This bypasses the USA and EU sanctions. May be also the first steps on  changing from the dollar being the world's reserve currency






http://www.commodityonline.com/news/india-to-pay-gold-instead-of-dollars-for-iranian-oil-45424-3-1.html

This entry was posted on January 26, 2012 at 4:25 PM and has received 717 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This info is from a advert but still has some interesting material in it

http://www.sovereignsociety.com/pages/svs/digital_currency_video1.php

FYI If you click to close the browser tab it will stop playing the video and give you the transcript of the video.

Looks like now is a good time to move some assets out of US dollars into other liquid investments abroad or as metals or land.
Michael

According to the New York Times, the U.S. government is “shredding and burying” billions of dollars in landfills… enough to fill 1,750 dump trucks each year. This shredding program has been going on for years, to rid the system of worn out dollar bills.

But the weird thing is, they’re now destroying currency faster than its being replaced.

And they’re shredding so much cash; they’ve been forced to outsource the job to private companies.

Mike Paciello of SEM Destruction Products, admits, “80% of our business comes from the Federal Government.”

Believe it or not …

Landfill fees are getting so high; they’ve been forced to find new and unusual ways to dispose of all of this unwanted currency.

As we speak, the government is recycling it into roofing tiles… fuel pellets… even postal packing material.

And billions more are waiting to be destroyed. ABC News reports, the dollars are “piling up so quickly [the Fed] will need to spend $650,000 to build a new vault in Dallas to hold them.” Last year, the U.S. Treasury printed fewer $5 bills than it had in over 30 years and they produced NO new $10 bills at all.

But there’s no legal requirement for businesses to accept U.S. dollars.
Of course, you can still pay for lunch with cash.

And most retail stores still take it. But I’m seeing signs of a major shift.

For example:

    * Southwest Airlines no longer accepts cash for cocktails.

    * Apple Stores won’t either – so if you want a new iPad or iPhone – you’d better bring a charge card.

·         * Just last month, my home state of Louisiana made it illegal to hand over dollars and cents to buy everything from second-hand books to used cars to collectible coins.

·         * In Mexico, there’s a bill before the legislature that would make it illegal to pay cash for real estate.

·         * In Greece, all cash transactions worth 1,500 euros or more ($2,165) will be against the law as of January 1, 2012.

·        * In Italy, all cash transactions over 5,000 euros ($6,740) will be banned.

·        *  There’s a bill circulating through Congress – introduced by a powerful  Texas lawmaker – that would remove legal tender status from U.S. Treasury coins and Federal Reserve notes.

·      * The U.S. Treasury has announced plans to switch to digital payments that will save nearly $300 million by eliminating millions of paper checks.

·        * And Social Security Administration recently switched from paper checks to a new digital currency system to distribute billions of dollars in monthly benefit payments.

This entry was posted on January 26, 2012 at 4:09 PM and has received 1104 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This does help explain the recent downgrade of US government debt. And makes it clear that continuing to add to the national debt is not a sustainable idea.

This is the best analogy I have seen for a while!  This rather brilliantly cuts thru all the political doublespeak we get.

Why the U.S. was downgraded:

* U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000

* Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000

* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000

* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000

* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000

Let's now remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget:

* Annual family income: $21,700

* Money the family spent: $38,200 (much of it interest on existing credit card debt!)

* New debt on the credit card: $16,500

* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710

* Total budget cuts: $385

Got It!

This entry was posted on January 26, 2012 at 3:37 PM and has received 1756 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Thanks everyone who told me about your Letting Go experiences last week!

Having just sorted though my closets and given away or sold about 24 large bags of clothes that I wasn't wearing or didn't love (or didn't fit) I realized that like many people I buy clothes that I don't wear. Here are some questions from Carol Tuttle article (full article and video at link below) to ask yourself in the dressing room when you are deciding whether to buy that item.

o            Why am I buying this item? Poor reasons include:

o             Am I settling? /tired of shopping and this is good enough

o             Do I want to please the sales person who helped me

o             The price a good deal even though I don't really love it

o             How much do I love it? (1-10)

o             Greater than cut off number - say at least 7/10

o             Check in with my heart on the decision, not my head

More reasons and the video at

http://abundantmichael.com/blog/index.cfm/2012/1/23/How-to-avoid-buying-clothes-that-you-later-regret-and-dont-wear

Here is to a closet where everything I have I love and can wear. And it is easy to put together an outfit that I feel wonderful wearing!

I am in La Paz right now - going to a 4 day shamanic sun moon dance - a vision quest kind of thing that starts tomorrow. No food, drink or talking for 4 days/3 nights. I think it will be powerful and interesting. I will tell you more afterwards. I think it is something some of you might enjoy! It is part of a month long shamanic journey but you can chose just to do the dance, like me.

More info at

http://www.sacharuna.com/training.html

Let me know your clothing and shamanic experiences?

This entry was posted on January 26, 2012 at 3:04 PM and has received 1386 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Having just sorted though my closets and given away or sold about 24 large bags of clothes that I wasn't wearing or didn't love (or didn't fit) I realized that like many people I buy clothes that I don't wear. Here are some questions from Carol Tuttle article (video below) to ask yourself in the dressing room when you are deciding whether to buy that item.

• why am I buying this item? Poor reasons include:
  • Am I settling? /tired of shopping and this is good enough
  • want to please the sales person who helped me
  • price a good deal even though I don't really love it
• how much do I love it? (1-10)
  • greater than cut off number - say at least 7/10
  • check in with my heart on the decision, not my head
• Functional
  • easy to wear
  • easy to clean
  • fits me well
  • well made
  • Works with other clothes I already have
  • there are many occasions I can wear it
• Do I already have the same kind of piece at home already?
  • If so enjoy the piece I already have and don't buy another
• Does it match my Dress my Truth type and coloring?

Here is to a closet where everything I have I love and can wear. And it is easy to put an outfit that I feel wonderful wearing together!

This entry was posted on January 23, 2012 at 11:33 PM and has received 1539 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

More on the current Greek economic collapse. Perhaps a foresight of what might happen in USA and rest of Europe, perhaps later this year.
M/M

If you want to see what happens when a collapse happens and a depression begins, just look at what is happening in Greece....

• 100,000 businesses have been closed since the beginning of the crisis.
• About a third of the nation is now living in poverty.
• The unemployment rate for those under the age of 24 is 39 percent.
• The number of suicides has increased by 40 percent in the past year.
• Thefts and burglaries nearly doubled between 2007 and 2009.

Things have gotten so bad that hundreds of families in Greece are abandoning their children. Some are taking their children to charitable institutions and others are handing them directly over to the government. The following sad story of one Greek family comes from an article in the Guardian....

"Psychologically we were all in a bit of a mess," said Gasparinatos. "We were sleeping on mattresses on the floor, the rent hadn't been paid for months, something had to be done."

And so, with Christmas approaching, the 42-year-old took the decision to put in an official request for three of his boys and one daughter to be taken into care.

"The crisis had killed us. I am ashamed to say but it had got to the point where I couldn't even afford the €2 needed to buy bread," he told the Guardian. "We didn't want to break up the family but we did think it would be easier for them if four of my children were sent to an institution for maybe two or three years."

Does that seem shocking to you?

Well, all of this is coming to America eventually. Someday we will see American parents abandoning their children because they cannot take care of them anymore. Someday we will see suicides absolutely skyrocket in America because people have lost all hope. Someday we will see thefts and burglaries soar to unprecedented heights as millions of desperate people attempt to try to find some way to survive.

It is all coming.

The federal government cannot pile up a trillion dollars of additional debt every year indefinitely. We cannot afford to see an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day in the United States shut down.  Eventually there won't be anymore factories to shut down. We cannot afford to keep putting millions more Americans on welfare.  At this point the government is feeding 46 million Americans a month.  Will the government eventually be feeding most of us?

The U.S. economy is getting weaker and weaker and weaker.  All of the long-term trends are absolutely nightmarish.  We are accumulating debt faster than ever, and our ability to produce wealth is diminishing faster than ever. There is no way that things are going to be okay if we stay on the path that we are currently on. So the truth is that Americans should be very concerned about an economic collapse. It is coming and it is going to be very painful.

From http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-number-one-catastrophic-event-that-americans-worry-about-economic-collapse

This entry was posted on January 18, 2012 at 11:12 AM and has received 1272 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

The TSA wants to expand into trains, buses and car searches. But in the case of Amtrak perhaps they went too far and too fast. The main reason I can see for search people after they get off a train is to create a climate of fear, not safety on the journey already completed. Perhaps there is hope for our Fourth Amendment rights...

Attacks on passengers' civil rights is one of the most unpleasant parts of flying. But the cancer is spreading to buses and trains. The TSA's Visible Intermodal Protection and Response (VIPR) teams "detain and search citizens at railroad stations, bus stations, ferries, car tunnels, ports, subways, truck weigh stations, rest areas, and special events." According to the TSA News Blog: "VIPR teams periodically descend on transportation hubs to conduct "random" searches, as they did in [various major cities]; and perhaps most notoriously, in Savannah, Georgia, where train passengers were separated from their luggage and body-searched after they got off the train. Amtrak Police Chief John O'Connor hit the roof when he found out and forbade the agency from ever setting foot in an Amtrak station without permission again

From http://aviationjustice.org/2011/12/05/tsa-american-trains-and-buses/

This entry was posted on January 18, 2012 at 11:03 AM and has received 736 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This entry was posted on January 17, 2012 at 3:51 PM and has received 3229 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

The company that makes these minature spy and kill drones is not only selling to the US military but also to local police forces. Should future police want to spy or assassinate leaders of demonstrations or other government opposition they will have a powerful and hard to detect weapon to do so. The drones fly almost silently, weigh under 6 lb and can explode on contact with the target without killing lots of other people nearby.

AeroVironment describes the Switchblade as the warfighter's “magic bullet”. It can rapidly provide a powerful, but expendable miniature flying Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) package on a Beyond Line-of-Sight (BLOS) target within minutes. This miniature, remotely-piloted or autonomous platform can either glide or propel itself via quiet electric propulsion, providing real-time GPS coordinates and video for information gathering, targeting, or feature/object recognition. The vehicle’s small size and quiet motor make it difficult to detect, recognize, and track even at very close range. The Switchblade is fully scalable and can be launched from a variety of air and ground platforms.

The Switchblade's payload and launcher, weighing less than six pounds total, can be carried in a backpack by a single soldier. The mini UAV, which sends streaming video and GPS coordinates back to its operator, can be transformed from an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance UAV into a mini bomb striking a target beyond the line of sight.

The battery-powered vehicle has a very low visual, acoustic and thermal signature. AeroVironment says the the weapon can also be deployed from submarines, ground vehicles and a manned, as well as unmanned, aircraft.

From http://defense-update.com/products/l/switchblade_31122010.html

 

In the January 4 Huff Post, attorney and author John Whitehead reported on the militarization of local police. Some police forces are now equipped with spy drones. Whitehead reports that a drone manufacturer, AeroVironment Inc., plans to sell 18,000 drones to police departments throughout the country. The company is also advertising a small drone, the “Switchblade,” which can track a person, land on the person and explode.

How long before Americans will be spied upon or murdered as extremists at the discretion of local police?

Recognizing the privacy danger, if not the murder danger, the American Civil Liberties Union has issued a report, “Protecting Privacy From Aerial Surveillance.”https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/protectingprivacyfromaerialsurveillance.pdf

 

This entry was posted on January 15, 2012 at 11:02 PM and has received 2020 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This article on the losses of rights in the US is in the Washington Post. Now not only are alternative news site talking about this issue, a main stream newspaper is too. Perhaps it is time to "Occupy the Constitution"... then at least we would be the home of the brave even if no longer land of the free.

And in a signing statement with the defense authorization bill, Obama said he does not intend to use the latest power to indefinitely imprison citizens. Yet, he still accepted the power as a sort of regretful autocrat.


An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.

The framers lived under autocratic rule and understood this danger better than we do. James Madison famously warned that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

Benjamin Franklin was more direct. In 1787, a Mrs. Powel confronted Franklin after the signing of the Constitution and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” His response was a bit chilling: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”

Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-united-states-still-the-land-of-the-free/2012/01/04/gIQAvcD1wP_print.html

This entry was posted on January 15, 2012 at 3:08 PM and has received 767 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.