Exposing The Truth

Ready For Life ‘Off The Grid’?: GBTV Launches Reality Show ‘Independence USA’

December 13, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

The show follows Frank Belcastro and his family as they try and become completely independent and prepare for life “off the grid.”

Here’s the news release:

GBTV LAUNCHES ITS FIRST REALITY SHOW- INDEPENDENCE U.S.A.

This January 2012, Join the Belcastro Family as They Prepare for an Independent Life Off the Grid. The show will debut on January 18th 2012 and will air weekly on Wednesdays.

Concerned that the economy could collapse? Or that a natural disaster could wipe out our infrastructure? So is Frank, and he is doing something about it!

Believing that America has become too reliant on a crumbling foundation, Frank is preparing his family for life “off the grid,” admiring the way people lived in the 19th century. Like them, he longs to become completely independent. So he is embarking on one project at a time hoping to prepare his family for the worst, such as building a car that runs on wood in case gasoline supplies are interrupted, becoming expert hunters when grocery stores are no longer in existence, and making his own alcohol for barter when the dollar collapses.

Frank does it all with determination, intelligence, and good humor. He’ll need all that and more, as he attempts to motivate a family that neither shares his fervor nor wishes to sacrifice the comforts and conveniences of 21st century life. In the series premiere- “A Hunting We Will Go”- we meet the Belcastro’s as they set out on a journey to be a self-sufficient family. Frank wants the family to be able to hunt and kill their own food but not every one is on board. Starting with making their own weapons Frank and his son Adam really learn an appreciation for the hunt but wonder if they will succeed.

Source: https://www.theblaze.com/stories/ready-for-life-off-the-grid-gbtv-launches-reality-show-independence-u-s-a/

Filed Under: America, An Alternative World, Media, Power Grid - Electrical - Et Al, Self-Sustainability, Survival

Cancer Costs Forecast To Rise 62% By 2021

December 12, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

The cost of diagnosing and treating cancer patients could rise by two-thirds over the next decade, according to a new report.

Healthcare analysts Laing and Buisson warned diagnosis and treatment costs are set to increase by 62% from £9.4bn in 2010 to £15.3bn by 2021.

This will mean the average cost of treating someone suffering from cancer will go from £30,000 in 2010 to almost £40,000 in 2021.

The Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment: A 2021 Projection report, conducted for Bupa, warns this will inevitably affect cancer survival rates in the UK.

It said: “If we do not address the rising cost of cancer, we are unlikely to be able to afford the desired and expected level of cancer diagnosis and treatment over the next 10 years and beyond.

“This possibility will mean that the UK’s cancer survival rate could fall even further behind that of other developed countries.”

The study comes weeks after data from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development revealed the UK is lagging behind other countries on average survival rates for breast, bowel and cervical cancer.

The predicted hike in costs would largely be due to Britain’s ageing population, which is predicted to lead to a 20% growth in cancer rates by 2021.

Rising costs of technology and treatments used to combat forms of the disease will also be a contributing factor.

Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of Cancer Partners UK , said: “Ironically, the reasons behind this dramatic increase in costs are a cause for celebration.

“Cancer is predominantly a disease of older people and because of the advances of modern medicine, many more are living in good health well beyond retirement. This trend is set to continue so cancer incidence will inevitably rise.

“Fortunately, when cancer does strike, we now have powerful new technologies available to gradually turn cancer into a chronic, controllable disease like diabetes.

“However, the rising numbers and the advent of innovation come with a hefty price tag.”

According to the report, the NHS will take the greatest hit, with the money it spends on diagnosing and treating cancer going up by £5.2bn.

Costs are also predicted to rise in the private sector by an estimated £531m and by £131m in the voluntary sector.

Source: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/cancer-costs-forecast-rise-62-2021-005343944.html

Filed Under: Big Pharma, Cancer, Corporations, Health, Medical Industry, Politics, Population, Science, Survival, United Kingdom, Vaccines and Medicine Tagged With: Cost

Federal Agents Raid Mormon Food Storage Facility, Demand List Of Customers Storing Emergency Food

December 12, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

As was the plan all along, the so-called “War on Terror” has officially devolved into a war on the American people

This was clearly illustrated by the recent traitorous passage of the egregious National Defense Authorization Act by the US Congress. But in order to fully implement the ultimate goal of total control and tyranny, the federal government is now actively collecting the names of individuals that are preparing for the future by buying and storing emergency food supplies.

Oath Keepers, an association of active servicemen devoted to upholding their oath of guarding the republic and protecting individual liberty, has reported that federal agents recently paid a visit to a Latter Day Saints food storage cannery in Tennessee. Though they had no reason to be there, these agents allegedly interrogated the facility’s manager and demanded to see a list of customers that had purchased, and were storing, food there.

Oath Keepers Tennessee Chapter President Rand Cardwell confirmed the incident, according to reports, as he is in close contact with a fellow veteran who happens to store his own food at the facility in question. According to the man’s account, agents entered the facility and began demanding payment records and personal information for everyone connected with the operation.

“The manager informed the agents that the facility kept no such records and that all transactions were conducted on a cash-and-carry basis,” Cardwell is quoted as saying, concerning the incident. “The agents pressed for any record of personal checks, credit card transactions, etc., but the manager could provide no such record. The agents appeared to become very agitated and after several minutes of questioning finally left with no information.”

This unprovoked act of intimidation is highly concerning, but it is also somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, the federal government has been instilling fear into the American public for years, and has even made announcements urging the public to be prepared. But on the other hand, this same government is now pursuing those who are heeding these precautions as if they are terrorists.

Oath Keepers suggests the government might be trying to gather intelligence on food-storing Americans in order to later come and confiscate that food, or worse — after all, freedom-loving patriots who are preparing for social upheaval are a threat to the power structure that seeks to tighten the noose of tyranny around the neck of society.

Source: https://peopleforfreedom.com/

Filed Under: America, Financial Crisis, Food, Freedom, Health, Police, Poverty, Self-Sustainability, Survival

How To Adopt A Can-Do Attitude

December 12, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Some time ago I was on my way to Salt Lake City. While thumbing through the in-flight magazine I saw an ad for the Special Olympics. In the middle of the page was the picture of an athlete going over the bar in the high jump. Above the photo the caption read:

“There were a few basic steps I had to take to learn the high jump… like believing I could. IT’S ALL ABOUT ATTITUDE.”

When I read it, I smiled to myself because I knew how true the statement was. Attitude is, beyond question, an integral part of any success journey.

The successful ones have a “can-do attitude.” They do whatever it takes to win (providing it is moral, legal and ethical). One of the things I enjoy most about the Olympics is to hear all the human-interest stories of athletes from all over the world. The tremendous obstacles that many of them had to overcome in their personal lives is admirable by any standard. But to do that and get to the Olympic Games is, in many cases, nothing short of miraculous. Along the way they adopted an attitude of “how I can” instead of “why I can’t,” and they were able to handsomely reap the rewards of that attitude. As the ad said, “It’s all about attitude.” The current that determines your dreams and shapes your life flows from the attitude you nurture every day.

As you go through life, you are going to encounter all kinds of obstacles—dozens of reasons why the goal you are pursuing could never be achieved or should not be pursued. Many of these will present themselves as concrete facts.

Let me share some facts with you:

Jamaica, being only 18 degrees North of the Equator, is always hot. That means the only place we ever see ice is in the tall glasses of lemonade we drink to keep ourselves cool. In the 1988 Winter Olympics, during the week of the four-man bobsled event, all the major teams were adding the finishing touches to their preparations and completing final selection of the two teams that would race on the weekend, and we were still trying to figure out who would ride in the second, third, and fourth spots on the sled. We already knew who the driver was. These facts would suggest that there was a greater opportunity for Jamaica to have a White Christmas than for its bobsled team to have any success at the Winter Olympics. However, by the end of the week, we had the seventh fastest start time. In 1994, our time finished in 14th place, ahead of the US in 15th, and was ranked the 8th nation overall. In the Salt Lake Games we set a new start record in the two-man event. The facts may be daunting but as that great Jamaican philosopher, Bob Marley, said “it’s a small axe that takes down a big tree.” When you focus on the solutions with a positive mental attitude, you end up with an opportunity to create a new set of facts that are far more powerful and dynamic.

It is very easy to believe that your attitude is affected by what others say or do, or even by what is happening around you. The truth is, it is what you say to yourself that has the greatest impact on how you approach the challenges in your life. Back in 1988, when many were calling us a media stunt we were calling ourselves the “Ragamuffins”. When asked what it meant we were always happy to divulge that it denoted a “can-do attitude” because we knew that we were also reaffirming that attitude to ourselves.

Consider the following words from Chuck Swindoll:

“Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. The remarkable thing is that we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one thing we have—and that is our attitude. Life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

Keep On Pushing!

As an original member of the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team and captain of the 1992 and 1998 teams, 3-time Olympian, Devon Harris achieved his grand dream—his current dream is to inspire others to achieve theirs. Tapping the same energy, determination, and skills that enabled him to bobsled with the best in the world, Devon, as a motivational speaker, is now sparking audiences of all ages to dream big and take their “game” to the next level.

Source: https://www.positivelypositive.com/2011/12/10/how-to-adopt-a-can-do-attitude-blog/

Filed Under: Psychology, Spirituality, Survival, Symbolism Tagged With: Inspirational

The Butterfly’s Lesson

December 12, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

The butterfly said to the sun:

“They can’t stop talking about my transformation. I can only do it once in my lifetime.

If only they knew, they can do it at any time and in countless ways.”

Source: https://www.dodinsky.com/

Filed Under: Energy, Health, Psychology, Spirituality, Survival Tagged With: Inspirational

Jacques Delors Says Eurozone ‘Is Flawed’

December 4, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

A key architect of the eurozone reveals it was flawed from the beginning and efforts to tackle its problems have so far been “too little, too late“.

Jacques Delors, former president of the European Commission , suggested “a fault in execution” meant the present crisis in the eurozone was inevitable.

Leaders in the 1990s chose to turn a blind eye to the economic weaknesses of some member states and the response, now the issues had surfaced, had generally been inadequate.

His comments in an interview with The Daily Telegraph came as France and Germany edged towards closer fiscal union to head off a potentially disastrous collapse of the single currency.

Mr Delors was head of the commission from 1985 to 1995 and known for his clashes with Margaret Thatcher . He became an object of ridicule in the eurosceptic press.

He has admitted that when “Anglo-Saxons” warned a single central bank and currency without a single state would be inherently unstable “they had a point”.

“The finance ministers did not want to see anything disagreeable which they would be forced to deal with,” he said.

Mr Delors insisted all European countries had to share the blame for the excessive borrowing by countries such as Italy and Greece that have brought the system to the brink of disaster.

“Everyone must examine their consciences,” he added.

However, the 86-year-old singled out Germany for its strict insistence that the European Central Bank must not support debt-stricken members for fear of fuelling inflation.

The euro’s troubles spring from “a combination of the stubbornness of the Germanic idea of monetary control and the absence of a clear vision from all the other countries”, he said.

Such is the scale of the crisis, he warned, that “even Germany” will struggle to find a solution. “Markets are markets. They are now bedevilled by uncertainty.”

Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to protect British interests will be paramount if the European Union treaty is changed to help resolve the eurozone crisis.

But according to Mr Delors, Britain is not “sharing the burden” because it is not in the euro.

But he claimed the UK is “just as embarrassed as the Europeans by the financial crisis“, as some of the measures put in place to deal with the crisis pose a threat to British interests.

Source: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/jacques-delors-says-eurozone-flawed-050841344.html

Filed Under: Debt, Education, European Union, Money, Politics, Survival

Introduction to Emergency Survival Shelters

December 1, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

If your plane crashes, your car gets washed away in a mudslide, or your boat sinks and you’re stuck on an unknown coast, your first priority might not be food or water, but an emergency shelter.

It depends on the conditions — weather primarily.

Of course, the best alternative is to get out of the wilderness and back home, but you might have to hunker down before you can leave. In case you do, you’ll need to know how to build an emergency survival shelter.

Assess the situation before you build an emergency shelter

When you find yourself stranded, follow the DAPA procedure:

Don’t panic. Disorientation, stress, and fear are the enemies of functionality. You can’t reason yourself through a situation without getting control of your emotions.
Assess your situation. Remain calm; look around. You might not know which direction points home, but you can determine your physical relation to the immediate environment. Are you in a gulley? Are you on high ground? Is it cold? Are you injured? Next, is there anyone with you? If so, determine whether they need help. Then determine what tools you have. What’s in your pocket?
Plan. Having a plan gives you the means to apply rational thought — it helps keep you mentally stable. Bad morale is lethal; your plan should be designed to guarantee incremental successes. This rewards you with the pleasure of progress. Don’t be too cocky for Baby Steps. Your first success might be something as simple as reaching the vantage point you identified when assessing your situation just moments ago, or identifying North, or taking stock of your tools. If you’re completely befuddled as to what to do, you still must plan. If you can’t think of anything else, determine simply to reach a landmark, like “I’m going to walk 100 yards uphill and see what’s there.” Your goal is always to improve your situation. Be realistic. Your ultimate goal is to get out of the wilderness and get home, but you might not be able to do that right now. If that’s the case, set interim goals that are achievable and improve your situation.
Act. What you planned, now you must do. Be diligent, but be flexible. Put some effort into carrying out every step of your plan, but revise the plan if necessary to reach your goal. For example, if you have decided to build your shelter against a fallen tree trunk, but find that the ground is drier next to a rock ledge nearby, feel free to move — if you have time. The goal always is to improve your situation.

Understand Your Immediate Shelter Needs

There are four primary considerations in determining your emergency shelter needs: purpose, environment, physical condition, and materials on hand.

Purpose of a shelter. Always, always keep in mind the purpose of your emergency shelter; you only need to provide basic protection from the elements. If the threat is rain, spend your energy stopping most leaks. If the threat is cold, focus on insulation. If the threat is heat, focus on shade and ventilation. Once you’ve abated the major environmental threat, move on to the next item in your overall plan. Don’t waste time and energy perfecting something that’s good enough.
Environment. If you’re supremely lucky, you’ll be stranded in an environment that resembles the garden of Eden — food will grow on trees, cold, clean water will bubble out of the ground, you’ll find mossy patches four feet thick for your bed, and the temperature will hover around 80 degrees Fahrenheit day and night. Bet against it, though. Just in case the garden of Eden is hard to find where you’ll be traveling, you should be prepared for a less benign environment. Whenever you travel, it is vitally important to have some information about the weather forecast.
Physical condition. If you’re in good condition, you can be more aggressive, take a little more hardship, take a little more calculated risk. If you’re injured, sick, or malnourished, your weakened condition means you’ll have less tolerance for exposure. You’ll have to be more careful to provide warmth, to stay dry, and keep your stress level down. Understand your capabilities and limitations.
Materials on hand. As always, your best bet is to have a well-stocked everyday carry bag. Ideally, you’ll have a ripstop poncho with grommets — you can tie this down for immediate shelter from wind and rain. In five minutes, you have a life-saving shelter. Barring that, consider what you do have, whether it’s snow, leaves, evergreen boughs, bamboo, banana leaves, whatever.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/introduction-to-emergency-survival.html

Filed Under: Environment, Housing, Reality, Self-Sustainability, Survival Tagged With: Emergency, Survival Shelters

Getting Used To Life Without Food

November 30, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

My late grandfather, a man of sturdy Norwegian-American farm stock, who later became a newspaper editor and political activist during the First World War, used to say, ‘A man can get used to pretty much anything with time, except dying…and even that with some practice.’ Well, as fate has it, it seems we, the vast majority of the human race, are about to test that adage in regard to the availability of our daily bread itself.

Food is one of those funny things it’s hard to live without. We all tend to take it for granted that our local supermarket will continue to offer whatever we wish, in abundance, at affordable prices or nearly so. Yet living without adequate food is the growing prospect facing hundreds of millions, if not billions, of us over the coming years.

In a sense it’s a genuine paradox. Our planet has everything we need to produce nutritious natural food to feed the entire world population many times over. This is the case, despite the ravages of industrialized agriculture over the past half century or more.

Then, how can it be that our world faces, according to some predictions, the prospect of a decade or more of famine on a global scale? The answer lies in the forces and interest groups that have decided to artificially create a scarcity of nutritious food. The problem has several important dimensions.

Eliminating emergency reserves

The ability to manipulate the price of essential foods worldwide at will — almost irrespective of today’s physical supply and demand for grains — is quite recent. It is also scarcely understood.

Up until the grain crisis of the mid-1970s there was no single “world price” for grain, the benchmark for the price of all foods and food products. Grain prices were determined locally in thousands of market places where buyer and seller met. The onset of economic globalization was to change that radically to the worse as the tiny percent of grains traded internationally were able to set the global price for the bulk of grains grown..

From the time of the earliest traces left by Sumerian civilization some two thousand years before Christ, in the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in today’s Iraq, almost every culture had the practice of storing a reserve stock of a grain harvest - right up to the most recent times. Wars, droughts and famines were the reason. When properly stored, grain can be safely stored over a period of about seven years, enabling reserve stocks in case of an emergency.

After the Second World War, Washington created a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to serve as a wedge to push free trade among major industrial nations, especially the European Community. During initial negotiations, agriculture was deliberately kept off the table at the insistence of the Europeans, especially the French, who regarded political defense of Europe’s Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) and European agriculture protections as non-negotiable.

Beginning in the 1980s with the political crusades of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the extremist free market views of Chicago’s Milton Friedman became increasingly accepted by leading European power circles. Step-by-step the resistance to the Washington agriculture free trade agenda dissolved.

After more than seven years of intense horse-trading, lobbying and pressure, the European Union finally agreed in 1993 to the GATT Uruguay Round, requiring a major reduction of national agriculture protection. Central to the Uruguay Round deal was agreement on one major change: national grain reserves as a government responsibility were to be ended.

Under the new 1993 GATT agreement, formalized with the creation of a World Trade Organization to police the agreements with enforceable sanctions against violators, ‘free trade’ in agriculture products was for the first time an agreed priority of the world’s major trading nations, a fateful decision to put it mildly.

Henceforth, grain reserves were to be managed by the ‘free market,’ by private companies, greatest among them the US Grain Cartel giants, the behemoths of American agribusiness. The grain companies argued that they would be able to fill any emergency gaps more efficiently and save governments the cost. That ill-advised decision would open the floodgates to unprecedented grain market shenanigans and manipulations.

ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), Continental Grain, Bunge and the primus inter pares, Cargill-the largest privately-held grain and agribusiness trading company in the world-emerged the great winners of the WTO process.

The outcome of the GATT agriculture talks was very much to the liking of the people at Cargill. That was no surprise to insiders. Former Cargill executive Dan Amstutz played the key role in drafting the agriculture trade section of the GATT Uruguay Round.1 In 1985 D. Gale Johnson of the University of Chicago, a colleague of Milton Friedman, co-authored a seminal report for David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission that was the blueprint for what they called “market-oriented” agricultural reform. It provided the framework for the US position in the coming GATT Uruguay Round negotiations. The Rockefeller group and its think tanks were the architects of ‘agricultural reform,’ as with so much in our post-1945 world.

The process of eliminating government grain reserves in major producing countries took time, but with the passage of the 1996 Farm Bill, the US had virtually eliminated its grain reserves. The EU followed soon after. Today, among major agriculture producing countries, only China and India still hold to a strategic security policy of nationally held grain reserves. 2

Wall Street smells blood

The elimination of national grain reserves in the USA and EU and other major OECD industrial countries set the stage for the next step in the process-elimination of agricultural commodity derivatives regulation, allowing unbridled unchecked speculative manipulations.

Under the Clinton Treasury (1999 - 2000) the deregulation of government controls over agriculture commodity speculation was formalized by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-the government body charged with supervising derivatives trade in exchanges such as the Chicago Board of Trade or NYMEX- and in legislation drafted by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers at Treasury. As described below, it was no accident that Wall Street pushed Geithner, former President of the NY Federal Reserve, to become Obama’s Treasury Secretary in 2008, amid the worst financial debacle in history. Something to do with having foxes guard henhouses.

When Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State in 1972-1973, acting in league with the Department of Agriculture and major US grain trading companies, he orchestrated an unprecedented 200% jump in the price of grain. The price hike was triggered at that time by the US signing a three-year contract with the Soviet Union that had just gone through a disastrous harvest failure.

The US-Soviet deal hit amid global drought and severely reduced harvests worldwide, hardly a prudent time to sell the entire US grain cupboard to an ostensible Cold War opponent. The sale took place amid a major world grain harvest shortfall leading to the explosive price rise. Critical voices in US press at the time appropriately dubbed it the Great Grain Robbery. Kissinger had even arranged for much of the cost of shipping US grain to the Soviets to be paid by US taxpayers. Cargill and company laughed all the way to the bank. 3

Around the same time, the big American grain companies-Cargill, Continental Grain, ADM, Bunge-began what would be a twenty-year process of transforming world grain markets into venues for controlling essential human and animal nutrition by manipulating grain prices regardless of supply.

The twenty-year process of the US’ gaining control of world grain markets and prices took a giant leap forward in the 1980s with the advent of financial commodity index trading and other derivatives.

The Summers-Geithner-Wall Street new version of the earlier grain robbery especially after 2006 would eventually pale anything Kissinger and friends had engineered in the 1970s.

In 1999, at the urging of major Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan and Citibank, the Clinton Administration drafted a statute that would fundamentally alter grain-trading history. It was called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and was made law in 2000.

The two key architects of Clinton’s new law were a former Goldman Sachs consultant and Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and his Assistant at Treasury Tim Geithner, friend of Wall Street and today Obama’s Treasury Secretary. Secretary Summers was also a key player in preventing efforts to regulate financial derivatives in commodities and financial products.4

The Summers-Geithner recommendations were contained in a November 1999 Report to Congress from the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, the infamous “Plunge Protection Team.” 5

At the time, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) proposed also to deregulate trading in derivatives between major banks or financial institutions, including derivatives of grain and other agricultural commodities.6

The historic and unprecedented deregulation opened a massive hole in Government supervision of derivatives trading, a gaping hole that ultimately facilitated the derivatives games leading to the 2007 financial collapse. It also formed the deregulation free-for-all that is behind much of the recent explosion in grain prices.

Some years earlier in 1991 Goldman Sachs had rolled out its own commodity “index,” which was to go on to become the global benchmark for derivatives trading of all commodities, including food and oil. The Goldman Sachs Commodity Index or GSCI was a new derivative that tracked the prices of some 24 commodities — from corn to hogs to coffee to wheat to precious metals and energy. From the point of view of Wall Street, the idea was brilliant. It let speculators gamble on the future price of an entire range of raw materials in one step, a kind of Wall Street version of a “one-step” gambling mall…

With the CFTC deregulation of commodity trading in 1999 Goldman Sachs was positioned to reap sweet financial rewards with its GSCI. Now bankers and hedge funds and other high-profile speculators were able to take huge positions or bets on the future grain price with no need to take delivery of actual wheat or corn at the end.

The price of grain was now run by the new casino masters of grain supplies — from Wall Street to London and beyond — who traded grain futures and options in Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City. No longer was future price a form of hedging limited to knowledgeable active participants in the grain industry, whether farmers or millers or large grain end-users - the individual traders who had relied on futures contracts for more than a century to insulate themselves from risks of harvest failure or disasters.

Grain had become a new speculative field for anyone willing to risk investors’ capital, high stakes gamblers such as Goldman Sachs or Deutsche Bank or high-risk offshore hedge funds. Grain, like oil before it, had now been almost entirely decoupled from everyday supply and demand in the short term. The price could be manipulated for brief periods through rumor rather than fact. 7

Unlike directly involved parties like millers or farmers or large restaurant chains, speculators neither produced nor took delivery of the corn or wheat they gambled with. They could hardly take delivery of 10 tons of hard red winter wheat and store it. Their game was a complex new form of arbitrage where the only rule was to buy low and sell high. Derivative instruments and US Government laissez faire regulatory negligence allowed the players’ potential profits from the game to be leveraged often many-fold.

But there was another perverse twist: Goldman Sachs’ GSCI was structured so that investors could only buy the contract. It was, as the industry calls it, “long only.” No one could bet on a fall in grain prices with it. You only stood to profit from an ever-rising grain price and that happened as ever more innocent investors were suckered into high-risk commodity speculation creating a kind-of self-fulfilling prophesy.8

That long-only feature was done to encourage bank clients to leave their money with the bank or fund for the long term and let the bankers play with other people’s money, with huge potential windfall profits to the bankers — while any losses fell to the clients.

The fatal flaw was that the GSCI structure did not allow “short selling” that would force prices down in times of grain surplus. Investors were lured into a system that required them to buy and keep buying once grain prices rose for whatever reason. Soon other banks, including Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Pimco, JP Morgan Chase, AIG, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers, floated their own commodity index funds.9 For the first time, high- risk commodity investing — including into grain and other agriculture products — became a financial product for

the “little man” who knew little if anything about what he was getting into, just that his banker or fund adviser was urging him to invest in it. The banks as usual played with “other people’s money” - at the expense of ‘other people.’

In a detailed analysis of the grain price bubble of 2007-2008, Olivier de Schutter, a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, recently concluded that “a significant portion of the increases in price and volatility of essential food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a speculative bubble.” 10 The timing of that bubble was notable as it conveniently offset huge losses of those same mega-banks that were under water with their excesses in securitized home mortgages and other Wall Street casino madness. Schutter added,

In particular, there is a reason to believe that a significant role was played by the entry into markets for derivatives based on food commodities of large, powerful institutional investors such as hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks, all of which are generally unconcerned with agricultural market fundamentals. Such entry was made possible because of deregulation in important commodity derivatives markets beginning in 2000. 11

Following the collapse of the dot.com stock bubble in 2000, as Wall Street and other major financial players began seeking alternatives, commodities and high-risk derivatives based on baskets of commodities became a major speculative investment theme for the first time.

Since 2000 the totality of dollars invested in various commodity index funds -Goldman Sachs’ GSCI being the largest — has risen from some $13 billion in 2003 to a staggering $317 billion during the oil and grain speculation bubble in 2008. This was documented in a study by Lehman Brothers shortly before Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made them a sacrificial lamb in order to bail out his Wall Street cronies.12

Since 2008 with some fluctuation, investor funds have continued to pour into various commodity funds, keeping food prices high and rising. From 2005 to 2008, the worldwide price of food rose 80 percent — and has kept rising. In the period from May 2010 through May 2011 the price of wheat rose again some 85%. “It’s unprecedented how much investment capital we’ve seen in commodity markets,” said Kendell Keith, president of the National Grain and Feed Association, in a recent interview. 13

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN estimates that since 2004, world food prices on average have soared by an unprecedented 240%. The offering of food commodities as a speculative alternative by the large banks and hedge funds exploded in 2007 when the US sub-prime financial tsunami first hit. Since then, speculation in food commodities has only gathered more momentum as other investments in stocks and bonds became highly dangerous. One result has been a predictably rapid rise in starvation, hunger and malnutrition in poorer populations around the world.

The FAO calculates that food-deficit countries will be forced to spend fully 30% more on importing food — with a world value of a staggering $1.3 trillion. Three decades ago, that international market was tiny; today it is overwhelmingly dominated by a small handful of US agribusiness giants. Agribusiness, like military exports, is a core US strategic sector, long supported to extraordinary lengths by Washington. It is part of a larger and rather private agenda shaped decades ago under the aegis of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and their eugenics advocates. 14

Importing food is today the rule rather than the exception as cheap, globalized agribusiness products, often under IMF pressure, are being forced onto populations across the developing world, including formerly self-sufficient food-producing societies now rendered dependant on imported food. This is done in the name of ‘free trade’ or what is often called ‘market-oriented agriculture.’ Left unsaid is that the so-called ‘market’ is colossally inefficient and unhealthy, literally and financially. Imported food dependency is artificially created by huge multinational conglomerates such as Tyson Foods, Smithfield, Cargill or Nestle, corporate giants whose last concern seems to be the health and well-being of those of us who must consume their industrial food products.

The cheap agribusiness imports often undercut the prices of locally grown crops, driving millions from their land into overcrowded cities in desperate search of jobs.

Today the price of wheat derivatives, or ‘paper wheat,’ controls the price of real wheat as speculators like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, Barclays or numerous offshore hedge funds — with little interest in grains other than as a profit source — now outnumber bona-fide agriculture industry hedgers four-to-one.

That is a complete reversal of the situation that dominated grain prices for the past hundred years or more. For some 75 years, the CFTC had imposed limits on how much of certain agricultural commodities — including:

wheat, cotton, soybeans, soybean meal, corn, and oats — can be traded by non-commercial players who are not part of the food industry. So-called ‘commercial hedgers,’ like farmers or food processors, previously could trade unlimited amounts in order to manage their risk. Not so with pure speculators.

Those limits were designed to prevent manipulation and distortion in what are relatively small markets. With the passage of the Summers-Geithner Commodity Modernization Act of 2000 and the infamous ‘Enron Loophole’ - - allowing exemption from government regulation — the fast and loose trading in energy derivatives was rapidly expanded to include food commodities. The dam broke in 2006 when Deutsche Bank asked for and was granted CFTC permission to be exempt from all trading limits. The regulatory authorities assured them that there would be no penalties for exceeding the limits. Others followed, lemming like. 15

For some two billion people in the world who spend more than half of their income on food, the effects have been horrifying. During the speculation-driven grain price explosion in 2008, more than a quarter billion people became what the UN terms “food insecure,” or a total of one billion human beings, a new record. 16

That need never have occurred had it not been for the diabolical consequences of the US Government deregulating grain speculation, with support from the US Congress over the past decade or more. By early 2008, upwards of 35% of all US arable land was being planted with corn to be burned as biofuel under the new Bush Administration incentives. In 2011 the total is more than 40%. Thus, the stage was set for the slightest minor market shock to detonate a massive speculative bubble in grain markets, as was then being done by the use of the same GSCI index games as are played with oil.

Agribusiness as a long-term strategy

The record rise in grain and food prices in recent years is not a mere Wall Street profit gimmick, although obscene profits are being made. Rather, it is apparently an integral part of a long-term strategy whose roots go back to the years just after World War Two when Nelson Rockefeller and his brothers tried to organize the global food chain along the same monopoly model they had used for world oil. Food would henceforth become just another commodity like oil or tin or silver whose scarcity and price could ultimately be controlled by a small group of powerful trading insiders.

At the same time the Rockefeller brothers were expanding their global business reach from oil to agriculture in the developing world through their technology-driven Green Revolution scheme after the war, they were also financing a little-noticed project at Harvard University. The project would form the infrastructure for their plan to globalize world food production under the central control of a handful of private corporations.

Its creators gave it the name ‘agribusiness,’ in order to differentiate it from traditional farmer-based agriculture — the cultivation of crops for human sustenance and nutrition. The push to place world national governments’ emergency grain reserves into private hands was merely a logical expansion of the original Rockefeller agribusiness strategy, as was their highly mis-represented “Green Revolution” which at day’s end merely promoted a huge sale of US agriculture products from John Deere tractors (using large volumes of Standard Oil Rockefeller products) to US chemical fertilizers made by other companies in the Rockefeller orbit-forcing a trend to large scale farming and forcing millions off the land into cities where they former a cheap labor pool for large multinationals. The highly-touted harvest yields turned out to be actual losses after several harvests. 17

Agribusiness and the Green Revolution went hand-in-glove. They were part of a grandiose strategy which included Rockefeller Foundation financing of research for development of genetic alteration of plants a few years later.

John H. Davis had been Assistant Agriculture Secretary under President Dwight Eisenhower in the early 1950s. He left Washington in 1955 and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Business, an unusual place for an agriculture expert in those days. Davis had a clear strategy. In 1956 he wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review in which he declared, “the only way to solve the so-called farm problem once and for all, and avoid cumbersome government programs, is to progress from agriculture to agribusiness.” He knew precisely what he had in mind, though few observers had a clue back then.18

Davis, together with another Harvard Business School professor, Ray Goldberg, formed a Harvard team with Russian-born economist Wassily Leontief, who was then mapping the entire US economy, in a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. During the war, the US Government had hired Leontief to develop a method of dynamic analysis of the total economy that he referred to as ‘input-output’ analysis. Leontief worked for the US Labor Department as well as for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA.19

In 1948 Leontief got a major four-year $100,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to set up the Harvard ‘Economic Research Project on the Structure of the American Economy.’ A year later the US Air Force joined the Harvard project, a curious engagement for one of the prime US military branches. The transistor and electronic computers had just been developed along with methods of linear programming that would allow the processing of vast amounts of statistical data on the economy. Soon the Ford Foundation joined in to fund the Harvard project.20

The Harvard project and its agribusiness component were part of a major attempt to revolutionize US and later, global food production. It was to take four decades before it dominated the food industry. Professor Goldberg later referred to the agribusiness revolution and the development of genetically-modified agribusiness as ‘changing our global economy and society more dramatically than any other single event in the history of mankind.’ 21 He just might have been right as we are now likely about to witness over the coming decade.

As Ray Goldberg boasted years later, the core idea driving their agribusiness project was the re-introduction of ‘vertical integration’ into US food production. By the 1970s most Americans had forgotten that bitter battles had been fought before World War I and during the 1920′s to pass laws in Congress to prohibit vertical integration by giant conglomerates, and to break up trusts such as Standard Oil, in order to prevent them from monopolizing whole sectors of vital industries.

It wasn’t until the David Rockefeller-backed Presidency of Jimmy Carter in the late 1970′s that US multinational business was able to begin the rollback of decades of carefully constructed US Government regulations of health, food safety and consumer protection laws, and open the doors to a new wave of vertical integration of agriculture. The vertical integration process was sold to unaware citizens under the banner of ‘economic efficiency’ and ‘economy of scale.’ 22

A return to vertical integration and the accompanying agribusiness were introduced amid a publicity campaign in mainstream media and from industry claiming that government had encroached far too much into the daily lives of its citizens and had to be cut back to give ordinary Americans ‘freedom.’ The war cry of the campaigners was ‘deregulation.’ Of course, de-regulation by government merely opened the door to private control - another form of regulation — by the largest and most powerful corporate groups in any given industry. That was certainly the case for agriculture — the big four grain cartel companies dominated world grain markets from the 1970s to today. They worked hand-in-glove with big Wall Street derivative players such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup. By the latter part of 2007, trading in food derivatives was fully deregulated by Washington, and US government grain reserves gone. The way was clear for dramatic food price rises.

The speculative machine that had been put into place by Wall Street and its banker friends was creating the potential for significant, long-term food inflation. But the inflation needed a major ‘venting’ to get the ball really rolling. That was to come from George W. Bush.

The Killer Punch-BP, Bioethanol and Genocide

In 2007, just as the US real estate crisis was causing the first tsunami shock waves through Wall Street, the Bush Administration made a major public relations push to convince the world that the US had turned into a “better steward of the environment.” Too many fell for the hype.

The center of the Bush program, announced in his January 2007 State of the Union Address, was something called ’20 in 10′-cutting US gasoline use 20% by 2010. The official reason given to the public was to “reduce dependency on imported oil,” as well as cutting unwanted “greenhouse gas” emissions. That wasn’t the case, of course, but it made good PR. Repeat it often enough and maybe most people will believe it. Maybe they won’t realize that their taxpayer subsidies are being used to grow ethanol corn instead of feed corn and are also driving the price of their daily bread through the roof.

The heart of the Bush plan was a huge taxpayer-subsidized expansion of the use of bio-ethanol for transport fuel. President Bush’s first plan required production of 35 billion gallons (about 133 billion liters) of ethanol a year by 2017. Congress had already mandated, via the Energy Policy Act of 2005, that corn ethanol for fuel must rise from 4 billion gallons in 2006 to 7.5 billion gallons in 2012.

To make certain it would happen, farmers and big agribusiness giants like ADM were given generous taxpayer subsidies to grow corn for fuel instead of for food. David Rockefeller’ s corporate farms were one of the largest

recipients of US Government agriculture subsidies. Currently ethanol producers in the US get a subsidy of 51 cents per gallon of ethanol. The subsidy is paid to the blender, usually an oil company, that blends it with gasoline for sale. In the 2011 harvest year, an estimated 40% of all corn acreage in the United States is expected to be grown for biofuel.

As a result of these generous US Government subsidies to produce bio-ethanol fuels, and the new legislative mandate, the US refinery industry has been investing big time in building special new ethanol distilleries, similar to oil refineries, except they produce ethanol fuel. The number currently under construction exceeds the total number of oil refineries built in the US over the past 25 years. When finished in the next 2-3 years, the demand for corn and other grain to make ethanol for car fuel will double from present levels.

Not wanting to be left behind, the EU bureaucrats in Brussels — no doubt generously encouraged by the likes of BP, Cargill, ADM and the major biofuel lobby — came up with its own scheme for “10 in 20″ or a mandate that 10% of all road fuel in the EU by 2020 be from biofuel. Shockingly, they did so despite the existence of a report by the same EU Commission on the damaging impact of such a massive turn to subsidized biofuels. The London Times reported,

A study by the Commission on the land use implications of sourcing only 5.6 per cent of Europe’s transport fuel from biofuels concluded that any significant rise beyond 5.6 per cent would ‘rapidly’ increase carbon emissions and ‘erode the environmental sustainability of biofuels’… Like most political diktats, the figure of 10 per cent was plucked out of the air and no one at the Commission had a clue, when the policy was adopted, how the fuel industry was to meet the one in ten mandate without a huge rise in biofuel planting in the tropics. 23

In short, the use of farmland worldwide for bio-ethanol and other biofuels-burning the food product rather than using it for human or animal feed-is being treated in Washington, the EU, Brazil and other major centers as a major new growth industry. The impact on human beings, however, is quite the opposite. It is rapidly becoming a death industry, death of millions of innocent human beings unable to afford adequate nourishment for themselves or their families.

The United States today is far and away the world’s largest producer of ethanol biofuel for transportation fuel. In 2010 the US produced 13 billion gallons (US) or 50 billion liters of ethanol biofuel, amounting to near 60% of the world’ s total. The EU added some 6% to the global total as number three behind Brazil in a macabre contest to see which country can destroy the most food by burning toxic biofuels. 24

The most alarming aspect of the entire biofuel scam is the fact that three full years after the grain price explosion of 2008 was demonstrated to be directly tied to the biofuels removal of millions of acres of US farmland — from corn for feed to corn for fuel — no action has been taken either in the US Congress or in the EU or anywhere else to reverse that insane policy. The stunning inaction seems testimony to the political power of the biofuels lobby. Who are they? Not surprisingly, they are the same agri and oil giants behind US and EU food and energy policy. Major players include BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ADM, Cargill and the like. It is a powerful lobby and sees a goose that can literally lay multiple golden eggs in the form of mandated biofuels requirements of the EU and USA and elsewhere.

This January the Institute for European Environment Policy (IEEP), an independent body, issued a report on the role of bioenergy in EU governments’ “renewable energy action plans.” Recent proclamations by the German government that renewables will replace nuclear electric generation by 2020, and similar pledges by other EU governments, all rely on a fantastic delusion that the electriic power being generated by large nuclear plants can come from biodiesel. The January IEEP study notes that:

More than half of the renewable energy which EU Member States expect to consume annually by 2020 will consist of bioenergy, e.g. biomass, bioliquids and biofuels. This is revealed in a first evaluation of the proposed scale of deployment of bioenergy by the EU Member States in the period to 2020 as forecast in their National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPs)…A significant increase in absolute consumption of bioenergy is anticipated. In the 23 plans examined, bioenergy will thus remain the main contributor to the renewable energy sector. Overall, the bioenergy contribution to final energy consumption is expected to more than double, from 5.4% in 2005 to almost 12% (124Mtoe) in 2020. Bioenergy will have a quasi- dominant role in the renewable portion of the EU heating and cooling sector, and is foreseen to contribute more than 80% to the sectoral target. In the electricity sector the bioenergy share will be relatively low but in the transport sector it is expected to reach nearly 90% of total renewable energy by the year 2020. 25

The IEEP conducted an analysis of required land acreage needed for the cultivation of such a huge increase of biofuels by 2020. They estimated, after all factors are properly calculated, that an additional “4.1 to 6.9 million hectares” in the European Union will be needed for biofuel, acreage more than three times the entire state of Kansas.

Further, belying the EU myth that biofuels give a reduction of CO2 (even were CO2 a problem — which is highly contested among serious scientists), the IEEP calculates that the enormous rise in biofuel use will lead to more CO2 emissions from vehicles, equivalent to adding as many as 26 million additional vehicles on European roads. 26

Biofuels are highly undesirable for countless reasons, as many serious environmental organizations have begun to realize. The corn ethanol industry has grown, largely due to powerful corn and oil lobbies. High demand will likely increase corn ethanol and gas prices as corn ethanol is mixed with gasoline.

Ethanol energy gets poor fuel-economy with standard engines. And most importantly, it simply is not possible to produce the amount of corn required to make the fuel a viable alternative to oil or a serious supplier of energy. 27

New Global Dustbowls?

What biofuels and their pushers-from BP to agribusiness, combined with the mad decisions of governments from Washington to Berlin to Paris and beyond - have accomplished is the elimination of grain security reserves worldwide. This has been vigorously mixed with a cocktail of deregulated free commodity derivatives trading to create the ingredients for the worst potential food crisis in human history.

The testing of that hypothesis may unfortunately already be underway at the hands of forces far beyond the ability of man to control. At the recent annual meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society, scientists from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) presented results of studies of recent solar flare activity, by far the greatest factor influencing climate change on Earth. Flares occur in periodic cycles such as 11-year, 22-year and longer ones. The solar studies indicate that the Earth is now at the beginning of what might be a decade or longer period of greatly reduced solar activity.

Reduced solar sunspot activity means a less active sun. As Dutch physicist Gijs B. Graafland puts it, ” It will affect severely the evaporation of ocean water and by that the amount of rain. This results in lower water for agriculture and therefore in less growth and more severe blowing away of dry fertile top soil layers which gives a decade of high food prices.” 28

Translated to us, that could mean climate catastrophes, harvest failures, droughts and dust storms — such as those that swept the US Midwest during the Great Depression of the 1930s — in fertile regions across the planet, not just once but over a span of years. If the solar physicists as well as earlier Russian astrophysicist, Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia who predicted similar onset of a new ” Little Ice Age” 29 beginning 2014, are right, we may soon face a food crisis on a scale our planet never in history has faced.

Source: https://therealnews.com/t2/component/content/article/54-william-engdahl/688-getting-used-to-life-without-food

Filed Under: America, Banks, Biotechnology, child, Earth, Economy, Energy, Environment, Food, Globalists, Money, Monsanto, Rights, Self-Sustainability, Social Unrest, Survival Tagged With: Commodity Speculation

Wisdom from the Orient: Self-Sufficiency

November 28, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

This presentation is taken from Thailand’s Government Public Relations Department and describes the King of Thailand’s Sufficiency-Economy and his “New Theory” of economics. For free people around the world, they will recognize the concepts and goals as self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and true, genuine sustainable development.

It can scarcely be argued that we all wouldn’t be better off being as self-sufficient as this project aims at getting the Thai people. As America and Europe collapse under unsustainable Ponzi-schemes, perpetual war, foreign meddling, and an addiction to credit and socialist handouts, we are provided by the King of Thailand a more sane, third way - a middle path to take between crushing Malthusian austerity and reckless, exploitative expansion. A constant reminder of the King’s concepts can be found on the back right side of every 1,000 baht banknote where a woman tending her garden is pictured with the concept described below in simple terms.

Of course, with Thailand’s latest elections and a full-fledged globalist-stooge now clawing his way back into power, the Wall Street Journal has already written an article calling the “sufficiency economy” a “relic of the past,” and is hoping that Thaksin’s new proxy government will remove such obstacles to growth and joins hands with globalization.

This passage is long, but it is well worth the read if you have any interest at all in building a national model upon the foundation of self-sufficiency with the family and local community as society’s basic building blocks.

For a condensed guide concerning this topic, please see “Self-Sufficiency: a universal solution to the globalist problem.”

The New Theory and the Sufficiency Economy

It has been more than half a century since His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej ascended the throne as the ninth monarch of the Royal House of Chakri. All through these years, His Majesty has devoted his time and energy, working alongside his subjects in remote areas in all parts of the Kingdom to improve their living condition and livelihood. No place in the Kingdom is too remote, nor is any task too difficult for him. Large and small projects have been initiated by His Majesty, aimed at economic and social development, as well as the conservation of natural resources and the environment, with the people’s well-being and happiness as the goal.

His Majesty’s development projects are based on morality, true knowledge and understanding of the situation, the expertise and experience of the society and communities, scientific studies, local wisdom, and appropriate technologies. His principles have been simplicity, frugality, and effectiveness, with all projects tailored to meet the needs of localities and solve problems at their root causes, laying a firm foundation for the prosperity and happiness of the people in all parts of the country.

Since 1973, His Majesty the King emphasized in his royal addresses and speeches on various occasions development guidelines based on sufficiency, moderation, economizing, rationalization, and the creation of “social immunity” for the majority of the people who are in the farm sector. He cautioned the Thais not to be imprudent in conducting their lives, but to be fully aware of the development process in accordance with proper theories, and within the framework of good morality. This has become known as “Sufficiency Economy.”

When the country experienced the 1997 economic crisis, His Majesty reminded the people of the need to be “self-contained.” In his royal address on the eve of his birthday anniversary on 4 December 1997, His Majesty said:

“In fact, I have often said… to be a tiger is not important. The important thing is for us to have a self-supporting economy. A self-supporting economy means to have enough to survive.”

Thailand was then in a deep crisis, following the economic meltdown, resulting in mass unemployment and indebtedness, with great consequences for the lifestyle of the Thai people at that time.

“The crisis occurred because we expanded our production too much, with no buyers, because no one could afford to buy.”

His Majesty implied in his speech that the export-oriented economy left Thailand in an imbalanced situation without self-sufficiency.

For Thailand, the 1997 economic crisis served as a costly lesson of unbalanced and unstable growth, partly due to the improper economic and social development process, in which the economy relied heavily on foreign capital inflows and external markets. The production sector was export-driven, aimed at earning foreign exchange. As a result, farmers in certain areas had to buy rice for consumption, although they grew rice. Fundamental structures in the country remained weak, with no immunity for the vulnerable. Accumulated economic and social structural problems culminated in unfair distribution of capital, income, and growth, a decline in moral and cultural values, and the deterioration of natural resources and the environment.

“When people talk about solving the current situation, the current crisis, one of the things they talk about is “globalization.” We say that we are now in the age of globalization, and we must “comply” with it or follow the rules. If we fail to comply with what we committed to, others will be dissatisfied. Why? Because they are also in crisis. And we would find it more difficult to recover from the crisis. Not only countries in the region are affected. Even prosperous and stable countries are in trouble. This is because, if a crisis is not solved in one corner of the world, other parts are also affected. So we must try to support the people, providing them with jobs, so that they earn an income and can survive the crisis.”

Thailand is situated in a region of the world that is rich in biodiversity. The land is abundant in food crops. Since time immemorial, residents have earned their living with cultivation, thriving on the abundance on land, in the sea, and in the rivers.

His Majesty the King is aware of the fact. He advised a self-supporting lifestyle for everyone. Farmers should be able to feed themselves, starting with rice production. Enough rice should be grown for household consumption, with the excess harvest sold to raise income. They are also advised to change from planting a single type of crop to integrated farming. People living in the city who are engaged in business should know how to invest appropriately, starting from small businesses. Apart from self-sufficiency, he has prescribed perseverance and industriousness. Also, people should be compassionate towards one another.

His Majesty the King has attached great significance to soil and water, the two essential elements in agricultural development. There are about 2,000 royally initiated water resource development projects spread across the country. They clearly represent His Majesty’s emphasis on fundamental infrastructure for the people’s livelihood, to sustain their lives and bring them prosperity. From his first nationwide visit to the people in all regions early in the reign, His Majesty made direct contact with his subjects, inquiring about their living conditions, examining his maps, taking pictures, and taking down copious notes himself. It is a known fact that “There is no place in this land not visited by His Majesty the King.”

In the course of his visits to people in the rural areas, His Majesty reckoned that a large number of his subjects were not able to support themselves. He was determined to make them self-sufficient, so that they would be better able to contribute to national development.

On his royal visits to the people in all parts of the country, His Majesty spoke with to farmers and found that they faced chronic water shortages. Pondering over their plight, His Majesty drew the following conclusions:

1. Rice is a sturdy plant. With sufficient water, more yields can be obtained.
2. If rainwater can be stored for crop planting, better harvests can be achieved.
3. The construction of large reservoirs is becoming more and more difficult, because of the expansion of communities and the limited land area.
4. However, if each household has its own pond, the combined stored water can match that of a large reservoir, involving less investment and directly benefiting the local people. The hard-working monarch, who had intimate knowledge of the people’s problems and had been advising those in the agricultural sector, who made up the majority of the population, spelled out the “New Theory” in his Sufficiency Economy philosophy.

His Majesty got his inspiration for the New Theory from a royal visit to the people in the Northeast, in Kut To Kaen Village, Kut Sin Khum Yai Subdistrict, Khao Wong District, Kalasin Province, on 25 November 1992, as recounted by His Majesty in his royal address to well-wishers on the eve of his birthday anniversary on 4 December 1992 at Dusidalai Hall, Chitralada Villa, Dusit Palace:

“Then I asked the villagers in the neighborhood about the past year. They said that they had got in the harvest and pointed to a heap of rice. We went in for a closer look. The rice had grown well but did not produce many grains, only about two or three to an ear. The production could be estimated at about one bucket or less per rai. On inquiry, the villagers explained that it was due to lack of rain. They had sown the rice, but when it came to transplanting the seedlings, there was no water. They had to make holes in the sand and stick the seedlings in them. In the daytime the plant withered and drooped, but at night it straightened up with the dew. In the end it developed ears but not so many grains of rice. That was a very revealing lesson, and they spoke to us very straightforwardly. This is proof that rice is a very rugged plant, able to survive with just a little humidity from the dew. Although that was ordinary rice, not upland rice, it could survive. If we could give only a little help, there could be an improvement and the people could survive. The project to be done need not be a big one to meet with success. It could be a modest project. So it dawned on me that in such a place rainfall is not small, but it just did not come at the right time. When it rains, it is not needed; when it is needed, it does not rain. So rice is not plentiful.”

Rice and farmers have always been His Majesty the King’s foremost concerns, as evidenced in numerous royally initiated experimental programs on rice growing. The Secretary-General of the Chaipattana Foundation, Dr. Sumet Tantivejkul, gave an account of this:

His Majesty the King initiated the Cattle and Buffalo Bank to solve problems of farmers who had no buffalos for farming, or rice price guarantee in the form of a Rice Bank. When they faced drought, he introduced artificial rainmaking. They lacked rice milling facilities, so he set up the Royal Rice Mill. His Majesty experimented with rice growing within the Chitralada Villa, to obtain good rice breeds for farmers. More importantly, he had the Royal Plowing Ceremony revived after it was discontinued since the changing of the administrative system in 1932. This was meant to boost the morale of rice farmers. This Sufficiency Economy has long been introduced to help farmers, as His Majesty knew intimately their problems.

The questions might arise as to what the “new” elements were in the New Theory. An explanation was hinted at in His Majesty the King’s address on the experimental plot for the New Theory at Wat Mongkol Chaipattana in Saraburi Province:

“So in that area, there will be a new type of development, known as the “New Theory,” which is believed to be carried out successfully here.”

In more detail, His Majesty the King has based his New Theory on four principles:

1. Firstly, the theory applies to small farmers holding about 15 rai, or about six acres, an average cultivation area for Thai farmers.
2. Secondly, farmers must be able to support themselves adequately. They must also realize the need for unity and compassion in the community so as to support one another.
3. Thirdly, each farm household should be able to grow enough rice for its whole year’s consumption, under the assumption that each family can be self-reliant by growing rice on an area of five rai.
4. Fourthly, water must be available even in the dry season, averaging about 1,000 cubic meters per rai the whole year round.

According to the New Theory, the average family’s 15 rai of land will be divided into four parts in a ratio of 30:30:30:10. The first 30 percent, or 4.5 rai, is meant for a pond to support cultivation. A pond about four meters deep holds up to 19,000 cubic meters of rainwater, for the whole year’s crop cultivation. The pond may also bring in additional income from aquatic animals and plants.

His Majesty the King recommended aquaculture when he visited the project site at Wat Mongkol Chaipattana:

“Raising fish provides additional income. With fish culture, earnings are gained within a few months.”

The second and third parts, 60 percent of the area, are for crop planting, 30 percent for rice and another 30 percent for cash crops, in accordance with the soil condition and market demand.

Based on his calculation of the need for water at 1,000 cubic meters per rai in the dry season, the cultivation area that makes up the second part, 9 rai in all, would need about 9,000 cubic meters of water. He also took into consideration the evaporation of water from the pond in the dry season, with the water level reduced by about 1 centimeter a day. With an average of 300 days without rain in a year, the water level in the pond would be reduced by three meters. Therefore, the pond must be large enough to ensure that there is enough water.

The remaining 10 percent of the area, 1.5 rai, is set aside as the service area, for a dwelling, paths, ramps, a kitchen garden, and livestock pens.

The New Theory is in fact a land and water management method for small farms in the natural condition, both in normal times and in crisis. The theory is clearly defined and can be implemented by farmers themselves by following the steps and procedures that have been set.

The New Theory aims at tackling the problem of water shortages and the use of limited land for cultivation so as to produce sufficient food for consumption, and, if possible, for sale.

Agricultural management in the New Theory has three phases. In the first phase, farmers strive to be self-sufficient by producing enough food for the family, living in a good environment, and enjoying good health, through the division of the land into the three zones described above.

In the second phase, farmers are encouraged to organize themselves into groups or cooperatives to conduct various activities in coordination with related government agencies, foundations, and private enterprises, focusing on production, such as crop seeds and soil preparation; on marketing, in the form of silos, drying space, distribution, and rice-milling tools; on daily living, such as shrimp paste, fish sauce, and dried food; on welfare, such as health and loans; on education, such as schools and scholarships; and on social and religious affairs, such as community functions.

With community members joining together as groups, they can reduce their dependency on external parties, while increasing their bargaining power in the acquisition of production factors and the sale of their produce. Costs can also be reduced in transportation and marketing through economies of scale. Production planning can also be done for the community for common benefits.

The main points of this phase are two:

1. Unity in the community, organization in groups or cooperatives
2. Development of better quality of life in various aspects, such as health, education, and social and religious activities.

The third phase involves connections with other organizations and agencies concerning capital, marketing, and energy, to expand commercial activities with the setting up of rice-mills, community shops, and service stations. Farmers are thus provided the chance to learn and acquire experience in production, processing of agricultural products, marketing, and even exporting. In this way, farm families earn more income and live happily, and the community is strengthened. Farmers learn by doing at all steps, resulting in a sustainable form of development.

There are two main points in the third phase:

1. Cooperation with financial and energy sources in development toward mainstream businesses
2. Development toward the Sufficiency Economy.

In all three phases of the New Theory, support and cooperation from outside are needed, in a multilateral partnership for development, with full cooperation from all stakeholders, as participants and as beneficiaries.

The first phase involves small-scale implementation, with the emphasis on acquiring production factors and experimenting to achieve results. The achievement in the first phase implies earning enough for a comfortable living or for savings, before getting into the second phase, which involves expansion and integrated development, to enhance efficiency in management by organizing as farmers groups or cooperatives, to strengthen production and marketing, and improve living condition, welfare, education, and social and religious activities.

The next phase involves advancement and institutionalization, leading to processing and adding value to the products in the form of agro-industrial development, in coordination with financial sources (commercial banks) and energy sources (oil firms). Taken together, the three phases cover the full cycle of development, resulting in a one-stop service center for farmers.

The success in the application of the New Theory, meanwhile, hinges on three major factors: first, true understanding on the part of farmers in applying the New Theory to their livelihood; second, their readiness to take part in the activities and cooperative programs; and third, substantial cooperation and support from outside on a continual basis.

The New Theory and Economic Development

The New Theory aims at self-sufficiency for farmers to a reasonable extent, in keeping with the overriding principle of moderation, the Middle Way. They are not meant to turn back to an ancient way of life, in which individuals provide for themselves in every aspect. Instead, farmers are empowered by means of producing enough food to sustain themselves, while benefiting from basic trading of produce and production factors to their full potential. They are encouraged to organize themselves as groups for enhanced bargaining power and efficiency in marketing and trading with outside parties, with mutual trade benefits.

His Majesty the King succinctly explained the philosophy of Sufficiency Economy for the first time in his royal address to well-wishers on the eve of his birthday anniversary on 4 December 1997, in this remark:

“By sufficiency, we do not mean that each family must produce its own food, weave its own clothes. That is just too much.”

His Majesty gave a further explanation in his royal address on the same occasion of the following year, on 4 December 1998. He provided a guideline for the implementation of the Sufficiency Economy:

“This Sufficiency Economy can be implemented for only half, not the entire economy. Even one fourth is good enough, not one fourth of the area, but one fourth of the action.”

This implies that the implementation of Sufficiency Economy need not cover the economy of an entire country, which is impossible. Should one family or one village turn to Sufficiency Economy entirely, it would be like taking backward steps to the Stone Age.

Faculty members of the Faculty of Economic Development, at the National Institute of Development Administration, in 1999 conducted a study on the New Theory pertaining to economic development. The main thrust of the New Theory was shown to correspond with the theories of several thinkers and theorists in economic development in the West. The three phases of the New Theory, for instance, are interlinked as the progression in economic development from a subsistence economy to commercialization, in line with various economic development theories.

Moreover, the New Theory corresponds with the theory of trade and economic development put forward by Myint (1958), which described the transformation from a subsistence economy to commercialization through the expansion of production from subsistence level to the production for sale or export outside the locality and the country, to distribute excess produce not needed for consumption.

The New Theory concept of transferring resources to be invested in the building of water sources and a central water supply system to distribute water to farmers means the transformation of resources into capital for farmers, to increase their productivity, which corresponds with recent economic development theories that place the emphasis on creating economic growth in tandem with fair income distribution. Such a transfer of resources as “capital” for the poor may adversely affect national economic growth as a whole, but will contribute to fair income distribution in the long run, with increased productivity seen among the poor who benefit from the capital.

The increase of capital for farmers in the form of water sources enables them to grow crops the whole year round, easing the problems of underemployment, disguised unemployment, and seasonal unemployment, while enhancing productivity on land for cultivation that is under-utilized because of a lack of complementary factors, particularly water, which prevent their limited land areas from being fully utilized. In the end, the productivity of the land and farm labor is enhanced as a result.

The allocation of part of the farmland for the digging of a pond is a sacrifice of land for cultivation in exchange for water, an essential factor for agriculture. The digging of a pond represents an investment in water to replace the land. As a consequence, however, yields from the remaining land area can be doubled. Farmers can regulate water to ensure steady growth of their crops, reducing their dependence on rainfall.

Surplus farmhands that became unemployed in the dry season would be able to find plenty of work all through the year, with the maintenance of the water pond, fish breeding, and plant protection and nurturing. Therefore, with existing land and labor, production can be increased and diversified, with enhanced quality and added value.

The New Theory and Social Development

Viewed from the perspective of social development, all three phases of the New Theory have social impacts on subsistence farmers who depend on rainfall and who have a number of farmhands in the household. As mentioned, the first phase focuses on production and crop diversification, with unity at local level, while the second and third phases add organization as groups and coordination with other agencies in the commercialization of production. Farmers thus have a better quality of life, and the community experiences sustainable development.

A better quality of life is attained as farmers are in a better environment, so their health improves, and there are jobs the year round, in better and safer conditions, earning continuously and more. Their education is improved, the family unified, and the community strengthened.

A sustainable type of development is the result, as it aims at self-reliance among farmers, a better environment, a strengthened community, and organization into groups for production, marketing, and welfare.

The environment is improved with diverse activities, such as the planting of perennial trees and multiple and alternate crops, and the keeping of herb gardens and livestock. Diversification breaks the cycle of plant diseases and pests. Soil degradation is slowed down, and it is kept fertile from the canopy of perennial trees, whose fallen leaves and foliage can be turned into compost. Organic pesticides and fertilizers from herbal products are emphasized, replacing chemicals.

Farmers’ health is improved, both their physical and emotional health, as the family is kept together, without the need to migrate for jobs elsewhere. The family has enough food to last the whole year, with continuous earnings and higher incomes. The use of chemicals is reduced, so farmers work in safer and more stable conditions.

Education is improved for farmers and their children, with the learning process in the program, through consultations among themselves, and news and information monitoring. The stable incomes also enable farmers to seek better education for themselves and their children.

Benefits of the New Theory

Farmers earn steady and higher income, resulting in a more equitable distribution of income. Under the multiple and alternating crops system, farmers can spread out harvesting time over the entire year. They can avoid risks from fluctuating prices, pests, and plant diseases. Production costs can be reduced as neighbors pitch in to work on planting or harvesting when needed, while resources are fully utilized, such as the use of manure as fertilizers. Chemical use is lessened, while more food items are produced for consumption. Household spending is thus contained and less borrowing is necessary.

Farm families are kept intact and satisfied, as jobs are available in the locality the whole year round, without the need to migrate for jobs elsewhere. Family members also earn steady income, with more frequent harvests of produce. Food items are sufficient and diversified, resulting in healthy and happy families and communities, as shown in Diagram 3.

Farm Families and Communities Kept Intact and Content

The community is strengthened, as members are not forced to migrate for jobs elsewhere. Labor is constantly in demand the whole year round, in rice farming, crop planting, fish breeding, and livestock raising. Farmhands are efficiently utilized. They also make up a workforce for various community projects. With steady farm incomes, sufficient food in the community, and organizations such as groups or cooperatives to improve production, marketing, living conditions, welfare, and capital, dependence on the outside can be reduced, with more bargaining power for the community, and a strengthened community, as shown in Diagram 4 below.

Strengthened Community

The result has been sustainable development, as it shores up the economy and creates self-sufficiency, while the environment is improved and the community strengthened, with people organizing into groups for production, marketing, and welfare, for example.

Such organization of people in the community not only makes it less dependent on outside sources, but also creates better bargaining power for the community in its acquisition of production factors and the sale of products. The cost of transportation and marketing can also be reduced, since it benefits from the economy of scale. At the same time, organized farmers can better plan their production, in accordance with market demands. In the third phase, thanks to coordination with other organizations in capital, marketing, and business operation on a wider scale, such as the setting up of rice mills, shops, and service stations, farmers are able to sell value-added products, at the same time learning and gaining experience in production, marketing, and processing. Their incomes gradually increase, and at the same time, the environment is improved and the family institution and the community are strengthened, resulting in sustainable development.

The New Theory and Human Resource Development

The New Theory puts a high priority on human resource development, under the principle of people-centered development, by means of empowerment by and for the people, comprising enhancement of people’s potential and capacity-building for individuals. The process of participation in decision-making on development is encouraged, in tandem with the creation of an enabling environment, for individuals to utilize their potential for enhancing their opportunities and to have more options in life, along with the development of the quality of life. This has been summed up as the development of the people, by the people and for the people.

The development of the people, as farmers are given the knowledge and ability to increase their productivity, earning more income, such as from rice-farming, fruit-tree growing, and fish rearing, management of the market and improved administration as groups or cooperatives, with better bargaining power and extension of cooperation to energy and capital sources; the development by the people, because farmers adopt the New Theory of their own free will, and voluntarily expand the results of the development to strengthen the society from the grassroots, by attaining self-supporting ability; the development for the people, as in the objectives of the second phase of the New Theory, with the focus on the improvement of the living condition, welfare, education, social and religious aspects, and the third phase, which clearly defines the “development of the quality of life,” yielding benefits to all sides.

His Majesty the King emphasized that development must be carried out in stages and that it in fact relies on tradition, as he stated in his royal address on 11 July 1980:

“In bringing about progress and prosperity, it is imperative to build up gradually, one step at a time, implementing measures, while contemplating and improving them. Never make the efforts with haste, spurred by the eagerness to bring novelty, just for the sake of novelty. In fact, nothing is really new. All the novelties are just the continuation of the old.”

And on 26 July 1984, His Majesty made a royal address, with more advice:

“When the base is complete and firm, you can start developing further, building on that base, working, developing and improving at the same time.”

The underlying concept of the New Theory places emphasis on the learning process rather than the success of the program alone. Also, the New Theory is not a magic formula for success that can be applied in all places. In implementing the New Theory, farmers must start from a real understanding of the development process, to be carried out in steps. The main thrust of development is the unleashing of human potential, by means of promoting, supporting, and stimulating the learning process, with the development of knowledge, ability, and skills in their livelihood, and in their peaceful co-existence with others. This is governed by good morality and code of conduct, and with the awareness of a sustainable development, based on the conservation of natural resources and the environment.

As such, the New Theory not only originated in a new development site at Wat Mongkol Chaipattana in Saraburi Province, but also gave birth to a development process that was new in three aspects:

1. Redesign of farming processes and resource management and mobilization, through the strengthening of the system and mechanisms in farming, and by seeking partnerships in development in both the public and private sectors.
2. Refocus on a farmer-centered development approach, through the enhancement of farmers’ potentials, so that they can live comfortably with “adequacy” and “sufficiency.”
3. Recapture of both contingency and situation, with the recognition of the top priority to eradicate poverty, as the means to strengthen the grassroots society of the country, comprising peasants’ and farmers’ groups.

His Majesty the King graciously outlined the benefits from the New Theory:

1. The people will be in a position of self-sufficiency in agriculture, having enough to feed themselves, although perhaps not rich. 2. In any year when water is adequate, they will be able to plant their usual crops or their annual rice crop. If after that, in the dry season, water becomes scarce, they will be able to use the water that has been saved in the pond in their own plot of land to cultivate any crop or even a second rice crop. They will not have to depend too heavily on the main irrigation system because they have their own supply. Moreover, they may be able to plant vegetables or raise fish, or do other things. Therefore, the New Theory is not just meant for the prevention of water shortages. 3. In normal situation, farmers can get rich. 4. In case of floods, they can recover without relying too much on official assistance.

A research project on community economies in Thai villages was conducted by 27 academics and educators, over a period of five years, from 1 March 2000 to 28 February 2005, using methodologies in economics, anthropology, and history, relying on official statistics and surveys conducted by researchers themselves. Three conclusions were drawn:

1. The Thai economy comprises two systems, the community economy and the capitalistic system. The community economy involves the livelihood of the majority of the populace, found in all regions of the country, especially in the provincial areas.

The main feature of the community economy is that families and communities are the production units, with the objective of enabling the families and communities to be self-supporting. The production is therefore meant for household consumption, and then for sale to raise income for the family’s survival, rather than to make maximum profits. The household is thus a small and independent producer, utilizing the available labor in the family on the existing land to feed the family, originally with rice-growing.

Later on, with more family members on the limited land, crops that employ less space but more labor are resorted to, such as vegetables and fruit trees, or livestock rearing. They might also turn to providing services such as the repair and maintenance of farm tools and machinery. Members who sell their labor elsewhere also remit income to support their farm families in rural areas. Selling of labor is thus income earning, not the permanent change of profession.

2. The transformation of the Thai economy from family and community economic system to capitalistic system is a process with high viscosity, moving forward very slowly, and on a limited scale. The causes are as follows:

a. The bounty and fertile natural environment in the past
b. The security provided by the community
c. The manner in which the state and the capitalistic system deal with the communities, without managing the production, but benefiting from the excess produce from the villages.

The maintenance of family and community economy in the past 50 years has been the adaptation and struggles of families and communities, by shifting from rice-growing to multiple crops, service business and trading, to preserve the families and communities. Such undertakings are individually carried out or as local networks created among relatives and friends, village to village, to broader confines. This represents the importance and strong ties of the family institution and the community in the Thai village economy.

The direction of the nation in accordance with the real situation and aspirations of the Thai people should be led by community and community culture, because the community is the axis of the Thai society and culture, as the institution or the way of life of the majority of the Thai people.

A study on the conditions of the rural community that comply with the direction of the Sufficiency Economy and pointed out that the Sufficiency Economy can be established and maintained within the social and traditional structures of the community, with two common factors:

1. Subsistence production with equitable linkage between production and consumption
2. The community’s potential for the management of its own resources.

Moreover, the study found that the Sufficiency Economy has four contributing factors in the community:

1. The absence of intervention from outside influences and trading with money
2. The richness of the forests
3. The use of appropriate technologies
4. The proper size of the population.

His Majesty the King’s philosophy of Sufficiency Economy is the guideline for national economic development by means of adherence to the Middle Path, involving two perspectives of development, namely, the middle path between the society and the market, and between the global level and the community level, as stated by His Majesty:

“If we contain our wants, with less greed, we would be less belligerent towards others. If all countries entertain this - this is not an economic system - the idea that we all should be self-sufficient, which implies moderation, not to the extreme, not blinded with greed, we can all live happily.”

The body of knowledge in economics and agriculture obtained from the New Theory granted by His Majesty the King to his people has been of great help to the country and the people in time of crisis, with diverse solutions to the people’s problems, people-centered development initiatives, sustainable development based on self-reliance, full public participation in development, equitable distribution of natural resources, integration of spiritualism and materialism, connection between cities and rural areas, and ultimately the equilibrium in the roles played by all sides.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/07/wisdom-from-orient-self-sufficiency.html

Filed Under: An Alternative World, Collective Colloboration, Corporations, Environment, Money, Revolution, Rights, Self-Sustainability, Spirituality, Survival Tagged With: Guidance, Thailand

Why Are So Many People Gathering to Hear David Icke?

November 27, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

What can you expect to hear if you listen to David Icke? Everything!He also empowers and motivates us to reclaim our personal freedom. You can be fearless in the midst of a seemingly cruel and crazy world. There is a method to the madness for all that’s irrational today, although it comes from an artificial reality, keeping us from our own natural consciousness.

It takes an amazing brilliancy and energy to take everyone through a personal prison break, speaking a mile a minute for nearly 11 hours straight! That’s what he did recently in Cleveland, Ohio and a few days ago in New York, connecting dots and pinpointing the sources for today’s confusion.

Asleep, we meander in a routinized, hazy, yet invisible prison. A world where we are made to feel shame even for every breath, as though we are so small and unworthy that we should receive punishment for filling the atmosphere with our sighs. We might feel confused, fearful, depressed, trapped, exhausted, deflated until it seems like our existence is squeezed into the size of a postage stamp.

But why should that be so! One of his book titles makes for a better description: Infinite Love is the Only Truth, Everything Else is Only Illusion. Always researching, he covers much: metaphysics, technology, co-opted revolutions, top-level power and world banks, fluoride, modern medicine, food politics, vibrational and electromagnetic frequencies, radiation, the left-brain 5-sense prison, the rise of child abuse, Zionism (more than meets the eye), world economy and debt, smart meters, narcissistic cops – trained to lack empathy, greater social consciousness, and tapping into our awareness.

How we receive and perceive information is akin to code and decoding. “We’ve been hacked into,” Icke demonstrated. Elitists, higher-ups, whatever general term for those who ruthlessly seek control at the top, use technology to manipulate that coding, giving us their manufactured reality and frenzied, lower brain mindset. For more specifics, check out the sources for his new work, below.

Do you ever feel that most of the world submits to left-brain and sensory modes? School, work, politics? That mode explains the box-routine cycle of work; eat a sandwich, feel no purpose, repeat.

And the limitation of “If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist!” Our intellect and senses are great, but are such a tiny drop in the sea of consciousness that we truly are. And a stirring consciousness scares those in power. We are compelled to view the world through a very small lens, blocked from bridging the right and left brain.

There is a lower, reptilian-like part of the brain. It even resembles a snake. It scans and reacts automatically. It’s the fight or flight response. This reaction is fine when someone walks in front of our moving car, Icke says, but to live like this all the time would be seriously damaging and repressive. Oh no! What am I going to do about rent, my job, my relationship, food…?

It’s reacting all the time from the fear of not surviving. How is that state-of-mind exploited when we tune in to the matrix? We are met with a barrage of manufactured terrorism, global warming (climate change), destroyed economies, the newest flu, disasters — total mayhem! Reaction, reaction, reaction. And more restriction from Problem-Reaction-Solution (which usually includes force, acquiescence to authority, and loss of freedom). People feed into this insatiable energy monster and it becomes harder to look at the bigger picture, make connections, and tap into our consciousness (right brain).

It’s also not coincidental that many of the things we oppose also directly destroy our DNA. Fluoride, GMOs, food additives, chemical jet trails, medicine and drugs, and weakness from many sources of radiation. Icke pointed out that fluoride calcifies the pineal gland in the brain which acts as our third eye.

The Positive Shift

David Icke speaks positively about the burgeoning paradigm shift. “So many children are growing up and breaking through the program — that is a testament to the power of consciousness. Think of the things we know now that we didn’t know one year, five years, twenty years ago,” Icke said.

“They are throwing everything at us…[trying to] keep us down emotionally.”

But these controllers aren’t omnipotent. They are like “little school boys in short trousers.” This cold mindset is one of massive insecurity. It operates under a limited vibration using only a limited intellect. That’s why technology is so often used for destruction, because they don’t have consciousness. “They are in a small box, terrified of us awakening. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

From the limited consciousness of the controllers, we experience a round the clock, suppressive targeted program. However, David likens this effort to trying to hold down a soccer ball in a pool of water. Naturally, the ball will immediately rise to the surface. It takes a great amount of constant force to keep it down. It cannot be released for one second. So another testament to our awakening and efforts is the absolute energy exhausted working tirelessly to keep us down. We must be pretty special!

How Can One Break From The Matrix?

Let pre-programmed beliefs go. We don’t need a blueprint. It doesn’t have to be complicated, he says: the fasting, the lifelong meditation, the guru teaching. “Open your frickin’ mind, openness…that’s it. I don’t fast, you probably noticed,” he joked. “Open the [Wizard's] curtain, keep finding the truth.”

The vibrational frequency of the imbecilic mindset inflicted on us is made up of fear, insecurity, and anxiety. It doesn’t so much think as it does react. But reacting to the irrational doesn’t work; it keeps us reactionary, controlled, drained, and feeling helpless. Think of a traffic light when applying the following response: Stop, Think, Act. The age-old counting to 10 or 20 before reacting helps too. Then there’s the ever-important phrase when facing attack, “NO!” Cease to acquiesce. We have the numbers and power — controllers never do. The only ones who can give up our power is us, and we are upholding our own enslavement when we acquiesce to that irrationality.

One of the greatest things we can do is get rid of the fear of “What will people think [of me]?? It doesn’t matter, they’ll think something different tomorrow. We have to let go of that fear.” Sometimes the biggest war is between the program of the head against the openness of the heart. Fear looks to the external, very limited. As Icke shows us, realizing who you really are and releasing your fear allows you to take back your power. Then life becomes more about abundance, wonderment, and adventure, with nothing to lose.

“People say, I want to seek enlightenment — what a bloody waste of time!” he exclaimed. “You are enlightened! You are infinite awareness.”

So, it’s not Oh, Little Me… Human Race – Get Off Your Knees!

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/why-are-so-many-people-gathering-to.html

Filed Under: An Alternative World, Illumanati, Media, Survival Tagged With: Conspiracy Theories, David Icke, Self-Empowerment

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