government control – The Burning Platform

The Shift to a Cashless Society is Snowballing

Love it or hate it, cash is playing an increasingly less important role in society.

In some ways this is great news for consumers. The rise of mobile and electronic payments means faster, convenient, and more efficient purchases in most instances. New technologies are being built and improved to facilitate these transactions, and improving security is also a priority for many payment providers.

However, there is also a darker side in the shift to a cashless society. Governments and central banks have a different rationale behind the elimination of cash transactions, and as a result, the so-called “war on cash” is on.

On the Path to a Cashless Society

The Federal Reserve estimates that there will be $616.9 billion in cashless transactions in 2016. That’s up from around $60 billion in 2010.

Continue reading “The Shift to a Cashless Society is Snowballing”

Every Position On The Spectrum Supports The Government’s Propaganda

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

This excellent article by Glenn Greenwald — http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43438.htm — reminded me that I have meant to write about how every sort of interest attaches to the government’s propaganda in order to make its point.

Greenwald shows how the Snowden haters in the US media seized on the Paris attack in order to blame Snowden. The American, indeed Western, media consists of the scum of the earth, and they all together are no match for Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald shows that they are so dimwitted that they cannot remember their previous stories long enough to save them from making laughing stocks of themselves when they gang up on Snowden.

The presstitutes that constitute the Western media had a great incentive to buy in to the false story of the Paris attack, because they saw an opportunity to blame the attack on Snowden, who showed them up for what they are — whores who lie for the government for money.

Likewise, anti-immigration web sites and political parties have a great stake in the false story of the Paris attack, because they can use it to emphasize the perils of allowing into a country people who don’t belong there.

The leftwing buys into the government’s lies, because it proves their point that Western imperialism and neo-colonialism brings blowback. The oppressed colonies rise up and send death and destruction to the imperialist’s homelands. This is emotionally satisfying to the left even though it hands over to the government control over the population.

Continue reading “Every Position On The Spectrum Supports The Government’s Propaganda”

Thanks Michelle: Black Market In Food Items Springs Up In US Schools

Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,

Kids to Michelle Obama: Here’s Where you can Stick your School Lunch Rules

A close-up of one of the Nanny State’s new “healthy school lunches” – a.k.a. the flood level of Halo 3 – via Twitter

Politicians have always labored under the entirely mistaken impression that one can keep people from doing what they actually want to do, or that markets can be suppressed by outlawing them. The greatest monument to this folly is the utter failure known as the “war on drugs”. Even those who believe in the notion that the government should look after the “Volksgesundheit”, or, as is far more likely in the case of drug prohibition, should enforce Puritanical morals on people against their will (while ensuring the profitability of officially sanctioned drug pushers in the form of the pharmaceutical industry on the side), must admit by now that the effort has been a spectacular and costly fiasco.

After Germany’s reunification, old medical records and statistics were rediscovered in the former GDR, which allowed researchers to complete the historical record back to 1871, when Germany was first unified. Upon studying these statistics, they inter alia found out that use of the drugs considered most dangerous – assorted derivatives of opium – has been precisely as prevalent among the population after prohibition as it was before it. In other words, the health benefit of prohibition was precisely zero. So who is benefiting? Apart from the already mentioned pill-pushers, this cartoon seems to cover it:

Beneficiaries of the drug war

Cartoon by Tim Kelly

Continue reading “Thanks Michelle: Black Market In Food Items Springs Up In US Schools”

France Restricts Cash, Movement of Gold & Crypto-Currencies

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

France is of course the most socialist country in Europe and it always attacks anyone with money. Its latest war on money is broadening to create a virtual lock-down on all assets of anyone. France is strengthening the control of cash payments drastically. Also the gold sales and movement of any tangible goods is to be reported.

The French Finance Minister Michel Sapin has announced a drastic tightening of the use of cash in France. As the newspaper Le Parisien reported that citizens should be strictly monitored from September 2015 if they make payments in cash.

– The limit on cash payments will be reduced from 3,000 euros to 1,000 euros.

– Tourists can only pay up to 10,000 euros in cash, so far there were 15,000 euros.

– If a Frenchman wants to change money into another currency, it must still do to 1,000 euros without identification only. So far, French could buy foreign currencies for 8,000 euros.

– If a bank customer stands out more than 10,000 euros in a month from his account, the bank must report the transaction to the Money Laundering Authority TRACFIN.

– Banks must inform the authorities of all cargo transfers within the EU that exceed 10,000 euros. This regulation checks, pre-paid cards and even gold are affected.

– The control of crypto-currencies like Bitcoin to be drastically tightened.

This is the economic tyranny we face. What is yours really belongs to them from the way they see it. We no longer live in a democratic world. This is all about them controlling the people to sustain their power. The French official reason for these measures is the “war on terror”. In fact, it is the measure that we are witnessing around the globe because those in power feel it slipping away. This is not a war on terror, it is war against the people in the form of financial repression. It is still unclear whether other euro countries to follow the example of Paris and its citizens in other countries restrict the free, private use of their money.

IS EBOLA JUST ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO DISTRACT THE IGNORANT MASSES WITH FEAR?

If it looks like a government manufactured crisis, smells like a government manufactured crisis, and the captured MSM does their part to promote crisis and fear, it’s probably a government manufactured crisis. Do you notice how the MSM and the government have done a 180 degree shift from Putin shooting down an airliner (another false flag) to this new worldwide Ebola crisis? Why would the government allow these two infected Americans back into the country? They won’t let you on a plane if you have the mumps, measles or chickenpox.

The economic situation of this country sucks, no matter what you are told on the boob tube by the corporate propaganda media. US influence around the world is in rapid decline. Everything we touch goes to shit instantaneously (Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine). The people need to be kept in a constant state of fear from terrorists, the Russians, Iran, and now from the terrible Ebola virus. Throw in a few Plague victims in Colorado for good measure.They don’t want you focusing on the Ponzi scheme and pillaging of wealth being pulled off by TPTB.

This is nothing more than another government method of keeping the sheep penned in and frightened. Trust the government to keep you safe. Sacrifice some more liberties and freedoms. The majority will quiver as they have been conditioned to over the years. When will people wake up from their stupor and realize what is happening?

Via InfoWars

Don’t Fear Ebola, Fear the State

And mistrust fascist big pharma public-private partnerships

by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com | August 1, 2014

It is difficult to contract the deadly viral disease Ebola.

In order to get it, you have to be in direct contact with blood and other body fluids from an infected person or animal. Aerosol transmission is not possible. The possibility of widespread transmission is extremely low due to a high fatality rate and the remote areas where infections usually occur.

According to some members of the medical establishment and the corporate media, the spread of the disease is out of control in the African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. A chart posted on Daily Mail claims 1,201 people in those countries tested positive for the disease and 672 have died this year. The Daily Mail says Ebola is “as infectious as flu,” a claim that is patently untrue.

As Jon Rappoport told Alex Jones on Thursday, the death rate from Ebola is nearly infinitesimal when compared to seasonal flu, which kills between three and five million people every year. Like previous “pandemic” diseases like Swine Flu and West Nile, Ebola is being exploited and exaggerated as part of a psychological operation by government.

Disease, natural disaster, and man-made crises are routinely exploited by government as pretexts to enlarge and extend its power and reach. The state and its propaganda media thrive on one manufactured crisis after another as part of a systematic effort to ramp up the police state. The goal is not protection of the people. It is an all-encompassing surveillance state with a militarized component designed not to save us from evil terrorists or scary diseases, but control the population and maintain through fear and violence its political monopoly.

A fear-mongered Ebola – far less threatening to the average American than a stay at the hospital or driving a car – will be used to impose new restrictions on the movement of citizens. The CDC website reveals what the government plans to do in the event the difficult to spread disease arrives in America – enforce isolation, quarantine, and government decree enforced at gunpoint. “In addition to serving as medical functions, isolation and quarantine also are ‘police power’ functions, derived from the right of the state to take action affecting individuals for the benefit of society,” the CDC states.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is on its game. “The military has response plans in place for national emergency events that could include anything from a pandemic outbreak to economic collapse, both of which could lead to civil unrest,” writes Mac Slavo. “The Department of Defense informed Congress that it has deployed biological diagnostic systems to National Guard support teams in all 50 states” despite a complete lack of Ebola cases and the improbability of a pandemic.

In addition to providing an excuse for an enlargement of government and military power, hyped up pandemic threats are used by transnational corporations to increase profits.

In 2010 the outgoing Chair of the Council of Europe’s Sub-committee on Health, Wolfgang Wodarg, told the Alex Jones Show that the 2009 swine flu pandemic was a hoax manufactured by pharmaceutical companies in league with the WHO to make large profits while endangering public health. “It is their trick that they always try to monopolize this and we pay much more like this,” said Wodarg.

Fast tracked vaccines that may become mandatory

The National Institutes of Health, a biomedical research facility under the Department of Health & Human Services, has announced it is working with another government behemoth, the Food and Drug Administration, to fast track an Ebola vaccine.

“We are starting to discuss some deals with pharmaceutical companies to help scale it up, so on an emergency basis, it might be available in 2015 for health workers who are putting themselves at extreme risk,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fast tracked vaccines and accompanying pandemic psychological warfare has resulted in the state and its supported institutions – including hospitals, schools and even private daycare centers – making flu vaccines mandatory for workers.

The New York Times and the establishment media are now demanding mandatory vaccinations for children and the elimination of all exemptions. As if that is not bad enough, some are calling for mandatory participation in vaccine clinical trials as well.

“Many societies already mandate that citizens undertake activities for the good of society,” writes Susanne Sheehy for the American Medical Association, a government-sanctioned cartel that specializes in making healthcare unaffordable.

Beware when government and its preferred corporate partners argue in favor of mandatory activities supposedly for the good of society.

This invariably results in authoritarian behavior, conscription, and wealth confiscation at gunpoint.

PUSSIES & BUTTERFLY CHASERS

While in Wildwood for Memorial Day weekend we witnessed the usual obese tattooed pierced masses aplenty. The foul mouthed multitude of morons were out in force consuming vast quantities of fried oreos, boardwalk fries, Mac’s pizza, Kohr’s ice cream, and Laura’s fudge, before drinking themselves into a stupor. Meanwhile, the air conditioner in my money pit condo was throwing in the towel after 13 years. What was another $4,400 for a new air conditioner for my underwater “investment” property?

But at least we had our bikes, the boardwalk and the ocean. Avalon and I went on our usual early morning trek to “the rocks” at 2nd & JFK Boulevard. The rocks were the jetty that has been there for decades. When I was a kid we would walk our dogs down to the rocks every night. My Dad taught me how to fish from those rocks. I inherited my Dad’s patience. I could stand on those rocks for hours, casting my line into the glistening ocean and waiting for a flounder, blue or weakie to take the bait.

I never fell off those rocks. I never saw anyone ever fall off those rocks. If I had fallen, my Dad would have called me a dumbass and told me to get up. The jetty was always wet from the ocean spray. Slippery green moss grew abundantly. It’s called nature. In the America I grew up in, if you fell down, you got up. You didn’t sue someone because you were an idiot who couldn’t keep their balance. The jetty was created to protect the beaches from erosion and has been used by Dads teaching their kids to fish since the 1960’s.

You can’t stand on those rocks anymore. According to the control freak government drones, it’s now a crime to step foot on those rocks. They threaten to fine you and throw you in jail for stepping foot on some rocks that have been stood upon without incident for fifty years. The picture below captures the pure utter idiocy of a government gone wild. What a pathetic joke this country has become. Some politician listens to some lawyer, who thinks city insurance rates will be lower if they put up some ridiculous danger sign to keep citizens from enjoying themselves and carrying on a tradition of fathers teaching sons how to fish. I wonder if those two four year old girls realized how much peril they were in.

Does that two foot drop from the jetty strike you as life threatening? This is what passes for high risk in this nation of pussies. But the government drones didn’t think one ridiculous sign was enough. They had to cement in a second sign to provide the exact same message. Sometimes I wonder how low the IQs of the government drones must be. It almost as if they are incapable of using their brains.

After escaping this perilous landscape, we hopped back on our bikes, taking our lives into our hands by not wearing helmets like Obama, and rode another quarter mile to the Hereford Lighthouse to take in some more scenic views. The lighthouse is surrounded by lovely well kept flowering gardens. The gardens are well manicured and weeded by meticulous Boomers. These old folks look down upon visitors with children. They love rules and regulations. Avalon and I had to laugh and shake our heads when we saw the sign below. These control freaks actually think butterflies care about kids chasing them. They think they can stop this butterfly abuse with a sign.

What is it with control freaks and signs? There are a vast swath of people in governmental positions of authority who don’t think you can make rational decisions without their rules and regulations. They don’t trust you to live your own life. They want to control every aspect of your daily existence. Every law, regulation, directive, bylaw, rule, edict, decree and command imposed upon our lives by sociopathic, unintelligent, controlling government apparatchiks takes away freedoms, liberties and our right to live our lives as we see fit. Years of indoctrination in government run schools and being inundated with decades of propaganda preaching “government knows best” has brainwashed the masses to accept and embrace the ridiculous notion that these control freaks make us safer, improve our lives, and act in our best interests.

Will we ever come to our senses, take personal responsibility for our own lives, and shake off the yoke of authoritarian government control? I keep looking for signs.