By Rebecca Em Campbell

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around(these banks) will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” — Thomas Jefferson during the congressional debate to renew the United States National Bank Charter – 1809

“There are thousand hacking at the branches of evil, to one who is striking at the root.” Henry David Thoreau – Walden, or A Walk in the Woods – 1854

During the week of June 26-July 2, 2016, it was announced that both corporate mainstream and allegedly independent media in both Seattle, Washington State and San Francisco, California would on June 29 launch a media blitz of “investigative reports” on homelessness in their two respective cities. Here is a brief aggregated summary and analysis of the two week’s end compilations of these “investigative reports” and their larger implications, in the weblinks provided below:

San Francisco Homeless Project
http://www.sfgate.com/homeless/

Seattle Media All in on #SeaHomeless Project
www.crosscut.com/2016/06/seattle-media-all-in-on-seahomeless-project/

Examination of both titles and contents of approximately 100 articles listed in these two compendiums indicate routine reexamination of all of the many well-known elements of homelessness: mental health/substance abuse problems, littered cityscapes, ubiquitous panhandling, underfunded social/affordable housing programs, increasing crime, unemployment, underpaying jobs, lack of universal healthcare and overpriced housing/healthcare.

There were also a fair number of these articles at least mentioning possible second-tier solutions, such as housing first, day centers, more shelters/treatment centers/affordable healthcare clinics and affordable housing, more jobs, as well as increasing the minimum wage. There were also many tear-evocative first-person accounts of what it was like to be homeless, as well as faux-populist reporter-on-the-streets articles concerning same. It was most significant, that, despite the professed solidarity with the homeless population that these media blitzes would imply, almost none of these reports were written by the greatest living practical experts on this issue — homeless people themselves.

Nothing in any of these “investigative reports” examined the actual root causes of homelessness. In fact, there have been virtually no real investigative reports connecting all of the dots on the real root causes of homelessness in any of the corporate-controlled media – either mainstream or allegedly independent – for over thirty-five years, when the insidious tsunami of homelessness in America began in the early 1980s with the draconian policies of the Republican Reagan administration, and continued by whatever dumbed-down dialectic of the Demopublican duopoly has been in power ever since.

So to end this long media blackout on the actual root causes of homelessness, here is a concise bullet point listing of these root causes, with evidentiary weblinks, on the outside chance that readers and members of the corporate-controlled media – both mainstream and alternative – might possibly be interested in doing their own research concerning, exposure of, and taking effective localized action on this urgent multifaceted systemic issue:

1. All levels of corporate government and media in America – from local to federal – are complicit in the systemic foreclosure fraud being perpetrated on we the people by the criminal globalist banking cartel through the private, for-profit Federal Reserve system. This systemic foreclosure fraud is the largest cause of increasing homelessness in formerly middle class families and individuals.

The local governments, courts and media of Seattle/King County, Washington State and Portland/Multnomah County, Oregon, for example, are complicit with the criminal banking cartel in enabling foreclosure fraud in these two major municipalities of the US Pacific Northwest by refusing to indict/report on systemic foreclosure fraud by the banking cartel; the US government is guilty of similar crimes on a larger scale. Notice that these evidentiary weblinks are from authentic independent media online; none of the local corporate-controlled media – mainstream or allegedly independent – bothered to cover these news stories actually dealing with one of the main root causes of homelessness in America:

City-Funded Titles Audit Finds at Least 93% of Seattle MERS Foreclosures Fraudulent; Seattle City Council Refuses to Hold Hearing on Findings
http://galacticconnection.com/leaked-seattle-audit-concludes-many-mortgage-documents-are-void/

Portland/Multnomah County, Oregon Unlawfully Settles $38 Million MERS Foreclosure Fraud Case for Mere $9 Million, Allows Bank of America to Continue Criminal Assault on Homeowners
https://livinglies.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/oregon-county-enters-into-illegal-setlement-with-mers-boa-et-al/

Whistleblower Tran vs. Wells Fargo Bank: US “Department of Justice” Declines to Intervene-Banks to Continue Foreclosure Fraud with Impunity
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-11/unsealed-tran-vs-wells-fargo-doj-declines-intervene-banks-continue-foreclose-impunit

2. All levels of corporate government in America — from local to federal — are complicit in enabling systemic gentrification by absentee foreign investors/private equity firms and mutual/pension funds, with consequent mass displacement of we the people. This is because these corporate governments do not at any level credibly investigate massive money-laundering by the globalist banking cartel, and its associated legal and real estate industries, of funds obtained from drug/weapons/human trafficking, as well as theft, extortion and fraud. These sanitized, ill-gotten gains are invested in new and existing high-end commercial/residential real estate and construction, driving up home and rental prices, gentrifying neighborhoods and displacing much of the local population, destroying the lives of many to fill the coffers of the few.

Seattle now has over 600 high-end construction sites of this type of development taking over the city; the numbers are likely similar in San Francisco, and Vancouver British Columbia, that has virtual shacks now selling for millions of dollars to absentee foreign and corporate investors, pricing longtime local residents out of living their own city.

CBS’ 60 Minutes Video/Transcript: New York Real Estate Attorneys – One President of American Bar Association – Tell Undercover Activist How to Launder Money Using High-End Real Estate; One Lawyer Tells Him, “We Run the Country” – 2016
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/anonymous-inc-60-minutes-steve-kroft-investigation/

New York Times – Towers of Secrecy: Piercing Real Estate Shell Corporations – 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/news-event/shell-company-towers-of-secrecy-real-estate

Zero Hedge: Vancouver, BC Shack Sells for $4 million, $735,000 Above Asking Price – 2016
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-29/pretty-freaking-nuts-vancouver-home-sells-735000-above-asking-price

Huffington Post/Tom Dispatch: Private Equity Funds Purchase Large Numbers of Rental Properties Within Cities, Then Cheat/Evict Renters-2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-gottesdiener/when-predatory-equity-hit_b_5110461.html

3. All levels of corporate government in America – particularly the federal CIA – are complicit in systemic drug-running operations delivering at the very least a large portion of illegal street drugs being sold in urban areas, fueling major mental health/substance abuse issues and associated street crime.

Classic Pulitzer Prize-Winning Exposé of CIA Drug-Running in Los Angeles-San Jose Mercury: Dark Alliance – 1996
http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/start.htm

Suppressed Investigative Report – Washington Post – The Crimes of Mena-CIA Drug-Running/Murders in Arkansas Under Governor Bill Clinton/First Lady Hillary Clinton 1983-1992
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ARCHIVE/CRIMES_OF_MENA.html

4. All levels of corporate government in America are complicit in taking the major portion of the revenues provided to them by we the people – 66% – and quietly placing our money in corporate Wall Street investments benefiting only the 1% that these private, for-profit government corporations controlled by the globalist banking cartel through the private, for-profit Federal Reserve system actually serve.

Government entities then claim yearly “budget deficits” and each year cut more of the social services made necessary by their enablement of the above-mentioned systemic corporate crimes against we the people, and their legislated stealing of our monies.

Criminal Charges Against the Washington State Government/Media for Ongoing Systemic Financial Fraud and Treason – 2012
http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/government/judicial_and_courts/news.php?q=1348243806

Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) Show Double Bookkeeping Fraud of All Government Entities in America, from Local to Federal
http://www.cafrman.com/

Huffington Post – The Mysterious CAFRs: How Stagnant Pools of Government Money Could Help Save the Economy – Ellen Brown – 2011
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/the-mysterious-cafrs-how_b_585011.html

5. We have been thus deterred from insisting that the following effective, replicable actions be taken to end the crisis of homelessness in our nation:

Government agencies investigating, prosecuting and convicting those corporate government and commercial corporate officials responsible for the aforementioned systemic crimes against the American people; the policy of housing first, that has already ended at least 90% of all homelessness in Utah and several cities in the province of Alberta, Canada, among all virtually veterans in the State of Virginia, and among considerable portions of the homeless population in Seattle and other cities; community land trusts, that can be used to keep whole portions of cities affordable for most; use of eminent domain and block purchases of mortgages, that, when rightly used by municipal governments, as in New York City and Richmond, California, can maintain affordable housing by public local government land banks of vacant buildings or fraudulently foreclosed homes for the public good of providing shelter for those who have been so wrongfully denied it, as well as the creation of municipal public banks providing funding for many such innovative public initiatives.

Seattle City Council President: Use of Eminent Domain/Financial Best Practices to Return Foreclosed Buildings to Reuse – 2015
http://housingactionfund.org/sites/default/files/2015%20Seattle%20City%20Council%20Responses%20-%20Bruce%20A.%20Harrell.pdf

Yes Magazine: How One Boston Neighborhood Stopped Gentrification in Its Tracks Using Urban Community Land Trusts – 2015
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/cities-are-now/how-one-boston-neighborhood-stopped-gentrification-in-its-tracks

Los Angeles Times: Utah Winning War on Chronic Homelessness with Housing First Program – 2015
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-utah-housing-first-20150524-story.html

6. Finally, we the American people are complicit in helping cause the present crisis of homelessness in this country. We in our willful complacency have become alienated from the spiritual home that eternally abides within the sanctuary of our hearts. We throughout our history collectively have denied the truth or hearts would teach, and so we largely abide as ignorant slaves living just outside the long-promised land of freedom, no matter what the opulence of our physical shelter or our material wealth and power as individuals, and as a nation, might presently be.

For we have given over our power to those unworthy of safeguarding the public good, and have all but superficially refused to acknowledge, much less work to change, the decadent human – more accurately, inhuman systems – that presently cause the suffering of our homeless brothers and sisters in America and worldwide, that will cause our own suffering in the near future, if such suffering has not already begun. And unless we the American people declare our independence from our own past indifference to this human suffering and its dark systemic causes, truth also will remain homeless among we the people of the United States, now disowned from our sovereign heritage in this, the land of the fee and home of the slave.

Democracy Now! – What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Speech by 19th Century American Black Leader Frederick Douglas – 1852

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/7/4/what_to_the_slave_is_4th?

(activistpost.com)

By Matt Agorist

Late Thursday night, during an entirely peaceful protest, murderers opened fire on crowds of police officers. Five Dallas cops were tragically killed and six others injured.

These apparently unprovoked attacks on individuals who were not directly involved in threatening the life of the shooters are a hindrance to the progression of liberty and police accountability.

Random acts of violence will only serve to undo what little progress those of us in the peaceful movement have accomplished and, in fact, will reverse it and prevent any future progress.

Violently attacking the government creates victims out of the ones we are trying to expose as criminals.

Those who initiate and support such violence will be complicit in creating the hellish police state that will inevitably ensue as a consequence of their actions.

It will start a war in which the people are the enemy.

We can simply look back to 9-11 as an example of what is to come if this violence continues.

Prior to 9-11 the TSA did not exist, indefinite detention did not exist, the NSA did not spy on American citizens, the police weren’t given armored assault vehicles, and Americans could not be assassinated without trial.

We can expect to see peaceful activists rounded up and detained indefinitely. We can expect to see homes raided of individuals who are speaking out against the State. We will see more and more checkpoints, and less and less unmolested travel.

If you think that the American people can somehow win in a war against the military industrial complex that the US has built up in the last decade and a half, you are seriously delusional.

Your AR-15 will do nothing against thermal imaging predator drones equipped with Raytheon’s small tactical munitions designed for blowing up single homes. They will not stop the MRAP as it plows through your front door. No matter how you slice it, the most well-armed American citizen is no match for the hundreds of billions spent annually by the US on warfare.

No, this battle will not be won with weaponry as the US spends more annually on defense than the next 13 largest militaries in the world, combined.

Also, the above scenarios don’t take into account the public’s support. If a group of people rise up and claim to be freedom fighters and they do not have the support of the citizens, well, that “revolution” was over before it started.

If anyone thinks that killing cops and/or praising the death of innocent people will amass public opinion in their favor – again, they are seriously delusional.

Even if a large group was able to get public support and engage in a war against the government, imagine the horrid reality that would come to pass. The US would literally be a war zone and quickly languish into third world status.

As a former Marine, I know that before I woke up to this tyranny, I would have done anything my leaders told me, including initiating force against Americans — especially if there were an increase in the prevalence of unprovoked violence against the State like we just witnessed in Dallas.

However, I also know firsthand how people can change once presented with the information that frees them from their Statist bonds. Most of these police officers are simply brainwashed into thinking they are doing the right thing. They just need to see their true reflection enough times to realize that they are not. It is up to you and me to provide this reflection.

That is why we must win the hearts and minds of the people within the State. We must expose as much of their violence and corruption as we can, for that is what garners support — not murder.

We must show that those of us who stand against this state corruption are the good guys. We are not some violent group of terrorists who are quick to don the pitchforks and torches and beg for blood.

Removal of due process, the initiation of violence, and abuse of power — these are tools of the State, not of the peaceful revolution.

Those who would take an innocent life to incite change are no different than the mass murdering sociopaths within the government.

‘But police are not innocent,’ some will say. What are statements such as that one, other than calls to remove due process and act as judge, jury, and executioner, just like the corrupt police?

Yes, police uphold a system of immoral laws that lead to the harassment, kidnapping and death of innocent people. But these are mere symptoms of a much larger problem.

The police state didn’t suddenly pop up overnight. It’s a product of society. More accurately, it’s asymptom of a sick society that we are all complicit in creating.

Our only means of changing this sick society is changing ourselves. We have to remove our dependency upon a group of people who use violent coercion to achieve what they refer to as “order.” When enough of us do this, the police state becomes irrelevant.

To quote Butler Shaffer from his eye-opening book, The Wizards of Ozymandias:

We will not become free when the state goes away. Rather the state will go away once we are free.

Taking an aspirin for a headache only masks the symptom of that headache, it does nothing to eliminate the cause.

One cannot eliminate future headaches by constantly taking aspirin, in the same manner that one cannot change a violent State by acting within the rules of that State; violence will only be met with more violence and more support for the State.

We must show that policing society does not have to be like this. We must expose the faults of this archaic system of using violence to solve every problem that arises.

We must show that there are alternatives to this type of policing and these alternatives will eventually make the old system obsolete. This has already begun.

We are now witnessing the free market reacting to an incompetent and violent police state by creating alternative means of community security.

Apps like Peacekeeper, which connects community members directly to each other to foster community interdependence by empowering community members to protect one another, are popping up as a reaction to police violence and corruption.

Organizations like the Threat Management Center in Detroit are popping up in response to police incompetence and negligence, and they are proving to be magnitudes more effective than actual police.

The new system is being built and is quickly showing the obsolescence of the old.

But here is the kicker — all these alternatives go away as long as people keep initiating senseless violence. We can say goodbye to all these positive aspects of society reacting peacefully to the police state. Every act of senseless violence is a step backward in the fight for freedom.

Do not mistake this as a call to pacifism. No one is advocating that you lay down and lick the boots of tyrants as they oppress you.

Self-defense is a natural right. This is why we see laws popping up like the one in Indiana thatlegalizes the shooting of police if they enter your home and pose an unjust threat to you and your family.

Georgia Sen. Mike Crane is running in the state’s Republican primary to replace U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland. Any politician seeking office in that very “conservative” state must pledge their support to cops and authority figures. But Crane, being a strict constitutionalist, believes that no-knock warrants are illegal and unjust. He was even filmed at a town hall meeting noting how shooting at unannounced intruders in your house is just, regardless of the badge.

The actions that we are taking now like filming the police, photographing and documenting their corruption and standing up to their immoral rule, are the real catalysts of change; and again, they will all go away if the violence continues.

The video of Eric Garner did not lead to the indictment of officer Pantaleo, but it set off a wave of peaceful resistance like we’ve never seen. Sports figures, movie stars, newscasters and even lawmakers have rallied together to put an end to this senseless police brutality.

The two videos of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were waking Americans up. Now, their tragic deaths are put on the back burner as the nation grieves the senseless murder of the Dallas police officers.

If you think that we are losing this battle, however, think again.

Police are frequently contacting The Free Thought Project and asking how they can help stop this ridiculous police state, and we are working with them to find new ways. One of the ways is a fund that we’ve recently set up to help whistleblower officers.

There are organizations like LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) that are fighting the odds and standing up to their own peers and seeking peaceful change.

There are movements across the country which are forcing police departments to carry their own personal liability insurance. This would stop the unaccountable flow of taxpayer dollars to pay for police misconduct, and hold the officers directly responsible for their actions.

We are winning and can beat these tyrants. But if people continue to stoop to the same level of senseless violence and removal of due process as them, we will not only lose, but guarantee that there will never be another opportunity to resist again.

Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. He is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world.


(actividtpost.com)

By Joshua Krause

After nearly 15 years of conflict and 2,378 deaths, the United States is still trying to find an exit to the longest war in American history. Millions of Americans voted for President Obama because he promised to withdraw our military from countries like Afghanistan; and two years ago he promised that by the end of his term, the only troops who remained would be guarding the US Embassy in Kabul.

Instead, it looks like there will be no further troop withdrawals for the duration of Obama’s presidency. The President announced today that the 8,400 troops currently stationed in Afghanistan will remain there until 2017. That is 3,000 more troops than he had originally planed.

“The security situation in Afghanistan remains precarious,” he said at a press conference on Wednesday, with Defense Ash Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford standing beside him. “I strongly believe it is in our national security interest … that we give our Afghan partners the best opportunities to succeed.”

However, the President tried to spin the current deployment numbers as a success. “Compared to the 100,000 troops we once had there, today, fewer than 10,000 remain. And compared to their previous mission, helping to lead the fight, our forces are now focused on two narrow missions: training and advising Afghan forces and supporting counter terrorist operations against the remnants of al Qaeda as well as other terrorist groups, including ISIL,”

What he didn’t mention was that the “training and advising” is not working. The Afghan Army is crumbling under the weight of mounting casualties, desertions, supply shortages, and poor enlistment rates. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s police forces are rife with corruption and run by a bunch of pedophiles.

It’s clear to anyone with a brain that the war in Afghanistan is an irredeemable failure, and no amount of soldiers or advisors will change that. The only reason why Obama is prolonging this conflict, is to preserve his legacy. He’s passing the buck on to the next president, so that he won’t be known as the man who let Afghanistan fall apart.

Image Credit: Anthony Freda Art

Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger.


(activistpost.com)