” very hesitantly — still find it politically expedient to deny, bury, and discredit the research that proves them wrong.  The climate change alarmists systematically ignore the evidence of naturally occurring climate change due to the sun.  Using manipulation of data to push a political agenda is not science,  and it threatens both the economy and the environment.  Attempting to shut down the fossil fuel industries due to a climate change alarm which does not exist is not just misguided, it is foolish, stupid, and dishonest.  Let’s find good alternative energy sources instead of spending billions upon billions of dollars subsidizing unprofitable industries and supporting the UN’s panicky climate fund efforts.

 

[From an article by Andrew Miller in The Philadelphia Trumpet]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

World’s first laser weapon now ready to be deployed

The world’s first laser weapon — one that can “kill” threatening, airborne drones — is ready for action, according to news sources.

The laser, known as the Laser Weapons System (LaWS), may seem as though it were pulled straight from a James Bond movie, but it’s entirely functional and can shoot with stunning accuracy, the U.S. Navy told CNN. The LaWS is currently deployed aboard the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport ship, in the Persian Gulf.

 “Operationally, it works just like a laser pointer,” Lt. Cale Hughes, a LaWS officer, told CNN. “There’s a chamber inside with special materials that release photons.” [7 Technologies That Transformed Warfare]

The LaWS laser beam is completely silent and invisible. It’s also fast: The laser travels at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second, or about 300,000 kilometers per second), meaning it’s about 50,000 times the speed of an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile, such as the one North Korea is testing, the Navy says.

The $40 million system requires a team of three to operate it and a small generator to power its electricity supply, according to the Navy.  However, each blast is relatively cheap, about a dollar a shot.

In addition to being able to take down threats in the air, the LaWS can hit and disable objects in the water. The laser’s accurate blasts, heated to thousands of degrees, might even mean fewer casualties in combat, according to Inez Kelly, a U.S. Naval Forces Central Command science adviser.

For instance, if the laser is aimed at an enemy boat, operatives can “take out exactly the engine, and not necessarily damage anything else,” Kelly said. “That type of precision weapon work is something that you don’t really get with conventional weapons, because there tends to be more collateral damage.”

Under Geneva Convention rules, armed forces are not allowed to use laser weapons directly against people, reported Optics.org, a site that tracks the photonics industry. The U.S. will abide by that protocol, Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research, said in 2014 at a news conference in Washington, D.C., according to Optics.org.

The U.S. Navy is already developing second-generation systems that might be able to target threats other than drones and water vessels. These missions are classified, but when asked whether the LaWS could shoot and destroy missiles, USS Ponce Capt. Christopher Wells said “maybe” and smiled.

 

[From an article by Laura Geggel, senior writer for LIVE SCIENCE.com]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

 

Which part is the Fed trying to play, Dumb or Dumber?

If you believe the newspapers, the Fed has begun a “tightening cycle.” It is on course to raise its key interest rate, little by little, in quarter-point increments.

It has to know this is a perilous thing to do. After so much market manipulation over a very long period, prices all up and down the capital structure – from junk bonds to quality stocks and solid real estate – have been bent and distorted.

After all, that was the idea: drive up the price of stocks and bonds by driving down interest rates. People would be forced to spend or invest their money rather than save it. And higher financial asset prices would make the rich feel even richer.

Walking down the street, the dollars would overflow from their pockets like turnips rolling off the back of a produce truck.

They’d feel so flush, they’d buy, buy, buy… sending the plain people into a flurry of trucking, toting, and busting their humps to provide them with goods and services.

Then, after the rich were fully satiated (how many martinis can the 1% drink?), they’d have to invest.

Cash would flow into money-losing startups like Tesla and Snapchat. Headline acquisitions, such as Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods, would keep stock prices bubbling higher. And trillions of dollars in stock buybacks would make the rich even richer still!

But the feds could only work this miracle by buying bonds. And the feds didn’t have any money. What could they do?

No problem! They used their fake money, the post-1971 credit dollars – trillions of them — money they could create at will.

From the post-crash bottom in 2009 to today’s top, U.S. stocks and bonds registered a cumulative increase of about $21 trillion. And upon that mirage now rest the hopes, dreams, and contentment of millions of people all over the planet.

One has planned his retirement based on his gains over the last eight years. Another has taken out a loan against his stocks to fund his business. Still another – a major player on Wall Street – has a billion-dollar hedge fund portfolio… a leveraged bet on “low vol,” which depends on further support from the Fed.

And look at super investor Warren Buffett…the latest headline news tells us his gifts to charities now top $27 billion. The money is to be used to fight illness and poverty worldwide. But the gifts came in the form of Berkshire stock – not cash. Imagine how the halt and the hungry will suffer if the stock goes down!

Which brings us back to our question: How dumb is the Fed?

As you can see from the foregoing, the boom of 2009–17 was wrought by the Fed and paid for with fake money. It is a classic credit bubble, in other words – not genuine prosperity.

Almost all the new jobs created during this period were low-wage or part-time jobs in health care or government, not high-value jobs in manufacturing. That’s why real earnings, per family, have scarcely improved… and real employment (as a percentage of the available workforce) has gone down.

All the bubbly action, in other words, is in the financial markets, not the real Main Street economy. And as the Austrian School economists tell us, every boom not financed on real savings must end in a bust.

Nothing comes from nothing. Fake money produces fake prosperity. Take away the fake money… and the fake prosperity goes “poof,” too.

Which is why the Fed will never, voluntarily, stop manipulating prices. It can’t let the markets return to “normal” price discovery.

Because the markets are likely to discover prices a lot lower than Dow 20,000.

“Normal” may be a lot higher than a 2% yield on a 10-year Treasury yield, too.

“Normal” may mean a deep depression as the economy shakes off the foolish investments and misallocations of the last eight years. “Normal” would also mean the disgrace of Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke, who are largely responsible for this bubble.

But “normal” won’t stop there. The crisis of 2008–09 was a repudiation of the Fed’s fake-money debt bubble. The stock market crashed as the bubble deflated, just as it normally does. But then central banks went back to work, doubling down on their error with more hot air than ever before.

Federal debt alone almost doubled from about $10 trillion to about $20 trillion. Worldwide, $68 trillion in debt has been added since 2007 – a 45% increase – bringing the debt-to-GDP ratio to 327%.

All of this debt now hangs on the feeble reed of more ultra-low interest rate policies.

The Fed says it is going to return its interest rate policy back to normal…

No chance. It’s not that dumb.

 

[From an article written and published by Bill Bonner of Bonner and Partners]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

 

 

Retired CIA agent now admits that 9-11 implosion of WTC-7 was a CIA job

Malcolm Howard, a 79-year-old retired CIA agent, has made a series of astonishing claims since being released from hospital in New Jersey on Friday and told he has weeks to live. Mr. Howard claims he was involved in the “controlled demolition” of World Trade Center 7, the third building that was destroyed on 9/11.

 

Mr. Howard, who worked for the CIA for 36 years as an operative, claims he was tapped by senior CIA agents to work on the project due to his engineering background, and early career in the demolition business.

Trained as a civil engineer, Mr. Howard became an explosives expert after being headhunted by the CIA in early 1980s. Mr. Howard says has extensive experience in planting explosives in items as small as cigarette lighters and as large as “80 floor buildings.”

The 79-year-old New Jersey native says he worked on the CIA operation they dubbed “New Century” between May 1997 and September 2001, during a time he says the CIA “was still taking orders from the top.” Mr. Howard says he was part of a cell of 4 operatives tasked with ensuring the demolition was successful.

Mr. Howard says the World Trade Center 7 operation is unique among his demolitions, as it is the only demolition that “we had to pretend wasn’t a demolition job”. He claims he had no problem going through with the deception at the time, because “when you are a patriot, you don’t question the motivation of the CIA or the White House. You assume the bigger purpose is for a greater good. They pick good, loyal people like me, and it breaks my heart to hear the **** talk.”

[John Kerry Admits WTC 7 Was Brought Down By Controlled Demolition]

But even he admits that now, looking back, “Something wasn’t right.  No good has come from this. This isn’t the America we envisioned.”

Explaining how the building was bought down, Mr. Howard says, “It was a classic controlled demolition with explosives. We used super-fine military grade nanothermite composite materials as explosives. The hard part was getting thousands of pounds of explosives, fuses and ignition mechanisms into the building without causing too much concern. But almost every single office in the Building 7 was rented by the CIA, the Secret Service, or the military, which made it easier.”

Mr. Howard explains that WTC-7 was “loaded with explosives in strategic places” in the month leading up to the day that changed the course of American history. On September 11th, while the North and South towers burned, fuses were ignited in World Trade Center 7, and nanothermite explosions hollowed out the building, destroying the steel structure, removing the reinforcements, and allowing the office fires to tear through the rest of the building, hollowing it out like a shell.

World Trade Center 7 collapsed into its own footprint at 5:20pm, seven hours after the destruction of WTC 1 and 2. The building shocked witnesses by coming down at the speed of freefall, indicating that it encountered zero resistance on the way down.

Mr. Howard and his colleagues had done their job.

“When the building came down, it was such a rush. Everything went exactly to plan. It was so smooth. Everybody was evacuated. Nobody was hurt in WTC-7. We were celebrating. We kept watching replays of the demolition, we had the whiskey and cigars out, and then all of a sudden the strangest thing happened. We all started to worry that it looked a bit too smooth. We watched the tape again and again and again and we started to get paranoid. It looked like a controlled demolition. We thought ****, people are going to question this. And then we heard that people from the street were reporting that they heard the explosions during the afternoon. When we were told that the BBC botched their report and announced to the world that the building collapsed 20 minutes before it actually did… at that point we really thought the gig was up.”

According to the official 9/11 report issued by the government, WTC-7 collapsed due to “uncontrolled fires” that were caused by debris that floated over from WTC 1 and 2, which had been hit by passenger planes. If the official narrative was true, WTC 7 would be the first tall building in the world to ever collapse due to uncontrolled fires, and the only steel skyscraper in the world to have collapsed into itself, due to “office fires.”

Mr. Howard and his colleagues feared the public would see through the official narrative and rise up against the government, demanding to be told the truth.

“There were so many loose ends, so much evidence left behind. We thought the public would be all over it. We thought there would be a public uprising that the media couldn’t ignore. They’d be funding investigations and demanding to know why they were being lied to. We thought they’d find chemical composites in the area that would prove Building 7 was blown up. 

“We thought there would be a revolution. It would go all the way to the top, to President Bush. He’d be dragged out of the White House.

“But none of that happened. Almost nobody questioned anything. The media shot down anyone who dared question anything they were told.”

Follow the money

Mr. Howard claims he has “no direct knowledge” about the destruction of North and South Towers of the World Trade Center, explaining that “CIA operations are very specific” and that it is common to be working on a larger project while only understanding a small piece of the puzzle.

[9/11: Larry Silverstein Designed New WTC-7 One Year Before Attacks]

But he has advice for investigators seeking to understand the entire puzzle and work out who was behind the most devastating attack on American soil in history.

“Follow the money.”

“When you want to find out who is behind something, just follow the money. Look at the trades made just before 9/11. These are the guys that knew what was coming. The sons of CIA agents, government officials. Close relatives of the most powerful men in America. Cheney, Rumsfeld. They all got rich. It wasn’t just the contracts awarded to their friends in the construction business and the wars and the kickbacks. It was insider trading.”

Many countries including Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Monaco launched insider trading investigations in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, believing that if they could prove Al-Qaeda operatives profited on the stock market then they could prove the terror organization was behind the attacks.

And all the evidence pointed to heavy insider trading around 9/11.

Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Martino, said: “I think there are terrorist states and organizations behind speculation on the international markets.” German central bank president, Ernst Welteke, said his researchers had found “almost irrefutable proof of insider trading.”

Even CNN reported that regulators were seeing “ever-clearer signs” that someone “manipulated financial markets ahead of the terror attack in the hope of profiting from it.”

Mr. Howard says that a serious study of who profited on the stock market from 9/11 would “tear the heart out of the oligarchy in America.”

“There is only one organization that spans the entire world, and let me tell you now, it isn’t and it never was al-Qaeda. It’s the CIA. There could never be a real investigation. The entire shadow government, as you call them now, are implicated.”

The 79-year-old, spending his final weeks at home, said he doesn’t expect to be taken into custody following his confession because “then they’d have to go after everyone else. They will just use the media to attack me. They are all on the payroll to suppress everything around 9/11.”

 

[From an article by Baxter Dmitry, published today by YourNewsWire.com]

 

NORM ‘n’ AL Note:  So let’s try to understand all we have been told by retired CIA agent Malcolm Howard.  (1) He himself was part of the CIA team that demolished WTC Building 7, AFTER the two main towers were demolished in the morning of 9-11-2001.  (2) He is not sure who was ultimately responsible for the destruction of the two main WTC towers earlier in the day.  (3) We know the death toll from the attacks on the towers: Over 2600 killed in the towers (about 200 of whom jumped to their certain deaths when they could no longer stand the heat and smoke), 265 killed on the four airliners (including the 19 terrorists), and 125 killed in the Pentagon.  Let us not forget the 344 New York firefighters and 71 law enforcement officers who also were killed in or after the attack on the WTC towers, bringing the total number of victims killed to 2977.  (In addition, 1140 people who worked, lived, or studied in Lower Manhattan on 9-11 have been diagnosed with cancer due to exposure to Ground Zero toxins, and about 1,400 9-11 rescue workers who responded to the scene in the days and months after the attacks have since died.)  (4) The demolition of WTC-7 was done in such a manner that it was designed NOT to look like a demolition. 

What are we to surmise from all this?  If true, the confession from Mr. Howard shows that CIA agents are blindly loyal to the organization, and perhaps blindly stupid at the same time.  How could the CIA possibly destroy WTC-7 in the afternoon, AFTER the towers had both fallen to the ground in the morning, and not think that this might be considered more than a little suspicious?  If the CIA knew ahead of time that the two towers would be destroyed, then the CIA must have been directly connected to the destruction of those towers.  (Is this not UNTHINKABLE, that our own CIA was willing to kill thousands of people, most of them US citizens, in this terrible plot?  And then arranged for it to happen?  How did the CIA find 19 Arabs crazy enough to buy into the suicidal plan?  Oh, wait…”buy into” the plan…the CIA could have paid the families of those crazy Arabs.  Now this is really getting strange.) 

Let us hope that someday soon the truth will be fully told.  Better yet, let us MAKE SURE the truth is fully told.

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

 

 

 

 

C.I.A. using Mainstream Media to run propaganda campaign against Trump Administration

“The C.I.A. always softens up the citizenry of a targeted country before a soft coup.  If that doesn’t work, they simply execute a covert but violent overthrow via assassination like they did with JFK.  Lastly, they will resort to an outright attack on the key organs of government authority and/or military power, but only when absolutely necessary.”   (Statement from a veteran intelligence analyst)

 

 

The NWO globalist entity known as Deep State, along with the Democratic Party, will — under no conditions — accept Donald Trump as the legitimate President of the United States of America.  For that matter, neither will the many RINOs within the Republican Party.

Because of this unrelenting predicament, there is no stopping the USS Donald Trump from hitting the iceberg.  You cannot thwart destiny when it’s preordained in such a profound and fundamental way.  After all, the welfare and continuity of the American Republic is at stake, they say.

To be clear, no one has said that Trump is at the helm of a 21st century Titanic.  He may just be the captain of a humongous icebreaker.   Only time will tell, however, and that time is fast approaching.

This seditious revolution has several pillars that define both its strategy and MO.  The whole world is watching daily the “Russia scare” strategy.  Deep State knows that the Russian boogeyman was effective during the Cold War so why should they reinvent the wheel?

Truly, no one has ever seen anything like it.  The C.I.A. uses their primary organs of propaganda — CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS — to run an unprecedented propaganda war against a sitting POTUS.  Likewise, the spook agency uses every major newspaper of record — especially The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times — to float patently false accusations and deliberately misleading headlines on their front pages.

KEY POINT: Even Nixon was not subjected to such a daily barrage of fake news during the height of Watergate.  And, “Yes!”, much of that media hysteria was also contrived fake news, produced to facilitate his premeditated removal which was in actuality a soft coup.

The CIA knows full well how to execute a color revolution.  They’ve carried out many around the globe over several decades.  Their trademark MO is to sufficiently frighten the citizenry about dangers of their current government or leader.   This is why the American people are now treated to a nonstop campaign of Trump-bashing by the MSM.  The CIA is aware that eventually, a critical mass of citizens will actively participate in an overthrow. And that many who don’t will at least lend their moral support to it.

The false story about ‘Russia election hacking’, of course, was the perfect pretext for the U.S. Intelligence Community to rally around.  Agents in all 17 agencies could be compelled to go with the flow — seditious flow — because the POTUS was said to be working with America’s historical enemy — R U S S I A!  Throw in a Democratic Party that is still beside itself with rage and madness about Hillary’s defeat and you have a full-blown Purple Revolution in the works. See the following link for valuable perspective: Former Democrat Insider Goes Rogue—Exposes Plot To Falsely Blame Russia

This total scam being run on the American people is not unprecedented.  Both World Wars of the last century saw similar war propaganda being thrown about here, there, and everywhere.  That’s just how it’s always done.  They did it against Germany prior to World War II after they demonized the Kaiser prior to World War I.

The salient point here is that it is now Putin who is being vilified and Russia that is being represented as a mortal enemy of the West.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and yet a vast majority of Americans believe the lies. Whenever a really big lie is repeated frequently, it starts to sink in.  That’s what CNN and NBC are all about today.  So are the NYT and WaPo.  Their CIA masters in Deep State know all of the best mind-control programs, as well as the magic formulas for effective war propaganda.

MSM and C.I.A. are guilty of sedition

There’s one major advantage that the President has at this pivotal stage of the Purple Revolution. The MSM now commits sedition on a weekly basis.  The C.I.A. likewise openly perpetrates treason against the nation.  These traitors to the American Republic expose themselves regularly because they think they can act with impunity.  This public display of arrogance and hubris has never happened before in the USA.

As a consequence, the MSM can legally be shut down with one executive order.  The C.I.A. can be dissolved with one stroke of the presidential pen.  Even the FCC can close down various MSM organs of propaganda for blatantly violating various rules and regulations. The law is squarely on the side of the FCC in this regard.

Hence, the longer that Trump permits the traitors to out themselves for all to see, the more of them he can get rid of when the time is right.  That moment is fast approaching as Deep State is getting closer to pressing the button on stage 2 of the 2017 revolution.  Their implementation plan has been designed according to a set schedule which sees this Fall as a crucial phase of the Purple Revolution.

What began with a clandestine partnership between George Soros and Hillary Clinton back in 2016 has evolved into a full-blown conspiracy to bring down the U.S. Federal Government and President Trump.

DO NOT MISS: Soros: Western Society Must Fall Before One World Govt Can Be Established 

Clearly, the growing insurrection against Trump has many disparate liberal organizations and powerful progressives supporting them.  As always, George Soros is front and center in this treasonous plot.  

Therefore, he should be arrested post haste for contributing to so much personal injury, including numerous deaths, as well as extensive property damage. The Clintons And Soros Launch America’s Purple Revolution. 

The C.I.A. will not stop this uprising until Trump is frogmarched out of the White House.  The principal question is this: What will the patriots and nationalists do then?

 

[From an article by Michael DePinto published in FREEDOM OUTPOST]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

 

 

 

 

The government’s official lies and false reality

The false reality constructed for Americans parallels perfectly the false reality constructed by Big Brother in George Orwells’ dystopian novel 1984.

Consider the constant morphing of “the Muslim threat” from al-Qaeda to the Taliban, to al-Nusra, to ISIS to ISIL, to Daesh with a jump to Russia. All of a sudden 16 years of Middle East wars against “terrorists” and “dictators” have become a matter of standing up to Russia, the country most threatened by Muslim terrorism, and the country most capable of wiping the United States and its vassal empire off of the face of the earth.

Domestically, Americans are assured that, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing, that is, flooding the financial markets with newly printed money that has driven up the prices of stocks and bonds, America has enjoyed an economic recovery since June of 2009, which must be one of the longest recoveries in history despite the absence of growth in median real family incomes, despite the lack of growth in real retail sales, despite the falling labor force participation rate, despite the lack of high value-added, high productivity, high wage jobs.

The “recovery” is more than a mystery. It is a miracle. It exists only on paper. Fake paper.

According to CNN, an unreliable source for sure, Jennifer Tescher, president and CEO of the Center for Financial Services Innovation, reports that about half of Americans report that their living expenses are equal to or exceed their incomes. Among those aged 18 to 25 burdened by student loans, 54 percent say their debts are equal to or exceed their incomes. This means that half of the U.S. population has ZERO discretionary income. So what is driving the recovery?

Nothing. For half or more of the U.S. population there is no discretionary income with which to drive the economy.

The older part of the population has no discretionary income either. For a decade there has been essentially zero interest on the savings of the elderly, and if you believe John Williams of shadowstats.com, which I do, the real interest rates have been zero and even negative as inflation is measured in a way designed to prevent Social Security cost of living adjustments.

In other words, the American economy has been skating by on the shrinkage of the savings and living standards of its population.

Last Friday’s employment report is just another lie from the government. The report says that the unemployment rate is 4.4 percent and that June employment increased by 222,000 jobs. A rosy picture. But as I have just demonstrated, there are no fundamentals to support it. It is just another U.S. government fabrication.

The rosy unemployment picture is totally contrived. The unemployment rate is 4.4 percent because discouraged workers who have not searched for a job in the past four weeks are not counted as unemployed.

The BLS has a second measure of unemployment, known as U6, which is seldom reported by the presstitute financial media. According to this official measure the US unemployment rate is about double the reported rate.

Why? the U6 rate counts discouraged workers who have been discouraged for less than one year.

John Williams counts the long term discouraged workers (discouraged for more than one year) who formerly (before “reforms”) were counted officially. When the long term discouraged are counted, the U.S. unemployment rate is in the 22-23 percent range. This is borne out by the clear fact that the labor force participation rate has been falling throughout the alleged “recovery.” Normally, labor force participation rates rise during economic recoveries.

It is very easy for the government to report a low jobless rate when the government studiously avoids counting the unemployed.

It is an extraordinary thing that although the U.S. government itself reports that if even a small part of discouraged workers are counted as unemployed the unemployment rate is 8.6 percent, the presstitute financial media, a collection of professional liars, still reports, in the face of the government’s admission, that the unemployment rate as 4.4 percent.

Now, let’s do what I have done month after month, year after year. Let’s look at the jobs that the BLS alleges are being created. Remember, most of these alleged jobs are the product of the birth/death model that adds by assumption alone about 100,000 jobs per month. In other words, these jobs come out of a model, not from reality.

Where are these reported jobs? They are where they always are, in lowly paid domestic services. Health care and social assistance, about half of which is “ambulatory health care services,” provided 59,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality provided 36,000 jobs of which 29,300 consist of waitresses and bartenders. Local government rose by 35,000. Manufacturing, once the backbone of the U.S. economy, provided a measly 1,000 jobs.

As I have emphasized for a decade or two, the U.S. is devolving into a third world workforce where the only employment available is in lowly paid domestic service jobs that cannot be offshored and that do not pay enough to provide an independent existence. This is why 50 percent of 25-year-olds live at home with their parents and why there are more Americans aged 24-34 living with parents than living independently.

This is not the economic profile of a “superpower.”  The American economy that offshoring corporations and financialization have created is incapable of supporting the enormous U.S. debt burden. It is only a matter of time and circumstance until the US debt burden becomes completely unmanageable.

 

[From an article by Paul Craig Roberts, published by PERSONAL LIBERTY]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

 

 

 

FDA now wants to eliminate side effect warnings from drug ads in latest collusion with Big Pharma

We’ve all seen those drug commercials on TV with happy-looking grandparents frolicking in a grassy field with an adorable puppy, living life to the fullest while an announcer talks about how Big Pharma’s latest poison is going to make your life every bit as joyful as theirs. Then comes the obligatory rapid reading of a list of side effects. When the commercial is over, the general impression is a positive one: This drug is going to make your life better, but you might have a few minor problems along the way.

Drug companies are required to tell you their product’s side effects, but they have invested a lot of money in finding ways to present this information in the most positive light possible, and when that approach won’t work, they do their best to deliver it in a forgettable manner. These efforts appear to be paying off because now the FDA is considering scrapping them altogether on the grounds that TV viewers simply don’t listen to the long list of side effects. With this move, it appears the FDA cares not at all about making their collusion with Big Pharma obvious.

In an effort to make the process seem reasoned, health officials proposed a study that will assess whether people actually read the ad warnings. They claim they are worried that critical information is getting lost in the shuffle, causing people to overlook the more serious warnings. Should the study confirm this suspicion, the FDA could scrap the list entirely as they find other ways to “safely” market medication.

In fact, they say that people are more likely to read a medication’s risks on a page-long full summary of safety information than they are to listen to it in the type of brief summary used in a TV ad. Of course, you won’t have that information in your hands in the first place until after you’ve “talked to your doctor” as these commercials suggest and somehow convinced him or her to prescribe you the medication. In other words, you’ve already bought and paid for it by the time you can see the drawbacks, which means you’re more likely to take your chances and simply swallow the meds – and even if you don’t ultimately do that, they’ve already got your money.

Adriane Fugh-Berman, the director of PharmedOut, a project run by Georgetown Medical Center,  believes that allowing drug companies to choose the limited list of side effects they include in ads is highly problematic. She pointed out: “That’s why ads for erectile dysfunction say ‘may cause four-hour erection,’ because that doesn’t sound too bad to most guys! Unlike other side effects such as heart attack.”

FDA lets Big Pharma use tricks to distract you from stated side effects

The U.S. is one of only two countries that allow pharmaceutical companies to place direct-to-consumer TV ads, and Big Pharma has found lots of ways to make the required side effect warnings more palatable. For example, some ads will have one narrator tell viewers about the drug’s benefits and then use a different voice actor to run through the risks using a less engaging voice. Another trick they employ is reading the list of warnings using more complex grammatical structures so it’s not as readily absorbable by viewers. Keeping the voice actor who lists the risks off screen is another common tactic as research shows people absorb more information when they can see a speaker. In addition, they sometimes show distracting images while this list is read so people won’t focus on the words.

The FDA does not approve ads before they are aired, but they claim they will stop ads that violate the law after their release. Their guidelines do not require drug makers to tell people if lifestyle changes like diet and exercise could help improve their condition, nor do they ban ads for medications that pose serious risks. Now the FDA is poised to remove yet another obstacle for drug makers…and make it easier than ever for them to convince people that their poisons are harmless.

 

[From an article by Isabelle Z., published by NATURAL NEWS]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970