Luther: The Life and Legacy of the German Reformer

God's school of life

GMO Avocados in Development

       Mercola   October 15, 2019

• A group of U.S. and Mexican scientists have sequenced the genomes of Mexican and well-known Hass avocados
• Researchers stated that their research to sequence the avocado genome was necessary in order to make the plants “accessible to modern genomic-assisted breeding efforts”
• Genetic engineering (GE) could be used to fight avocado diseases and optimize growth in changing climates
• It will likely be years before a GE avocado is created, as the plant takes years to mature, but this is where the research is headed in creating “avocados for the future”
• Choosing organic will be the best way to avoid GE avocado, which may not be labeled as such.

Glyphosate is everywhere

Global Research    April 27, 2019

As new studies continue to point to a direct link between the widely-used glyphosate herbicide and various forms of cancer, the agribusiness lobby fights ferociously to ignore or discredit evidence of human and other damage. A second US court jury case just ruled that Monsanto, now a part of the German Bayer AG, must pay $ 81 million in damages to plaintiff Edwin Hardeman who contracted non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer. The ruling and a line-up of another 11,000 pending cases in US courts going after the effects of glyphosate, have hit Bayer AG hard with the company announcing several thousand layoffs as its stock price plunges.

In a trial in San Francisco the jury was unanimous in their verdict that Monsanto Roundup weed-killer, based on glyphosate, had been responsible for Hardeman’s cancer. His attorneys stated,

“It is clear from Monsanto’s actions that it does not care whether Roundup causes cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about Roundup.” 

It is the second defeat for the lawyers of Monsanto after another jury ruled in 2018 that Glyphosate-based Roundup was responsible for the cancer illness of a California school grounds-keeper who contracted the same form of cancer after daily spraying school grounds with Roundup over years, unprotected. There a jury found Monsanto guilty of “malice and oppression” in that company executives, based on internal email discovery, knew that their glyphosate products could cause cancer and suppressed this information from the public.

A new independent study shows that those with highest exposure to glyphosate have a 41% increased risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) cancer. A meta-analysis of six studies containing nearly 65,000 participants looked at links between glyphosate-based herbicides and immune-suppression, endocrine disruption and genetic alterations. The authors found “the same key finding: exposure to GBHs (glyphosate-based herbicides) are associated with an increased risk of NHL (Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma).” Further, they stated that glyphosate “alters the gut microbiome,” and that that could “impact the immune system, promote chronic inflammation, and contribute to the susceptibility of invading pathogens.” Glyphosate also ”may act as an endocrine disrupting chemical because it has been found recently to alter sex hormone production” in both male and female rats.

In a long-term animal study by French scientists under Gilles Eric Seralini, Michael Antoniou and associates, it was demonstrated that even ultra-low levels of glyphosate herbicides cause non-alcoholic liver disease. The levels the rats were exposed to, per kg of body weight, were far lower than what is allowed in our food supply. According to the Mayo Clinic, today, after four decades or more pervasive use of glyphosate pesticides, 100 million, or 1 out of 3 Americans now have liver disease. These diagnoses are in some as young as 8 years old.

Alcohol causes most overall harm of any drug, says study

The Age  June 22, 2019
In the grips of his alcohol addiction, David Reichmann was told by his doctor that he would be dead within a year.
"I'd suffered two minor strokes, but it didn't stop me from going to hotels every night and drinking until stumps. Then I’d take a bottle of bourbon home with me," the 53-year-old Victorian father of two said.

He would keep a bottle of whiskey next to his bed, but if he couldn't afford spirits that week, he'd mix methylated spirits with soft drink.

“I couldn't keep down a morning coffee," he said. "I’d have to have alcohol to settle me for the day."

Alcohol causes the most overall harm to the Australian community, surpassing crystal methamphetamine (ice) and heroin, a new national study suggests.
The Australia-first study, funded by St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, examined 22 drugs and measured the risk to an individual and the damage to society as a whole.

As part of the study, 25 drug-harm experts – including frontline emergency service workers, police, addiction specialists, doctors and those working in the welfare and homeless sectors – ranked the drugs on a score of zero to 100, based on the damage they caused to users, including illness, injury and death.

They also examined the effects drugs have on users' families and the wider community, such as through  violence, crime, unemployment, economic costs and relationship breakdowns.
Alcohol was ranked by far the most damaging drug to the Australian community, scoring 77 out of 100, followed by crystal meth (66), heroin (58) and fentanyls (51).

As well as consuming about 23 standards drinks a day, Mr Reichmann would smoke cannabis and regularly use crystal meth and heroin. But alcohol was always the easiest drug to get.

Why the Swiss are rebelling against 5G rollout

The Local   18 September 2019 

Switzerland was among the first countries to begin deploying 5G, but health fears over radiation from the antennas that carry the next-generation mobile technology have sparked a nationwide revolt.

Demonstrators against the technology are due to fill the streets of Bern later this month, but already a number of cantons have been pressured to put planned constructions of 5G-compatible antennae on ice.

The technology has been swept up in the deepening trade war between China and the United States, which has tried to rein in Chinese giant Huawei – the world's leader in superfast 5G equipment – over fears it will allow Beijing to spy on communications from countries that use its products and services.

But far from the clash of the titans, a growing number of Swiss are voicing alarm at possible health effects from exposure to the electromagnetic rays radiating from the new antennae, and are threatening to put the issue to a referendum in the country famous for its direct democratic system.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

In February, Switzerland took a big step towards deployment when it attributed 5G frequencies to three major operators, Swisscom, Sunrise and Salt, allowing the country to rake in revenues of nearly 380 million Swiss
francs (€350 million).

High on their success, the operators raced to trumpet on television advertisements and billboards that the cutting-edge technology would be available this year in cities, in the countryside and even in mountainous
regions.

By early July, 334 antennae stations for 5G were operational across the country, authorities told the AFP news agency.

Scientific American, the Oldest US Monthly Magazine, Issues Severe Warning on 5G

Walking TimesOctober 24, 2019

In a recently published article entitled, We Have No Reason to Believe 5G is Safe, Scientific American (SciAm) magazine issued a stern warning about the known and potential dangers of 5G technology.

Of particular significance is the fact that SciAm is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States, founded by inventor and publisher Rufus M. Porter in 1845, and running monthly since 1921. It is a highly influential publication, widely reputed for its rigorous scientific standards, and lauded by today’s fact-checkers as highly credible and staunchly pro-science.

In the article, University of California, Berkeley public health researcher Joel M. Moskowitz argues that 5G, along with previous w-fi and cellular technology, is much more harmful than the government and telecomm industry wants the public to believe.

His primary concerns center around a recent FCC announcement, made in a press release, that the FCC is close to reaffirming the radio frequency radiation (RFR) exposure limits that were previously adopted by the commission in the 1990’s… well before the introduction of 5G, 4G, 3G, 2G or even WiFi.

In short, the safety standards that the FCC wishes to maintain are severely outdated and fail to reflect the growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating harm.

Moskowitz notes that the ’90’s exposure limits only address the singular concern over the potential effects of the intensity of exposure to RFR. With the research we now have available the health concerns are much broader, including a sincere risk of cancer, among other things.

“The latest cellular technology, 5G, will employ millimeter waves for the first time in addition to microwaves that have been in use for older cellular technologies, 2G through 4G. Given limited reach, 5G will require cell antennas every 100 to 200 meters, exposing many people to millimeter wave radiation. 5G also employs new technologies (e.g., active antennas capable of beam-forming; phased arrays; massive multiple inputs and outputs, known as massive MIMO) which pose unique challenges for measuring exposures.

Millimeter waves are mostly absorbed within a few millimeters of human skin and in the surface layers of the cornea. Short-term exposure can have adverse physiological effects in the peripheral nervous system, the immune system and the cardiovascular system. The research suggests that long-term exposure may pose health risks to the skin (e.g., melanoma), the eyes (e.g., ocular melanoma) and the testes (e.g., sterility).

The FCC’s RFR exposure limits regulate the intensity of exposure, taking into account the frequency of the carrier waves, but ignore the signaling properties of the RFR. Along with the patterning and duration of exposures, certain characteristics of the signal (e.g., pulsing, polarization) increase the biologic and health impacts of the exposure. New exposure limits are needed which account for these differential effects. Moreover, these limits should be based on a biological effect, not a change in a laboratory rat’s behavior.” ~Joel M. Moskowitz, Scientific American

A bit of sun might help diversify the bugs in your gut

NBC   Oct. 24, 2019

A bit of sun might help diversify the bugs in your gut, a study published Thursday suggests.

Brief exposure to ultraviolet rays not only bumps up vitamin D levels, but could also lead to a more varied collection of gut bacteria, according to the Frontiers in Microbiology study.

On the surface, sunlight and gut microbes seem to have nothing in common — after all, your gut bacteria are unlikely to find themselves catching some rays.

Crop losses all across the U.S. heartland will be “as devastating as we’ve ever seen”

EOTAD   October 14, 2019

An unprecedented October blizzard that hit just before harvest time has absolutely devastated farms all across the U.S. heartland.  As you will see below, one state lawmaker in North Dakota is saying that the crop losses will be “as devastating as we’ve ever seen”.  This is the exact scenario that I have been warning about for months, and now it has materialized.  Due to endless rain and horrific flooding early in the year, many farmers in the middle of the country faced very serious delays in getting their crops planted.  So we really needed good weather at the end of the season so that the crops could mature and be harvested in time, and that did not happen.  Instead, the historic blizzard that we just witnessed dumped up to 2 feet of snow from Colorado to Minnesota.  In fact, one city in North Dakota actually got 30 inches of snow.  In the end, this is going to go down as one of the worst crop disasters that the Midwest has ever seen, and ultimately this crisis is going to affect all of us.

 

According to the USDA, only 15 percent of all U.S. corn and only 14 percent of all U.S. soybeans had been harvested as of October 6th…

Only 58% of U.S. corn was mature as of Oct. 6 and just 15% was harvested, according to the latest data from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). North Dakota’s crop was furthest behind, with just 22% of corn mature and none harvested as of Sunday, while South Dakota’s corn was 36% mature with 2% harvested.
U.S. soybeans were only 14% harvested as of Sunday, 20 percentage points behind the average pace, USDA data showed. North Dakota and Minnesota beans were just 8% gathered while Iowa’s and South Dakota’s crop was only 5% harvested.

So that means that the vast majority of our corn and the vast majority of our soybeans were exposed to this giant storm, and the losses are going to be off the charts.

I want you to consider the next quote very carefully.  According to North Dakota state lawmaker Jon Nelson, we should expect “massive crop losses – as devastating as we’ve ever seen”…

The early season snowstorm showed no mercy to some farmers and ranchers, especially in North Dakota.
“I’m expecting massive crop losses – as devastating as we’ve ever seen,” said Jon Nelson, a state lawmaker who farms several hundred acres near Rugby in north-central North Dakota.
Unharvested wheat in the region probably will be a total loss, he told the Associated Press.

California is Burning

Google’s announcement that it has achieved “quantum supremacy”

Summit  October 2019

Google’s announcement that it has achieved “quantum supremacy” with a 53-qubit quantum computer greases the skids for all cryptocurrency and military secrets protected by cryptography to be breakable in a stunning new development that will change the world.

The Big Tech corporation’s new quantum processor took a mere 200 seconds to complete a computing task that would normally require 10,000 years on a supercomputer.

The 53-qubit quantum computer can break any 53-bit cryptography in seconds, meaning Bitcoin’s 256-bit encryption is vulnerable once Google scales its quantum computing to 256 qubits, something their own scientists say will be possible by 2022.

Modern military cryptography will also eventually be rendered obsolete given that the number of qubits in Google’s quantum computers will double at least every year, according to the report, growing at “double exponential rate,” which is even faster than Moore’s Law.

At this rate, Google will be able to break all military encryption by 2024, a frightening prospect given the company’s close ties to China.

The prospects of Google controlling such vast supercomputer power when it applies to the field of surveillance is also chilling.

“Google will rapidly come to dominate the world, controlling most of the money, all speech, all politics, most science and technology, most of the news media and all public officials,” writes Mike Adams.

“Google will become the dominant controlling authoritarian force on planet Earth, and all humans will be subservient to its demands. Democracy, truth and freedom will be annihilated.”

Read Adams’ full article for a comprehensive breakdown of what this means for the future – a beast system controlled by Google that makes Skynet look amateur in comparison, controls all secrets, communications and financial transactions.

Google has come a long way from “don’t be evil” to establishing a monopoly over technology that will literally allow them to become the most dominant force on the planet.

The Untold Story of Christian Zionism’s Rise to Power in the United States

Mint Press News  July 12th, 2019

The largest pro-Israel organization in the United States is not composed of Jews, but of Christian evangelicals, with a total membership of 7 million, more than 2 million more members than the entirety of the American Jewish community. 

Members of this organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), met in Washington on Monday, attracting thousands of attendees and featuring speeches from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. CUFI’s leader, controversial evangelical preacher John Hagee, has met with President Donald Trump several times and was recently part of an exclusive White House meeting in March on the administration’s upcoming “peace plan” for Israel and Palestine.

CUFI is but one of many organizations throughout American history that have promoted the state of Israel and Zionism on the grounds that a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine is a requirement for the fulfillment of end-times prophecy and necessary for Jesus Christ to return to Earth — an event Christians often refer to as “the Second Coming.” 

While organizations like CUFI and its predecessors have long seen the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and the later Israeli victory and conquest of Jerusalem in 1967, as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, there is one prophecy that this sect of evangelical Christians believes is the only thing standing between them and the Second Coming. There are estimated to be more than 20 million of these Christians, often referred to as Christian Zionists, in the United States and they are a key voting bloc and source of political donations for the Republican Party.

As was explored in previous installments of this series, these Christian Zionists, much like religious Zionist extremists in Israel, believe that the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock must be replaced with a Third Jewish Temple in order to usher in the end times. 

These two groups of different faiths, since the 19th century, have repeatedly formed an opportunistic alliance in order to ensure the fulfillment of their respective prophecies, despite the fact that members of the other faith are rarely if ever on the same page in their interpretations of what occurs after the temple’s construction.

Protests and demonstrations have rocked every corner of the world in recent days

RT  21 Oct, 2019

Protests and demonstrations have rocked every corner of the world in recent days, with tax hikes, corruption and supposed environmental injustice all raising public anger. But why have they spread?

Watching the news over the last week, one would be convinced that the world has devolved into a series of flashpoints, with corrupt governments across the political spectrum facing the wrath of their enraged citizens. To be fair, that’s not far from the truth.

Four continents have seen anti-government demonstrations over the last week, many of them sparked by seemingly innocuous taxes or changes to the law. In Lebanon, protesters have set Beirut ablaze in response to a proposed fee of 20 cents per day on internet voice calls, dubbed the “WhatsApp tax.” Chileans set metro stations on fire following a $1.17 increase in public transport fares, and the streets of Ecuador are filled with rubble after a planned removal of fuel subsidies triggered mass unrest.

Elsewhere, perennial corruption has the West African nation of Liberia in a state of near-constant protest; a change to presidential term limits in Guinea caused deadly riots; Mexicans are demonstrating against corruption and drug cartel violence; and masked rioters in Hong Kong are still rallying against their government, months after the withdrawal of the Chinese extradition bill that sparked their anger.

Europe, meanwhile, has seen a general strike and mass marches in Barcelona following the jailing of Catalonian independence leaders on Monday. Dutch farmers have also shut down the country’s motorways after the government introduced new emissions regulations; and in France, already rocked by almost a year of ‘Yellow Vests’ demonstrations, thousands of firefighters have marched for more funding and better working conditions.

In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace

Pew Research Center October 17, 2019

The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.

Both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share. Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in 2009. And one-in-five adults (20%) are Catholic, down from 23% in 2009. Meanwhile, all subsets of the religiously unaffiliated population – a group also known as religious “nones” – have seen their numbers swell. Self-described atheists now account for 4% of U.S. adults, up modestly but significantly from 2% in 2009; agnostics make up 5% of U.S. adults, up from 3% a decade ago; and 17% of Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12% in 2009. Members of non-Christian religions also have grown modestly as a share of the adult population.

These are among the key findings of a new analysis of trends in the religious composition and churchgoing habits of the American public, based on recent Pew Research Center random-digit-dial (RDD) political polling on the telephone.¹ The data shows that the trend toward religious disaffiliation documented in the Center’s 2007 and 2014 Religious Landscape Studies, and before that in major national studies like the General Social Survey (GSS), has continued apace.

A look at the powerful, elite-backed machine behind Greta Thunberg and the true agenda behind her world tour.

Vigilant Citizen October 15, 2019

In the matter of a few months, Greta Thunberg went from a lone girl protesting in front of the Swedish parliament to an international phenomenon. Although mass media is making it seem as if this meteoric rise to prominence happened organically, this is simply not true.

Behind Greta is a major machine, one that is controlled by major international actors and backed by major funds. This PR machine has allowed Greta to make the covers of magazines, become the subject of thousands of news articles while being photographed with world leaders and giving speeches at elite organizations such as the United Nations.

Although Greta might very well be genuinely concerned with the fate of the planet, her message is carefully crafted by those who control her to generate a specific response from the youth. In short, Greta is the face of a major marketing scheme – a tightly coordinated international effort to sell global warming through a specific lens: Fear, panic, and urgency.

Before going further, I need to point out that I am neither a “climate denier” nor a “climate activist”. That is not my field of expertise. I never analyzed any data regarding climate change and its correlation with human activity. I am far from qualified from speaking about this issue so I won’t.

Kellogg’s introduces new gay cereal to teach children how to become transgenders while they eat processed breakfast junk food

Natural News October 21, 2019

Do you ever wake up in the morning and think to yourself, gee, I wish my breakfast cereal was just a little bit more gay. Well, never fear, Kellogg’s is here with a brand new gay breakfast cereal that the company hopes will encourage more children to “be themselves,” including by getting sex changes to become “transgenders.”

According to reports, the new “All Together Cereal” by Kellogg’s combines Corn Flakes, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, Frosted Mini Wheats, Raisin Bran, and Rice Krispies “exclusively together” in a bright purple box with the word “Together” emblazoned on both the front and back in an LGBT rainbow color display.

Timed to coincide with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defemation’s (GLAAD) recent “Spirit Day” on October 17, the release of All Together Cereal by Kellogg’s is an effort to promote “equality and inclusion in the workplace, marketplace and in the communities where we work and live,” according to Kellogg’s chief diversity officer Priscilla Koranteng.

According to Koranteng, Kellogg’s has also donated $50,000 to GLAAD to continue promoting the LGBT agenda to children, which presumably includes having drag queen perverts read to children at public libraries.

“We all belong together,” Kellogg’s says on its website about its new gay cereal, emphasizing the LGBT theme of coexistence as part of its marketing tactic.

“So for the first time in history, our famous mascots and cereals are offered exclusively together in the same box for All Together Cereal,” the website goes on to explain. “It’s a symbol of acceptance no matter how you look, where you’re from or who you love. We believe that all people deserve an environment where they can be their best selves.”

Half the world's banks are too weak to survive downturn - McKinsey

RT 22 Oct, 2019

A new survey from consultancy McKinsey & Co has found that a majority of banks globally may not be economically viable because their returns on equity aren’t keeping pace with costs.

The study looked at 1,000 banks in developed and emerging countries and found that just over a third had made a return on capital of just 1.6 percent over the past three years. This compares to returns of just over 17 percent for top banks over the same period.

"Nearly 35 percent of banks globally are both sub-scale and suffer from operating in unfavorable markets", as well as having flawed business models, said McKinsey.

It added that "to survive a downturn, merging with similar banks may be the only option, if a full reinvention is not feasible."

According to the report, banks are not as well-prepared for a downturn as they were when the global financial crisis erupted in 2007 in terms of profitability.

"While the jury is still out on whether the current market uncertainty will result in an imminent recession or a prolonged period of slow growth, the fact is that growth has slowed," McKinsey said.

Global ‘terrorist’ list provides banks with names of 3 million people to be denied service

RT 23 Oct, 2019

A massive, ever-growing database used by the world’s largest banks to track terrorism financing and other crimes has compiled millions of names from unverified sources – including scandal sheets and search engine results.

The World-Check database adds 25,000 names every month to its massive risk list, used by 49 of the world’s 50 largest banks to monitor possible financial, regulatory and reputational liabilities. Over three million people are currently on the list – many not convicted of any crime, some not even aware they are suspected of one. 

Getting on the list is easy – employees scour publicly available sources, from court records to search engine results, and apparently make little effort to verify what they find. An investigation by Al Jazeera found hundreds of thousands of Muslim names, some seemingly absurd. In one example, retired Egyptian football player Mohamed Aboutrika was designated a “terrorist” after the Egyptian government added him to its domestic terrorism list for supporting the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, after he was overthrown. 

Beyond the overpopulated terrorist databases, the Qatari outlet found that World-Check scours the scandal-sheets and tabloid newspapers of Israel and other countries for names, though its own website claims “research is sourced from reputable public domain sources.” Indeed, World-Check boasts that its database includes not only convictions but “person accused, investigated, arrested, charged, indicted, detained, questioned, or on trial” for a laundry list of crimes including everything from bribery and corruption to slave labor, “cheating,” or “environmental crimes.”

Goodbye Middle Class: 50 Percent Of American Workers Make Less Than 33,000 Dollars A Year

TECB October 22, 2019

The truth is that most American families are deeply struggling, but you hardly ever hear this from the mainstream media.  Yes, about 10 percent of all American workers are making $100,000 or more a year, but most of those high paying jobs are concentrated in the major cities along the east and west coasts.  For much of the rest of the country, these are very challenging times as the cost of living soars but their paychecks do not.  According to the Social Security Administration, the median income in the United States last year was just $32,838.05.  In other words, 50 percent of American workers made more than $32,838.05 and 50 percent of American workers made less than $32,838.05 in 2018.  Let’s be generous and round that number up to $33,000, and when you break it down on a monthly basis it comes to just $2,750 a month.  Of course nobody can support a middle class lifestyle for a family of four on $2,750 a month before taxes, and so in most families more than one person is working these days.  In fact, in many families today more than one person is working multiple jobs in a desperate attempt to make ends meet, and it still is often not quite enough.

If you want to look at the Social Security wage statistics for yourself, you can find them right here.  As you will see, I am not making these numbers up.

These days many would have us feel bad if we are not making at least $100,000 a year, but according to the report only about 10 percent of all American workers make that much money.

Instead, most Americans are in what I would call “the barely getting by” category.  Here are some key facts that I pulled out of the report…

-33 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.

-46 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

-58 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.

-67 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

That means that approximately two-thirds of all American workers are making $4,000 or less a month before taxes.

Ouch.

But these numbers help us to understand why survey after survey has shown that most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  After paying the bills, there just isn’t much money left for most of us.

And for an increasing number of Americans, even paying the bills has become exceedingly difficult.  In fact, a brand new report from UBS says that 44 percent of all U.S. consumers “don’t make enough money to cover their expenses”…

Stock Market Crash Near? Nobel Laureate Sees 'Bubbles Everywhere'

Investors   10/25/2019
When Nobel Laureate and "Irrational Exuberance" author Robert Shiller says he sees bubbles in the financial markets — you'd better listen up. He literally wrote the book on stock market crashes and bubbles after all.

"I see bubbles everywhere," Shiller, economics professor at Yale University and author of just-published "Narrative Economics" told investors gathered in Los Angeles on Oct. 23. "There's no place to go. You just have to ride it out. You invest even though you expect the price to decline." Shiller famously predicted the 2000 stock market crash and the 2007 crash of the housing market.

The timing of Shiller's ominous warning comes at a scary time. This is the month of the 90th anniversary of Black Monday. That day on Oct. 28, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 13%. That still stands as the second-worst drop in history and, combined with the pounding the stock market took in early days of the depression, took 25 years for investors to recover from.

Shiller sees bubbles in the stock market, bond market and the housing market. "You get ... in a situation where you know it's going to decline, but you still saved enough to hold you over; you have no choice."

Switzerland’s supreme court rules parents have no right to homeschool their kids

GENEVA, Switzerland, September 18, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) -- Switzerland’s top court ruled that parents do not have a right to homeschool their children.

On Monday, the Swiss Federal Court ruled against a mother from the city of Basel who in 2017 had applied for permission to school her 8-year-old son at home. School authorities rejected the application and a cantonal court threw out the mother’s appeal.

When she brought her case to the Federal Court, the mother held that the appeal court’s decision was tantamount to a ban on private instruction at home, thus violating a constitutional right to privacy and family life.

The high court, however, rejected the mother’s argument, ruling that the constitutional right to a private life does not also apply to homeschooling. The court noted that no international treaty grants a right to homeschooling. 

In addition, the Federal Court ruled that Switzerland’s cantons may decide whether to authorize homeschooling or to ban it outright. In Basel, homeschooling is allowed if applicants can show that the child’s attendance at school is impossible. The Federal Court had ruled earlier that national law does not explicitly grant a right to private instruction at home. Nevertheless, it ruled that cantons may decide how they comply with federal requirements for basic education.

Most of the content that is fed to us through our televisions, phones, tablets and computers is controlled by the elite

TECB   October 24, 2019

Why do you believe what you believe?  Some people have a really solid answer to that question, but much of the population never thinks much about deeper questions such as this.  In fact, for most Americans it is simply easier to let others do their thinking for them.  Today, most of us spend multiple hours each day absorbing information through a screen, and most of the content that is fed to us through our televisions, phones, tablets and computers is controlled by the elite.  And if you allow anyone to feed information into your mind for several hours every day, it is going to have a dramatic impact on how you view the world.

When I was younger, one of my favorite movies was “The Matrix”, and I think that it is a really good metaphor for what is going on in our society today.  In the film, nearly the entire human population was plugged into a system which continuously fed a computer-generated reality into their minds that wasn’t real at all.  Later on, I eventually came to realize that we are willingly doing the same thing to ourselves.  Our personal interactions with one another are extremely limited, but we willingly “plug in” to the enormous matrix of news, information and entertainment that the elite have constructed for many hours each day.

 According to numbers that were released earlier this year, the average American spends more than three hours watching television and more than three hours on mobile devices every single day…

 If Americans from previous generations could visit our society right now, they would probably be horrified that we are all constantly staring at our screens like some sort of zombies.
And perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if we were feeding our minds healthy things, but instead most of what we are absorbing is garbage that has been produced by the elite.      More..

Zoologist expelled from University for stating polar bears are at no risk of extinction from climate change

Financial Post   Oct/2019

A world-renowned expert in animal bone identification has lost her position at the University of Victoria (UVic), she believes for telling school kids politically incorrect facts about polar bears.

Zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford is routinely hired by biologists and archeologists in Canada and abroad to identify the remains of mammals, birds and fish. She has helped catalog museum collections, and assisted police with forensic analyses. But UVic students will no longer benefit from her expertise, and her ability to apply for research grants has come to a screeching halt. In May, the Anthropology Department withdrew her Adjunct Professor status, depriving her of a university affiliation.

Crockford describes her expulsion as “an academic hanging without a trial, conducted behind closed doors.” After being renewed unanimously in 2016 for a three-year term, her adjunct status was not renewed the next time around.

Crockford is the author of a popular blog, polarbearscience.com, as well as five books about these animals. Polar Bear Facts and Myths has been translated into four languages. She says that, contrary to the claims of environmental activists, polar bears are currently thriving and are at no risk of extinction from climate change.

Policymakers may not be able to reverse the next global recession

NBC  Oct/16/2019

There’s an “uncomfortably high” chance that a recession could hit the global economy in the next 12-18 months — and policymakers may not be able to reverse that course, an economist said on Wednesday.

“I think risks are awfully high that if something doesn’t stick to script then we do have a recession,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “I’ll say this also: Even if we don’t have a recession over the next 12-18 months, I think it’s pretty clear that we’re going to have a much weaker economy.”

Avoiding a slowdown in economic activity requires many factors to “stick to script” at the same time, he said. That includes U.S. President Donald Trump not escalating the tariff war with China, the U.K. finding a resolution to Brexit and central banks continuing their monetary stimulus, Zandi explained.

Privacy implications of FBI use of surveillance data

CPOMagazine   10/15/2019

According to a new declassified ruling from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), FBI personnel systematically abused National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance data in both 2017 and 2018. The 138-page ruling, which dates back to October 2018, was only unsealed 12 months later in October 2019. It offers a rare look at how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been abusing the constitutional privacy rights of U.S. citizens with alarming regularity. The court ruling is also a stinging rebuke to the FBI’s overreach of its ability to search surveillance intelligence databases.