To
Fwd: UPDATE ❀ REVERENCE FOR ALL CREATION: A Three-Day Event & Fundraiser ❀
Important according to Google magic.
Click to teach Gmail this conversation is not important.
*fyi
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers <info@grandmotherscouncil.org> Date: Sat, Mar 24, 2018 at 5:00 PM Subject: UPDATE ❀ REVERENCE FOR ALL CREATION: A Three-Day Event & Fundraiser ❀
Click to teach Gmail this conversation is important.
Join the 13,930 informed, caring subscribers to this list (two emails/week)
Subscribe here
The Mission of WantToKnow.info:
To provide our readers with reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups, and to serve as a call to work together for the good of all
This message is also available online at this link.
Please support this important work and make a donation.
Support us by using this amazon.com link at no extra charge to you.
Dear friends,
Explore below key excerpts of revealing news articles on the underhanded tactics and high-tech propaganda used by big data firm Cambridge Analytica to manipulate elections, a former Pentagon director stating UFOs travel by warping space-time, the collapse of France's bird population due to heavy use of pesticides, and more.
Read also wonderfully inspiring articles on quadruple amputee Kyle Maynard's accomplishments including a solo climb of Mount Kilimanjaro, how the ability to shape your own narrative empowers us to overcome suffering, the success of Norway's focus on normality, humanity and rehabilitation in its prison system, and more. You can also skip to this section now.
Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails, see this page. The most important sentences are highlighted. And don't miss the "What you can do" section below the summaries. By educating ourselves and spreading the word, we can and will build a brighter future.
Special note (sources may be less reliable): Read an excellent article by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky on the link between the opioid crisis in the U.S. and the invasion of Afghanistan. Read a declassified, U.S. government-funded study on the real possibility of teleportation. Watch an awesome, four-minute video showing how Austin, TX has found a beautiful, creative way to help their homeless population find refuge and even meaningful work.
Quote of the week: "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." ~~ Jimi Hendrix
Video of the week: Watch an astounding video revealing how Cambridge Analytica has successfully manipulated national elections around the world. And here is a video featuring the whistleblower who exposed this.
Cambridge Analytica, Trump-Tied Political Firm, Offered to Entrap Politicians
March 19, 2018, New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2018/
Sitting in a hotel bar, Alexander Nix, who runs the political data firm Cambridge Analytica, had a few ideas for a prospective client looking for help in a foreign election. The firm could send an attractive woman to seduce a rival candidate and secretly videotape the encounter, Mr. Nix said, or send someone posing as a wealthy land developer to pass a bribe. “We have a long history of working behind the scenes,” Mr. Nix said. The prospective client, though, was actually a reporter. The encounter was secretly filmed as part of a monthslong investigation into Cambridge Analytica, the data firm with ties to President Trump’s 2016 campaign. The results of Channel 4’s work were broadcast ... days after reports ... that the firm had harvested the data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles in its bid to develop techniques for predicting the behavior of individual American voters. Less noticed has been the work that Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, the SCL Group, have done outside the United States. “Many of our clients don’t want to be seen to be working with a foreign company,” he told the Channel 4 reporter. “We can set up fake IDs and websites.” Mr. Nix ... boasted that Cambridge Analytica employs front companies and former spies on behalf of political clients. The information that is uncovered ... is then put “into the bloodstream to the internet,” said Mark Turnbull, another Cambridge executive. “Then watch it grow,” he added. “It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘That’s propaganda.’”
Note: Watch an astounding video revealing how Cambridge Analytica has successfully manipulated national elections around the world using sleazy tactics like pretty women to entrap candidates and offering major bribes while recording the exchange. And here is a video featuring the whistleblower who exposed this.
‘I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblower
March 18, 2018, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers) https://www.theguardian.com/
At 24, [Christopher Wylie] came up with an idea that led to the foundation of a company called Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that went on to claim a major role in the Leave campaign for Britain’s EU membership referendum, and later became a key figure in digital operations during Donald Trump’s election campaign. In 2014, Steve Bannon ... was Wylie’s boss. And Robert Mercer, the secretive US hedge-fund billionaire and Republican donor, was Cambridge Analytica’s investor. The idea they bought into was to bring big data and social media to an established military methodology – “information operations” – then turn it on the US electorate. By [2017], Steve Bannon had become Trump’s chief strategist. Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL, had won contracts with the US State Department and was pitching to the Pentagon, and Wylie was genuinely freaked out. “It’s insane,” he told me one night. “The company has created psychological profiles of 230 million Americans. And now they want to work with the Pentagon? It’s like Nixon on steroids.” He ended up showing me a tranche of documents that laid out the secret workings behind Cambridge Analytica. Wylie ... came up with a plan to harvest the Facebook profiles of millions of people in the US, and to use their private and personal information to create sophisticated psychological and political profiles. And then target them with political ads designed to work on their particular psychological makeup.
Note: Billionaire Robert Mercer used this new new technology to build a corporate empire capable of swinging elections by using military propaganda strategies on civilian populations. The above article further details how mass media is being combined with Big Data to produce powerful new forms of mind control. Watch an astounding video revealing how Cambridge Analytica has successfully manipulated national elections around the world.
Former Pentagon director says UFOs warp space-time for uncanny movement: Did aliens figure out time travel?
February 10, 2018, International Business Times http://www.ibtimes.co.in/
Alien and Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) have been mind-boggling stuff since 1947 – the first time a well-known UFO sighting occurred. Cut to 2004, Navy pilots encountered a UFO off the San Diego coast. According to an eyewitness, pilot David Fravor, the 40-foot Tic-Tac shaped white vehicle moved, unlike any other thing he had ever seen in the air with lightning speed. UFOs are often reported to display bizarre aerodynamics, defying the laws of physics, which human minds are still incapable of apprehending. Former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program - Pentagon's program to identify and investigate UFOs, Luis Elizondo has put forward an explanation about "the physics of how it works". "We do believe all these observables we've been seeing, sudden and extreme acceleration, hypersonic velocities, low observability, trans medium travel, and last but not least, positive lift, anti-gravity – is really the manifestation of a single technology," Elizondo said. It is the ability to warp space-time, Elizondo explained, and not by a lot, but by a little. Space and Time Warps theory says that the fourth dimension called the space-time continuum, which fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time, can be bent like a cloth when exposed to high gravity of objects. Thus from here, another question arises: Are aliens time-travellers?
Note: Luis Elizondo is one of several former government officials reportedly working with a new company called To the Stars Academy for Arts and Sciences. Watch an excellent 8-minute video showing that something is fishy about this company. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing UFO news articles from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
'Catastrophe' as France's bird population collapses due to pesticides
March 20, 2018, The Guardian/AFP https://www.theguardian.com/
Bird populations across the French countryside have fallen by a third over the last decade and a half, researchers have said. Dozens of species have seen their numbers decline, in some cases by two-thirds, the scientists said in a pair of studies – one national in scope and the other covering a large agricultural region in central France. “The situation is catastrophic,” said Benoit Fontaine, a conservation biologist at France’s National Museum of Natural History and co-author of one of the studies. A migratory song bird, the meadow pipit, has declined by nearly 70%. The museum described the pace and extent of the wipe-out as “a level approaching an ecological catastrophe”. The primary culprit, researchers speculate, is the intensive use of pesticides on vast tracts of monoculture crops, especially wheat and corn. The problem is not that birds are being poisoned, but that the insects on which they depend for food have disappeared. Recent research ... has uncovered similar trends across Europe. Flying insects have declined by 80%, and bird populations has dropped by more than 400m in 30 years. Despite a government plan to cut pesticide use in half by 2020, sales in France have climbed steadily, reaching more than 75,000 tonnes of active ingredient in 2014, according to European Union figures. “What is really alarming, is that all the birds in an agricultural setting are declining at the same speed, even ’generalist’ birds,” which also thrive in other settings such as wooded areas, said [ecologist Vincent] Bretagnolle.
Note: A United Nations report recently noted that pesticides have produced “catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole”, and condemned the pesticide industry for aggressively promoting lies about the usefulness of their products. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing food system corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
'Dirty meat': Shocking hygiene failings discovered in US pig and chicken plants
February 21, 2018, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers) https://www.theguardian.com/
Shocking hygiene failings have been discovered in some of the US’s biggest meat plants, as a new analysis reveals that as many as 15% (one in seven) of the US population suffers from foodborne illnesses annually. A joint investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and the Guardian found that hygiene incidents are at numbers that experts described as “deeply worrying”. US campaigners are calling once again for the closure of a legal loophole that allows meat with salmonella to be sold in the human supply chain, and also warn about the industry’s push to speed up production in the country’s meat plants. Unpublished US- government records highlight numerous specific incidents including: Diseased poultry meat that had been condemned found in containers used to hold edible food products; Pig carcasses piling up on the factory floor after an equipment breakdown, leading to contamination with grease, blood and other filth; Meat destined for the human food chain found riddled with faecal matter and abscesses filled with pus; High-power hoses being used to clean dirty floors next to working production lines containing food products; Factory floors flooded with dirty water after drains became blocked by meat parts and other debris; Dirty chicken, soiled with faeces or having been dropped on the floor, being put back on to the production line after being rinsed with dilute chlorine.
Note: Read more on the unsafe and unethical high speed slaughterhouses on track for USDA approval. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing food system corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
The 1% grabbed 82% of all wealth created in 2017
January 22, 2018, CNN http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/
More than $8 of every $10 of wealth created last year went to the richest 1%. That's according to a new report from Oxfam International, which estimates that the bottom 50% of the world's population saw no increase in wealth. Oxfam says the trend shows that the global economy is skewed in favor of the rich, rewarding wealth instead of work. "The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system," said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International. The head of the advocacy group argued that the people who "make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food" are being exploited in order to enrich corporations and the super wealthy. The study, released ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, was produced using data from Credit Suisse's (CS) Global Wealth Databook. Oxfam said Monday that it is time for the global elite to stop talking about inequality and start changing their ways. "It's hard to find a political or business leader who doesn't say they are worried about inequality. It's even harder to find one who is doing something about it," said Byanyima. Oxfam said that governments should focus on policies that would lead to fairer distribution of wealth and stronger workers' rights.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing income inequality news articles from reliable major media sources.
No CEO should earn 1,000 times more than a regular employee
March 18, 2018, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers) https://www.theguardian.com/
The CEO of Marathon Petroleum, Gary Heminger, took home an astonishing 935 times more pay than his typical employee in 2017. One of Marathon’s gas station workers would have to toil more than nine centuries to make as much as Heminger grabbed in just one year. Employees of at least five other US firms would have to work even longer – more than a millennium – to catch up with their top bosses. These companies include the auto parts maker Aptiv (CEO-worker pay ratio: 2,526 to 1), the temp agency Manpower (2,483 to 1), amusement park owner Six Flags (1,920 to 1), Del Monte Produce (1,465 to 1), and apparel maker VF (1,353 to 1). These revelations come thanks to a new federal regulation that requires publicly traded US corporations to disclose, for the first time ever, how much their chief executives are making compared with their median workers. The disclosures are just now starting to flow in. Ever since 2010, the year Congress plugged a ratio disclosure mandate into the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, corporate lobbyists have been scheming to delay and repeal that mandate’s implementation. But responsible investors and other activists rallied and kept the mandate in place. The new ratios offer a benchmark for corporate greed that exposes exactly which firms are sharing the wealth their employees create and which aren’t, knowledge we can use to impose consequences on the corporations doing the most to make the United States more unequal.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing income inequality news articles from reliable major media sources.
I went to prison for disclosing the CIA’s torture. Gina Haspel helped cover it up.
March 16, 2018, Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.
I was inside the CIA’s Langley, Va., headquarters on Sept. 11, 2001. I headed counterterrorism operations in Pakistan from January to May 2002. My team captured dozens of al-Qaeda fighters, including senior training-camp commanders. One of the fighters whom I played an integral role in capturing was Abu Zubaida, mistakenly thought at the time to be the third-ranking person in the militant group. By that May, the CIA had decided to torture him. When I returned to CIA headquarters that month, a senior officer in the Counterterrorism Center asked me if I wanted to be “trained in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.” I declined. I said that I had a moral and ethical problem with torture and that - the judgment of the Justice Department notwithstanding - I thought it was illegal. Unfortunately, there were plenty of people in the U.S. government who were all too willing to allow the practice to go on. One of them was Gina Haspel, whom President Trump nominated Tuesday as the CIA’s next director. Putting Haspel in charge of the CIA would undo attempts by the agency - and the nation - to repudiate torture. The message this sends to the CIA workforce is simple: Engage in war crimes, in crimes against humanity, and you’ll get promoted. Don’t worry about the law. Don’t worry about ethics. Don’t worry about morality or the fact that torture doesn’t even work. Go ahead and do it anyway. We’ll cover for you. And you can destroy the evidence, too.
Note: The above was written by former CIA counterterrorism officer John Kiriakou, who was imprisoned for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s illegal torture program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the intelligence community.
A forgotten hero stopped the My Lai massacre 50 years ago today
March 16, 2018, Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/
Everybody's heard of the My Lai massacre - March 16, 1968, 50 years ago today - but not many know about the man who stopped it: Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot. When he arrived, American soldiers had already killed 504 Vietnamese civilians. They were going to kill more, but they didn't - because of what Thompson did. "We started noticing these large numbers of bodies everywhere," [Thompson said]. "They were old women, old men, children, kids, babies." Then Thompson ... "saw some civilians hiding in a bunker, cowering. Saw some advancing Americans coming that way. I just figured it was time to do something, to not let these people get killed. Landed the aircraft in between the Americans and the Vietnamese, told my crew chief and gunner to cover me, got out of the aircraft, went over to the American side." What happened next was one of the most remarkable events of the entire war, and perhaps unique: Thompson told the American troops that, if they opened fire on the Vietnamese civilians in the bunker, he and his crew would open fire on them. "I thank God to this day that everybody did stay cool and nobody opened up. It was time to stop it. That was the only way the madness ... could be stopped." Back at their base he filed a complaint about the killing of civilians that he had witnessed. The Army covered it up. But eventually the journalist Seymour Hersh found out about the massacre, and his report made it worldwide news and a turning point in the war.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.
Ex-DEA agent: Opioid crisis fueled by drug industry and Congress
October 15, 2017, CBS News https://www.cbsnews.com/news/
In the midst of the worst drug epidemic in American history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's ability to keep addictive opioids off U.S. streets was derailed - that according to Joe Rannazzisi, one of the most important whistleblowers ever interviewed by 60 Minutes. Rannazzisi ran the DEA's Office of Diversion Control, the division that regulates and investigates the pharmaceutical industry. He says the opioid crisis was allowed to spread - aided by Congress, lobbyists, and a drug distribution industry that shipped, almost unchecked, hundreds of millions of pills to rogue pharmacies and pain clinics providing the rocket fuel for a crisis that, over the last two decades, has claimed 200,000 lives. His greatest ire is reserved for the ... middlemen that ship the pain pills from manufacturers, like Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson to drug stores all over the country. Rannazzisi accuses the distributors of fueling the opioid epidemic. "This is an industry that allowed millions and millions of drugs to go into bad pharmacies and doctors' offices, that distributed them out to people who had no legitimate need for those drugs," [said Rannazzisi]. In 2013, Joe Rannazzisi and his DEA investigators were trying to crack down. Then ... with the help of members of Congress, the drug industry began to quietly pave the way for legislation that essentially would strip the DEA of its ... ability to immediately freeze suspicious shipments of prescription narcotics to keep drugs off U.S. streets.
Note: See also this informative Washington Post article for more information on this sad topic. Lots more available here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in pharmaceutical industry.
Key Articles From Years Past
The tax bucks stop here / Resisters withhold payment in protest of U.S. sending troops to Iraq
April 3, 2007, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper) https://www.sfgate.com/
Dorothy Hansen used to pay her taxes faithfully every year - until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Since then, the 87-year-old Sebastopol resident has stopped filing her income tax returns to show her disapproval of the war. "I am very sure that I don't want to have any part in killing people and I certainly don't want a part in any wars that do just that," Hansen said. With the tax-filing deadline just two weeks away, some... are using it as an opportunity to protest the war by withholding their tax dollars to fund it. Known as war tax resisters, they consider it an act of civil disobedience. Some withhold only a symbolic portion of what they owe - $10.40, for example, to represent the 1040 tax form - while others, like Hansen, refuse to pay anything at all. Many will redirect their tax dollars to a charity of their choice. The risks can be costly if a resister is caught. Some resisters have had their wages garnisheed or property seized. Jesse Weller, an IRS spokesman, said the agency does not keep statistics on war tax resisters. The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee ... said they have no way of tracking their numbers either. Weller said the IRS goes after promoters of tax resistance more aggressively than those who participate in the movement and warns that anyone who gets caught can face a criminal or civil penalty. Nonetheless, war tax resisters persist. Hansen said she will stand by her beliefs regardless of the consequences.
Note: See the letter WantToKnow.info founder Fred Burks wrote to the IRS on why he is withholding war taxes. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.
Inspiring Articles
Kyle Maynard: one man’s life with no excuses
March 21, 2014, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Kyle Maynard, 27, was born with a rare condition called congenital amputation that left him without the lower parts of his arms or legs. It’s a disability that would, understandably, all but end most people’s potential for a normal life. Yet for the determined Atlanta native, this end was only the beginning. At 11, he played American football. At high school, he switched to wrestling. Around the same time, he bench-pressed 240lbs 23 times, earning the title World’s Strongest Teen from sports supplement company GNC. Shortly after, US sports broadcaster ESPN awarded Maynard its 2004 Espy for Best Athlete With A Disability, and fame followed. He ... appeared on Oprah and Larry King Live, and took his first of many bookings as a motivational speaker, all of which drew from experiences described in his ... autobiography No Excuses. And yet, in a keynote speech published on his own website, Maynard reflects on once feeling like a fraud. He tells of how, during a speaking tour, he looked at himself ... and knew, for the first time, he had started to believe what others said about him. Perhaps that’s why, in 2011, Kyle Maynard decided to scale Mount Kilimanjaro. And why on January 15, 2012, he became the first quadruple amputee to reach the roof of Africa without assistance, crawling all 19,340 feet on specially made soles. “When we take on a big goal, it’s always going to be difficult at first,” says Maynard in his website’s Speaking Intro video. “We forget that just showing up, and continuing to try, is going to get us there.”
Note: Watch an engaging video of this inspiring man.
The Power of Your Suffering is in How You Tell Your Story
March 19, 2018, PBS https://www.pbs.org/newshour/
Trauma is a word we hear used to describe a range of experiences. Author and journalist Aminatta Forna thinks the word is overused, and, in her Humble Opinion, it is time to find a new way of talking about terrible events. "My family has seen what feels like more than our share of painful, you might say traumatic, events," [said Forna]. "The murder of my father who was a political activist when I was 11, followed by 25 years of political oppression, 10 years of civil war and even an Ebola outbreak. "I’m often asked whether I was traumatized by events, and I have to answer, truthfully, no. Over the years, I have written a great deal about people who have managed to endure events with the power to ruin lives, and this is what I have learned. The more a society tells you that you are irrevocably damaged by what has taken place, the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The ability to shape your own narrative, rather than having others shape it for you, is ultimately what matters most. Almost any experience can be reshaped, any destiny re-imagined, if those who have lived it tell their own stories. People who frame their experience within a wider context are often most capable of withstanding painful events. They rarely ask, why me. But rather see the world for the capricious and unfair place it can be, and they have a vision of their role in it. Individual temperament matters, but societal attitudes play a considerable role in shaping our responses. The suffering is real, but it may yet be withstood."
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Heated floors and pillow-top mattresses... in prison
March 8, 2018, CNN News https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/
Norway's prison system is designed with three core values in mind: normality, humanity and rehabilitation. The point of incarceration in Norway, they say, is to make inmates "better neighbors" once they are released - and they take that mission very seriously. In the US, prison is generally seen as punishment for crimes committed. But Norway might change that. In 2015, prison directors and lawmakers from North Dakota traveled to see Norway's prisons for themselves. The trip was part of a program that takes state officials to visit the country, which has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world. When the leaders returned, North Dakota slowly began making changes to its prison system. The move has been controversial with some prison staff. The changes called for different dynamics between inmates and corrections officers, causing one of them to leave over what he believed was a fundamental shift in their training. North Dakota's prison directors say the benefit in the long run - reducing the state's recidivism rate - is worth giving this new approach a chance. If the goal is to make them better neighbors, North Dakota inmate Jonathan McKinney says it's working. He spent more than two years in and out of solitary confinement during part of his 17-year sentence for murder and other serious charges. Because of Norway's influence, prison officials allowed him to transfer to medium security when he showed good behavior - a move that he would not have been able to make as easily before.
Note: Watch an incredible nine-minute video on the mind-boggling success of Norway's prison system.
Does Energy Healing Work? Watch 'Healer' Charlie Goldsmith And Decide For Yourself
November 13, 2017, Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/
Does energy healing work? Charlie Goldsmith knows it does. The Australian energy healer, who reluctantly discovered his talent at the ripe age of 18, is now on a mission to take energy medicine mainstream. To date, Goldsmith has volunteered his time - and talents - to two scientific studies. In the first study, published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2015, he treated 50 reports of pain at a 76% success rate and 29 reports of non-pain problems at a 79% success rate. The study, conducted at NYU's Lutheran Hospital ... landed him a TV deal. The second is still underway. Prior to the studies done in the public eye, Goldsmith spent years healing as many as he could, often those who had been failed by countless doctors and traditional medicine. He has never once charged for his work. Dr. Ramsey Joudeh, from NYU's Lutheran Medical Center, attests to Goldsmith's miraculous healing powers: "Most of our narcotics decrease a patient's pain by three to five points. If you go from a 10, meaning the worst pain you can imagine, to five, that's significant. In some cases Charlie reduced a patient's pain from 10 to zero. He also treated people with infections where antibiotics were not effective. You could see the shift in a patient's status from stagnant to a rapid healing resolution. I can't quantify it, but I would say Charlie cuts off patients' hospital stays. Watching him work has been humbling in the most extreme way."
Note: See this miracle worker's website at https://www.charliegoldsmith.
Kindly support this important work. Donate here.
Please note that most of the summarizing of the revealing news articles in the above summary was done by Mark Bailey of WantToKnow.info. Many thanks to Mark for all the time and skill he puts into this. The section below provides several ideas on what you can do to spread the news.
What you can do:
Finding Balance: WantToKnow.info Inspiration Center
WantToKnow.info believes it is important to balance disturbing cover-up information with inspirational writings which call us to be all that we can be and to work together for positive change. For an abundance of uplifting material, please visit our Inspiration Center.
See our exceptional archive of revealing news articles.
Explore the mind and heart expanding websites managed by the nonprofit PEERS network:
www.peerservice.org - PEERS websites: Spreading inspiration, education, & empowerment
www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all
Subscribe here to the WantToKnow.info email list (two messages a week)
U.S. Government's Great Secret: Huge Hidden Investments Revealed in CAFRs
Join the 13,920 informed, caring subscribers to this list (two emails/week)
Subscribe here
The Mission of WantToKnow.info:
To provide our readers with reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups, and to serve as a call to work together for the good of all
This message is also available online at this link.
Please support this important work and make a donation.
Support us by using this amazon.com link at no extra charge to you.
Dear friends,
The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) is a very little known, yet detailed presentation of a governmental entity's financial condition. The CAFR is also one of government's best kept financial secrets. These reports show that almost all governments have far more
money than people know.
Literally hundreds of billions of dollars are available to governments in investment accounts that are never mentioned to the public. This can be easily verified by searching publicly available CAFR reports. Read the powerful essay below to find out how we may be in much less fiscal difficulty than you ever imagined and what you can do about it.
With best wishes for a transformed world,
Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info Former language interpreter for Presidents Bush and Clinton
Note: The below article's author, Harvard-trained Carl Herman, is a personal friend and educator whose work I admire. And though most research for this article was done in 2010, the facts and principles uncovered are still very much in effect today.
CAFR: US agencies have billions, trillions in investments while crying budget deficits
By Carl Herman (edited for brevity and clarity)
Gerald Klatt and Walter Burien are are pioneering researchers who have revealed how government agencies quietly conceal American taxpayers' money in surplus accounts that collectively total literally trillions of taxpayers' dollars. The data is found and can be verified in publicly available documents for
each governmental entity called Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs).
What CAFRs reveal is a little-known, yet deceptive policy whereby taxpayers collectively surrender enormous assets to the government, which then invests the trillions that swell in these accounts. As this money is secreted away, taxpayers are warned of debilitating budget deficits to either squeeze more taxes from them and/or cut public services. To add insult to injury, the state commits a gross lie of
omission by never informing citizens of their withheld trillions as they eliminate jobs, reduce education, and attack the quality of our lives.
The American Constitution is a contract of limited government whereby the public informs and is informed by our representatives. CAFRs are damning public documents that expose political leadership from both left and right as exactly what leading economic voices have said: a corrupt and self-serving oligarchy.
Let's look at the economic data revealed in CAFRs for 2009. (More recent reports available here)
Take California, for example, which had a 2009 budget deficit of about $20 billion. The combined investments reported in 2009 CAFRs for the state of California, Los Angeles County, and the City of Los Angeles was over $450 billion! That's over 22 times the amount of the budget shortfall!!! Click on the links for verification.
These governments claim they need this money mainly for public employee retirement benefits. Let's check that story. The CAFR data shows current member contributions pay for all retiree benefits except for $1.8 billion (net cost). If just these three state agencies paid off their budget deficits and paid the $1.8 billion in retirement benefits, the amount still remaining would be enough for each taxpayer in
California (population 36 million, taxpayers less than 2/3 of this number) to receive well over $15,000.
Why has political leadership and corporate media not informed American taxpayers of this intriguing option? And why isn't this data publicly submitted for professional and independent economist cost-benefit analysis to consider other options which benefit both government and the people? As we all know, money talks and power corrupts.
So far, we've only considered three CAFRs in the state of California. The comprehensive reality is far more dramatic. Looking at all of California's roughly 10,000 cities, counties, towns, and other government agencies, the combined total assets reported in CAFR's for California alone is likely in the trillions of dollars. Add in the other 49 states and we are talking astronomical figures.
Obviously, we need independent auditing and economic cost-benefit analyses of all state and local CAFRs around the US in order to make clear choices on how the public benefit might best be served. In California, oppressed under a $20 billion dollar budget deficit that cuts education, child welfare, and other essential public services, the failure to redirect some of these vast sums of money to pay off the
deficit and support social programs is a travesty.
To put this into an analogy:
This is like a teenager claiming to everyone that he needs money badly because the front pockets of his pants are empty, which he dutifully shows (budget debt). What he's not telling you is that his back pockets are stuffed with over 100 times the money he says he "needs" (shown in various places of the CAFRs). Whenever someone by chance sees the wads of money stuffed in his back
pockets and asks him about it, he says, "Oh, that money is being saved for when I need it much later. I can't touch that."
So far, the silence of major media and political leadership from left and right on these vast CAFR funds is deafening. Of course, the politicians' claim of "I can't touch that" is a lie of omission, because it can be touched the moment policy changes. So the real issue is the heart of economics: what are the costs and benefits of different choices?
Here's the specific data and documentation:
Note: For more valuable information on CAFR reports, see respected researcher Ellen Brown's essay on this topic with excellent suggestions on how best to use these funds.
What you can do:
Finding Balance: WantToKnow.info Inspiration Center
WantToKnow.info believes it is important to balance disturbing cover-up information with inspirational writings which call us to be all that we can be and to work together for positive change. For an abundance of uplifting material, please visit our Inspiration Center.
See our exceptional archive of revealing news articles.
Explore the mind and heart expanding websites managed by the nonprofit PEERS network:
www.peerservice.org - PEERS websites: Spreading inspiration, education, & empowerment
www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all
Subscribe here to the WantToKnow.info email list (two messages a week)
|
Translate
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Vol VI No. 696 Part 4
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment