Skynet to Launch October, 2013

Jack Mullen
Activist Post

Business Insider published an article about the NSA data center being constructed in Bluffdale, Utah. The facility, being roughly 1 million square feet, will house a computing and data harvesting and long term data storage facility to be operational by October 2013. (Source)

The stated purpose of the facility is to "listen and decode all foreign communications of interest to the security of the United States." But in light of the recent revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the data center under construction in Utah is far more likely a tool of the United States Government (and its global masters) to collect unimaginable amounts of data on Americans and eventually every human on earth.

In fact, as far back as the mid nineteen eighties, the NSA and other intelligences agencies created and controlled a secret computer monitoring operation in New Zealand and elsewhere called project ECHELON.

Designed and coordinated by NSA, the ECHELON system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex, and telephone communications carried over the world's telecommunications networks. Unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country. It potentially affects every person communicating between (and sometimes within) countries anywhere in the world.[*]

With this so-called leak from Snowden, the public is now aware of something that has been going on for decades and, by now, would have already compiled billions of records about hundreds of millions of people in the America and the world.

In fact this ‘leak’ really doesn’t provide a lot of new information, since we already knew “The ECHELON system is not designed to eavesdrop on a particular individual's e-mail or fax link. Rather, the system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and using computers to identify and extract messages of interest from the mass of unwanted ones.

A chain of secret interception facilities has been established around the world to tap into all the major components of the international telecommunications networks. Some monitor communications satellites, others land-based communications networks, and others radio communications. ECHELON links together all these facilities, providing the US and its allies with the ability to intercept a large proportion of the communications on the planet.” Read more >>

House votes to repeal ObamaCare in 229-195 vote

The Republican-led House has voted, for the 37th time, to repeal President Obama’s health care law, even though GOP lawmakers know the Senate will not follow suit.  The repeal passed on a 229-195 vote.

All Republicans voted to repeal, while all but two Democrats voted no. They were Reps. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., and Jim Matheson, D-Utah, two of the most conservative Democrats in the House.

Democrats have called efforts to de-fund or partly scale back the Affordable Care Act a waste of time -- even an obsession.

But Republicans see a political advantage to keeping the pressure up as the administration tries to get all the moving parts of the law working in the next few months. They're hoping that problems with its implementation will help them recapture the Senate in next year's midterm elections. Read more >>

Arizona Becomes Second State to Approve Gold and Silver as Legal Tender

Last Monday Arizona lawmakers passed a bill that makes precious metals legal tender. Arizona is the second state after Utah to allow gold coins created by the Fed and private mints to be used as currency. More than a dozen states have legislature underway to pass similar measures.

The bill comes hot off the heels of one of the largest drops in the price of gold. The metal fell 9% yesterday -- its biggest one-day drop in 30 years. Gold’s volatility may make it hard to go to a grocery store and pay for milk and eggs with bullion coins.
Related: Gold Tumbles Again: Is the Era of Gold Over?

“Yeah, I know gold is down right now,” Arizona State Senator Chester Crandell and sponsor of Senate bill 1439, tells The Daily Ticker. “People are still buying gold and using it as a commodity and I think they want to use it as actual legal tender instead of the dollar."
Senator Crandell says that the differences between gold as a commodity and gold as legal tender are pronounced. Read more >>

More Than Dozen States Push For Gold as Legal Tender

Distrust of the Federal Reserve and concern that U.S. dollars may become worthless are fueling a push in more than a dozen states to recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender.
Arizona is poised to follow Utah, which authorized bullion for currency in 2011. Similar bills are advancing in Kansas, South Carolina and other states.

The measures backed by the limited-government Tea Party movement are mostly symbolic -- you still can’t pay for groceries with gold in Utah. They reflect lingering dollar concerns, amplified by the Fed’s unconventional moves in recent years to stabilize the economy, said Loren Gatch, who teaches politics at the University of Central Oklahoma.

“The legislation is about signaling discontent with monetary policy and about what Ben Bernanke is doing,” said Gatch, who studies alternative currencies at the Edmond, Oklahoma-based school. “There is a fear that the government, or Bernanke in particular and the Federal Reserve, is pursuing a policy that will lead to the collapse of the dollar. That’s what is behind it.”

Bernanke has pushed interest rates to near zero since the 18-month recession that began in December 2007. The Fed said in March it would continue buying $85 billion in securities each month in a program known as quantitative easing that has ballooned its assets beyond $3 trillion and is aimed at keeping long-term borrowing costs low to support economic growth. Read more >>

Sheriff proposes ankle monitors for some seniors

A northern Utah sheriff's office is floating a unique and unproven idea for keeping seniors with Alzheimer's disease and dementia safe: Give them ankle monitors normally used on criminals on house arrest or parole.

Davis County Deputy Sheriff Kevin Fielding says the monitors would allow deputies to quickly find a person who has wandered off. That would save lives and save taxpayer funds by avoiding time-consuming searches.

The monitors would be offered to residents at a cost of about $4 a day.

Alzheimer's Association officials commend the agency for working to keep people with dementia and Alzheimer's safe. But they say using the bulky ankle monitors is not a realistic solution because people won't want to wear them.

They say people are already reticent to wear tracking devices that look like bracelets and necklaces offered by private health care providers and some law enforcement agencies.
Source

Sales skyrocket for bulletproof backpacks and kids’ body armor

Demand for a Utah company’s bulletproof backpacks and even child-sized body armor has skyrocketed in the aftermath of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

Amendment II has been in business for a couple of years now, selling its brand of lightweight armor called “Ryno-Hide” to police agencies and the military. They began putting sheets of the armor in children’s backpacks a year ago.

“The concept came up as things happened at schools,” Rich Brand, Amendment II’s Chief Operating Officer, told FOX 13 on Tuesday. “Children need protection as well.”

Brand said initially, they would only sell a handful of the backpacks and child-sized body armor at gun shows. The backpacks retail from $150-300. After the Newtown shooting that killed 20 children, the demand for the product skyrocketed. There has been so much demand, the company said, it has overloaded their website.

“Our armor was being bought to protect people, the ‘preppers,’ is the term,” Brand said of those who would typically buy it for personal use. “At this point, it’s transcended to everyone. Anyone who’s sending out a child into the world, seeing what can happen now, they want to protect their children.” Read more >>

Utah to make gold legal currency

Image via WikipediaThe US state of Utah has passed a Bill that legalizes gold and silver for everyday financial transactions. Press TV talks with David Morgan, Silver Investor.com from Washington who was a party to the signing of this declaration to allow people to use gold and silver as transactional money for their everyday living expenses. He explains how this would be done. Following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: There's a huge global insurrection against banker occupation and underneath that we see some interesting cross currents going on as well. You've just returned from the Utah monetary conference where you signed the Utah monetary declaration. How exciting - tell us all about it?

David Morgan: Utah is the first state in the union that has at law passed the fact that citizens can voluntarily transaction in the state in commerce. So in other words simply stated you can buy and sell with gold and silver as a transaction basis throughout the state.

Now, that is a little tough to do coin-wise so they've implemented a strategy that I think is very simple and one that we're familiar with - Put your gold and your silver with a depository; the bank gives you a credit on their balance sheet; they issue you with a debit card; and then you just use the debit card.

So to the merchants, Wal-Mart as an example, you simply swipe your debit card, the transaction goes down to the spot price that day whatever the spot price for gold or silver is and then at the end of the month they reconcile the account based on what you purchased during the month.

Once this is implemented I think it's going to catch on and then of course it sets a standard I think for other states to come along and do the same thing. There are 11 states that have proposed gold and silver in transactions, but Utah is the only one that has passed it in the law so far.

Press TV: If you have your account based in gold and silver and you're using it as your go-to savings account and checking account, you have protection against the government printing up lots of fiat-dollars and inflating the purchasing value away from your currency - so why wouldn't anyone not want to do this?

David Morgan: I do believe it's going to catch on - it's hard to say; there's a argument about Gresham's law that good money chases out bad - that you're only going to save the good money. But I don't think this is necessarily true and I don't have time to go into all the arguments, but I interviewed Larry Hilton who wrote the bill - he's a lawyer in Utah - and basically there's lots of reasons why you would want to use physical gold and silver in a transaction. More...

Returning to gold standard gains support in more than a dozen states

Image via WikipediaMike Pitts is no economist, but that hasn't kept the retired small-town cop from taking a prominent role in a quixotic campaign to push the U.S. monetary system back to another century.

Pitts, a South Carolina statehouse representative, introduced a bill in April that would make gold and silver coins legal tender in the state. Similar efforts are underway in more than a dozen state capitals, fueled by Tea Party support and antipathy toward the federal government.

The ultimate goal is to return the nation to the gold standard, in which every dollar would be backed by a fixed amount of the precious metal. Economists of all stripes say the plan would be ruinous, but that view is of scant concern to Pitts.

"Quite frankly, I think that economists from universities are thinking within the confines of their own little world," Pitts said. "They don't deal with the real issues."

Proponents of the laws believe that returning America to the gold standard would force the government to live within its means, curtailing runaway spending and inflation.

Lately, the idea has been gaining currency — and not just among the Tea Party activists who have been pushing the gold standard as part of wider efforts to rein in federal power. More...

Gold, silver coins to be legal currency in Utah

Image via Wikipedia

Utah legislators want to see the dollar regain its former glory, back to the days when one could literally bank on it being "as good as gold."

To make that point, they've turned it around, and made gold as good as cash. Utah became the first state in the country this month to legalize gold and silver coins as currency. The law also will exempt the sale of the coins from state capital gains taxes.

Craig Franco hopes to cash in on it with his Utah Gold and Silver Depository, and he thinks others will soon follow.

The idea is simple: Store your gold and silver coins in a vault, and Franco issues a debit-like card to make purchases backed by your holdings. More...

Foreclosure rates rise in 33 states

Bankruptcy levels remained largely unchanged...But the depressed housing market took a toll. Foreclosure rates rose in 33 states [in December], most sharply in Utah, New Jersey, Nevada and Arizona. The average county's score in December was 10.4, up from 10.3 in November. Slightly more than 40 percent of the nation's 3,141 counties were deemed stressed, up slightly from November. Read more...

Man Shuns Recession - Lives in Cave

Christopher Ketcham; Photograph by Mark Heithoff

DANIEL SUELO LIVES IN A CAVE. UNLIKE THE average American—wallowing in credit-card debt, clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the office—he isn't worried about the economic crisis. That's because he figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit.

His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He's either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo. Suelo's blog, which he maintains free at the Moab Public Library, suggests that he's both. "When I lived with money, I was always lacking," he writes. "Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present." More...