From the Glenn Beck Show - 10/13/08

BECK: Hello, America. I know you`re tired, and I`ve got some news that we really have to face together. I`m going to try to -- try to make it easy. It`s making my head hurt. 


When I hear people talking about the bailout, the first question that comes to my mind is, oh, really, which one? Every time I turn around, it seems like someone else -- the government, G-7 -- I don`t know, is Ronald McDonald in the government yet? -- is writing some giant Jerry Lewis check, you know, to save somebody`s butt, somebody who should have to live with the consequences of their own bad business decisions. Why are we continuing to pay for this mess? 

Here`s "The Point" tonight. These bailouts have got to stop, and they have got to stop now or we`ll be using wheelbarrows of cash to buy loaves of bread. These bailouts are the last bullets that are in our gun, and if they don`t hit the mark, there`s no more money and there`s no time to reload. And here`s how I got there. 

Over the weekend, the leaders for the International Monetary Fund and the G-7 nations got together in Washington to coordinate their efforts -- that sounds spooky -- to stabilize the world financial market. One world government conspiracy theorists take note. They ended up with a three- point plan. And here they are. 

Point No. 1: keep cash flowing through the financial system, a.k.a., print more money. Recapitalize the banks. Print more money. And restart lending to businesses. Print more money. Gee, all those sound pretty obvious. Why haven`t we been doing them all the time? 

Here`s the thing. These ideas all cost money. Buying a new Ferrari sounds like a good fourth idea. You know, I don`t have the cash to pay for it. Big deal. Can you imagine, if you wanted that new sports car so bad, but just declared bankruptcy, I`m completely penniless. 

Let me ask you the question. Can you imagine being so overleveraged, so -- so out of cash that you can`t even afford the basics. Only you come home and say, "Honey, honey, honey, I was just at the bank, and I got a whole bunch of more money. Let`s go shopping and stop by and get that Ferrari I`ve always wanted." 

This is -- we`re talking trillions of dollars, and it`s a gamble. And these guys are gambling. They`re putting us, you and me, all in. All of our chips are on the table. Are you comfortable with that? 

Tonight, America, here`s what you need to know. One of the biggest sticking points with this financial crisis is that banks aren`t lending money to other banks. They`re stuffing it in the proverbial bank mattress. There`s been a run on their banks. Over the weekend, the Fed, who has mishandled this situation, oh, I don`t know, since maybe 1914, finally did the smart thing by deciding to insure the loans from one bank to another. The problem with this idea is, it should have been the first thing they tried and not the last. Instead, they`ve put you and me way out on a limb. 

When everybody figures out that these schemes don`t work, and I believe they`ve already figured that out, there`s not going to be any place for us to go but into hyperinflation. 

Representative John Culberson is the Republican from Texas. 

Congressman, you voted against this bailout bill, I believe, two times. 

REP. JOHN CULBERSON (R), TEXAS: Twice. 

BECK: Yes. They did it anyway. 

CULBERSON: Right. 

BECK: But now over the weekend, all of a sudden it`s like, "Oh, yes, you know that thing we talked about in Congress? No, we`re not going to do any of that. But we`re going to take that money, add to it -- right -- and do something entirely different." 

CULBERSON: Right. 

BECK: When did this happen? Where is this in the Constitution? 

CULBERSON: It is unfortunately, probably, constitutional because of the commerce clause, Glenn, but what we`ve done, however, I think the level of authority that we`ve granted the secretary of the treasury could be challenged because it`s so unprecedented. 

We`ve literally created a king, Glenn. Secretary Paulson is now King Henry, has complete authority to do whatever he wishes with that $700 billion. We in Congress were told this emergency required that this $700 billion be given to the secretary so he could buy up the toxic debt. And then, you`re right, this weekend he said, "No, never mind. We`re going to nationalize the banks." 

BECK: And wait a minute -- the -- well, first of all, nationalizing the banks, do we have that clip? This is me from, I don`t know, three months ago or so. Watch this clip. And this isn`t the first time I said it. Watch. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: If you look what our government is doing, they`re talking about, "Ph, it`s too big to fail," or "We should nationalize these." We`re looking at the financial, energy, transportation, and health-care sector. 

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: I said back then...

CULBERSON: Right.

BECK: And it`s all coming. It`s all coming. 

CULBERSON: Right. And how do you stop feeding a shark? I mean, if you feed sharks, they just get hungrier. What`s next? I mean, we`re going to bail out the -- we`re going to nationalize the automotive industry? 

BECK: They will.

CULBERSON: California said they don`t have enough money. 

BECK: They will.

CULBERSON: There`s no end to this, Glenn. Unfortunately, this is where it ends. 

I don`t know if you can see this. This is a $50 billion bank note from Zimbabwe. And if we`re not careful, this is going to become the Weimar Republic. 

BECK: It is.

CULBERSON: This is what`s concerned me for years. This is why I burnt out my "no" light on the floor of the Congress, voting against all of these incredible spending programs. And we have to have a revolution in this country at the ballot box and elect rock-ribbed, hard-nosed fiscal conservatives who are going to get this under control and get back control of the government. 

BECK: Congressman, is it true that Fannie and Freddie is now getting $40 billion a month -- $40 billion a month to bail out these bad mortgages. That`s an additional $500 billion. 

CULBERSON: That`s right. In fact, Glenn, it`s hard to keep track of how many hundreds of billions of dollars have been pumped into not only Fannie and Freddie, but into the investment banking system by the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, bailing out these investment banks with our dollars. And as far as I can tell, Glenn, the banks have been burying the money in the backyard. 

BECK: I know, I know. They`re holding on to it. Because they know what`s coming. They know what`s coming, and it ain`t pretty. 

CULBERSON: And they won`t show each other their real balance sheets. 

BECK: Right.

CULBERSON: It`s a real concern to me that the minute we change that mark-to-market accounting rule, we didn`t see a change in the asset sheets of these banks. 

BECK: Congressman, I thank you very much. And keep up the hard work. 

CULBERSON: We are going to keep it up, Glenn. And thank you for ringing the fire bell on this. And this is too important. We`re going to get this country back. We`re not going to become France without a fight. 

BECK: I think we`re already there. Congressman, thank you very much.

More on the madness of this bailout in 30 seconds. Don`t go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: I have a lot of people who talk to me offline, if you will. They -- they`ll tell me things they won`t tell anybody else because of their position or, you know, they don`t want to seem crazy or whatever. 

I got a call from a friend of mine who is very high placed. He said, "Everybody I know, Glenn, is reading about the Weimar Republic." 

And I said, "Oh, jeez, the Loaf-of-Bread-with-a-Wheelbarrow-Full-of- Money Republic?" 

He said, "Mm-hmm." 

It is what a lot of people believe is coming. Try to buy a book online about the Weimar Republic. You will have a hard time finding some of the books. A lot of them are suddenly gone. Who`s reading them all and why now? 

Peter Schiff, president of Euro PAC and author of the "Little Book of Bull Moves and Bear Markets."

Peter, worst nightmare looks like it`s coming -- coming true, because you know, as much as anybody wants to say that we`re borrowing this money, we are borrowing some of this money. But people are also asking for insurance, if you will, on our treasuries, which has never, ever happened before. 

We need credit default swaps on our treasuries now to make sure that - - because some people are saying, "I don`t know if they`re good for the money." 

We`re printing a lot of this money, aren`t we? 

PETER SCHIFF, PRESIDENT, EURO PAC: Well, I think that`s where it`s going to come from. Remember, credit comes from savings. And we blew through most of our savings when the dot com -- dot com bubble crashed. And then we started borrowing a lot of money from the rest of the world. 

Wall Street helped us do this with these structured powers, so we tapped into the global savings glut. We borrowed from China and Saudi Arabia and Russia and Japan. But now we can`t pay the money bank, and nobody wants to lend us any more, so they`re trying to recreate it with a printing press. And that`s exactly what happened in Weimar Republic, Germany. That`s what`s happening in Zimbabwe right now. 

BECK: When you have -- when you have inflation, let`s just say -- let`s just say that unemployment next year, next summer is maybe 10 percent. And you inflation at what -- what do you project next year, just by the amount of money that we put into the market? 

SCHIFF: Well, I think it`s already running a little bit north of 10 percent. I think pretty soon, maybe a year or two down the line, it`s going to be going at least 20 or 30 percent a year. The government won`t admit it, but it will be. 

BECK: Right. But they won`t admit it, but we`ll feel it. When inflation is 20 percent, you have unemployment at, you know, at least 10 percent. What happens then? People can`t pay their bills. They can`t pay their mortgages. They can`t pay their credit cards. I mean, the whole thing starts to fold. 

SCHIFF: Glenn, they already -- Glenn, they already can`t pay their bills. They already...

BECK: I know! 

SCHIFF: And the government, instead of encouraging us to start saving now so we can pay back the debt, they`re trying to encourage us to borrow even more money and spend that. 

You know, what`s going to happen, of course, is as inflation starts running out of control and prices start going through the roof, the government again is going to focus on the symptoms and not the disease. 

And they`re going to impose price controls on energy, on food, on a lot of other things that are vital, which means shortages, which means long lines, black markets, civil unrest. All this stuff is coming if we don`t stop. 

BECK: OK. Peter, let me be just a conspiracy guy here for just a second. Because what drives me crazy is, all these people are so very smart. They know. I mean, I got a call from somebody who`s in the know, and says, everybody is reading about this. Everybody is where. And this is a guy at the highest level of global banking. 

Are we being pushed into a global one-financial system? What is happening? 

SCHIFF: I don`t know what`s going to happen as far as the global currency, but if you remember the Weimar Republic, they were in trouble because of the reparations from the treaty of Versailles. Huge external liabilities. 

BECK: If you`re not -- if you don`t -- if I may take you back one step, they got into a war and decided they didn`t want to finance it with taxes or finance it with bonds. They just decided to run a deficit. That was the first step. 

SCHIFF: Right. That sounds very familiar. 

BECK: Yes.

SCHIFF: That`s what we`re doing with Iraq. But the thing is, we owe the world probably as much, if not more, than Germany owed, only we didn`t incur this debt fighting a war. We incurred it remodeling our houses and buying cars and television sets and iPods and all these little gadgets that we didn`t need. And now we owe the world trillions, and we`re reaching for the printing press to pay it back. 

BECK: And we`re also reaching for a stimulus package, which we have to go to the printing press to get that, too. And all those tax rebates and everything else. 

SCHIFF: All of it is coming from a printing press. There`s no more money. 

BECK: OK.

SCHIFF: We can`t borrow it any more from the rest of the world, because how can we pay it -- we can`t pay back the money we`ve already borrowed. 

BACK: Somebody -- I talked to somebody at church yesterday, and he said, "I was reading something" -- I want you to stick around for a second after the break. I want to talk to you about something else that has been on my mind and apparently, at least according to one of my friends at church, you -- it`s on your mind, as well. 

Did the administration hard sell Congress on the bailout by dangling the threat of martial law? What`s all that about? And martial law. Peter just said it. We`re going to talk about it next.

The issue of racism also is rearing its ugly head on the campaign trail. What does a 1960s segregationalist [SIC] have to do with today`s presidential race? Yes, I`d like to know the answer on that one, too.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECK: Coming up, Barack Obama will cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans when he takes office next January. Sweetness. I mean, unless you`re part of that nasty 5 percent. 

Shouldn`t be a problem, you know, to cut taxes in the middle of the largest government spending spree of all time, right? Cutting taxes is a good thing. 

Oh, yes, and by the way, he`s going to squeeze out universal health care, as well. That`s the kind of change I`ve been hoping for. I`ll tell you the truth behind the tax plan in tonight`s "Real Story." Don`t miss it. 

But first, when people are frightened, they make different decisions than they would when they were feeling safe or secure. Sometimes when that fear is justified, I mean, it`s common sense. But when that fear is manufactured, it feels an awful lot like coercion. 

For instance, when the U.S. bailout Bill was trying to be jammed through Congress, some members say there was an organized effort to scare them into signing. 

Here is the California Democratic Congressman, Brad Sherman. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. BRAD SHERMAN (D), CALIFORNIA: Many of us were told in private conversations that, if we voted against this Bill on Monday, that the sky would fall, the market would drop 2,000 or 3,000 points the first day, another couple thousand the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no. That`s what I call fear mongering. 

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: OK. We`ve called this congressman`s office. He`s not speaking to the press. I wonder if there`s more fear or intimidation going on. Martial law, could it really have happened? 

Joining me once again is Euro PAC president and author of -- and author Peter Schiff. 

Peter, let`s talk a little bit about martial law. Why would that even be a consideration? 

SCHIFF: Well, I don`t think it was a threat if they had rejected the bailout Bill, but I think it is a possibility a few years down the line. We just spoke a little bit about price controls and the effect that they`re going to have. 

If we have shortages of food, if we have rolling blackouts. And people are upset, and they`re hungry, and they`re cold, there could be civil unrest. There could be looting, rioting, and that might be the impetus for the government to declare martial law. 

BECK: You know, I don`t think you`re a couple of years away from something like that. I mean, honestly, Peter, I mean, look at what`s happening. In a half hour, I`ve got a congressman on about -- about the racism cries. I mean, there are people that are right now so disenfranchised, and I think being encouraged to be disenfranchised on both sides, that at any time this damn thing could break apart. 

SCHIFF: Yes. And we`re giving the government so much power. And you know, you give up a lot more civil liberties. When you have martial law and you`ve got the military policing our streets, when you`ve got suspension of habeas corpus, you`ve got curfews, you can`t be out of your house after dark, and they can just pick you up and put you in prison and keep you there indefinitely without charges, and there`s nothing you can do about it?

I mean, we`re giving up one liberty after another, all to protect ourselves from this economic crisis, which needs to happen anyway, but it doesn`t need to be nearly this bad. 

BECK: Peter, this is -- I mean, we`re in Crazytown, USA. But my gut tells me that, two years down the road -- let`s just use that number -- this country is not going to look anything like it does today. Our world has changed; it just hasn`t caught up. 

SCHIFF: Of course. I mean, we`ve blown way by France already. We`re not going to become France. I`m hoping we don`t become Zimbabwe, but that`s where we`re headed. 

BECK: Explain that. Because most people -- most people will say that`s -- I sat with a guy -- I sat with a guy this weekend who`s a good friend of mine. He said, "Glenn, I`ve got to tell you something. Six months ago" -- he`s in the financial business -- he said, "Six months ago, I thought you were crazy." He said, "How did you know?" 

And I said, "It`s common sense." 

SCHIFF: It is common sense. 

BECK: Right.

SCHIFF: And, you know, people think that hyperinflation can`t happen here. Well, you know, the laws of physics works everywhere. If you throw a ball up in the air in Zimbabwe, gravity`s going to bring it back down, just the way it is here. 

And economics is a science. There are laws. And it doesn`t matter where you apply them. You`re going to get the same result. So if we follow their monetary policy, that`s where we`re going to go. 

We need to replenish our savings. And the government is not letting us do that. The government is forcing spending. They`re force-feeding spending down our throats. 

BECK: Peter, do you -- do you remember -- do you remember in the Great Depression -- I mean, not like you or I were there -- but I`ve been doing my homework on the Great Depression the last couple of years. This is what -- exactly what the government did. 

In fact, in 1935, they said to companies, "You must spend your money or we tax it all and take it away." 

And the companies said, we can`t do that, we won`t have any money for a rainy day. Low and behold, a rainy day came, crash again. 

SCHIFF: The left-wing agenda wants us to think that the reason there was a depression was because the government didn`t do anything. That`s not true. 

(CROSSTALK)

SCHIFF: There were actually people that were advocating the government do nothing, but they didn`t. They did a lot. Hoover did a lot of things, and he created a lot of damage, and then Roosevelt came in and did even worse stuff. 

BECK: Yes, yes. And it goes -- you know, America, go look for the little blue eagle. I remember always seeing that little war eagle. That was price control. That meant -- the government was basically saying, "Do not shop or buy any product without that blue eagle, because they won`t promise to sell it at a certain price." I mean, what kind of country were we living in? And we`re going back. 

Peter, thank you very much. 

SCHIFF: Thank you.

The Obama Deception . . .

Senate Rubber Stamps National Enslavement Bill

This is what I have been talking about . . these people are going to be our ' handlers ', when the time comes that FEMA needs them to corral us into all the camps they have been building . . . they will appear to be federal FEMA ' helpers ', here for our own benefit, as opposed to police or military personnel, and we will actually want to follow their direction, thinking that they are leading us to safety . . . or something to that effect . . at least in my opinion . . I guess we will just have to wait and see . . . Gee, I can't wait . . .

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Senate last night rubber stamped a nightmare domestic draft bill that legislates mandatory national service and creates an “army” of at least 7 million civilian enforcers working at the the behest of the government, while also containing language that threatens to ban free speech and the right to protest.

Last week, we reported on the House passage of the GIVE Act, which was carried with a 321-105 margin vote.

A passage contained in section 6104 of the original House version entitled “Duties,” in subsection B6, states that a commission will be set up to investigate, “Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed.” This language has been dropped from the version passed by the Senate.

However, Section 120 of the bill discusses the “Youth Engagement Zone Program” and states that “service learning” will be “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.” This part remains in the version passed by the Senate.

Roles which will be staffed by members of the programs, labeled “Required National Service Corps,” include “criminal justice,” “environmental stewardship,” and “public safety”.

Aside from the programs aimed at college students and young people, others will be specifically targeted towards, “Retired and other former law enforcement, fire, rescue, and emergency personnel, and other individuals with backgrounds in disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery.”

The bill was rubber stamped by the Senate last night in a 74 to 14 vote, a move that creates “Anarmy dispersed to help with education, health services and the environment, (which) would vastly enlarge the notion of “community organizing,” and allow, as Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, said tonight, for about 7 million people to be engaged in such work,”reports the New York Times.

References to the program as the creation of a civilian “army” have dominated mainstream news coverage of the legislation.

7 million members of this civilian “army” equates to about one member for every 50 Americans, a similar figure to the number of East Germans who collaborated with the Stasi and informed on their own citizens during the cold war.

The GIVE Act is just one of many pieces of legislation that vastly expand service organizations in line with Obama’s agenda to create a “national civilian security force”.

In January we also reported on the introduction by the Department of Defense of a “civilian expeditionary workforce” that will see American civilians trained and equipped to deploy overseas in support of worldwide military missions.

The DoD report states, “Management retains the authority to direct and assign civilian employees, either voluntarily, involuntarily, or on an unexpected basis to accomplish the DoD mission.”

Though the civilian expeditionary workforce program is restricted to DoD employees, similar programs have already been established for public sector workers.

One such program has seen hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers recently trained and dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.

Similar initiatives have been introduced in other western countries, including recently in the UKwith the announcement that MI5 is currently training up to 60,000 UK citizens as part a civilian network of terrorist spotters, according to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and home secretary, Jacqui Smith.

In addition, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, publicly stated his intention to help create “universal civil defense training” in 2006.

In an interview with Ben Smith of the New York Daily News, Emanuel outlined the agenda for military-style training, essentially a domestic draft, aimed at preparing Americans for a chemical or biological terrorist attack.

Asked by Smith about the universal service plan and whether people would have to live in military barracks, Emanuel laughed before responding, “We’re going to have universal civil defense training, somewhere between the ages of 18 to 25 you will do three months of training….but there can be nothing wrong with all Americans having a joint similar experience of what we call civil defense training or civil service in service of the country, in preparation, which will give people a sense of what it means to be an American.”

“It will be a common experience and we will be prepared, God forbid, God forbid that there is a chemical hit, another terrorist act or natural disaster becoming more frequent - there’ll be a body of citizens who are ready and capable and trained - that’s all you have to think about,” said Emanuel before smugly declaring, “We’re all here for you OK? It’s a circle of love.”

Asked if the training would be military style, with people wearing uniforms, Emanuel stated, “If you’re worried about are you going to have to do 50 jumping jacks the answer is yes,” adding that the service could be done through state national guard.

Shockingly, the GIVE legislation also contains language that could completely demolish the 1st amendment.

The 12th amendment to the act states, “Amendment to prohibit organizations from attempting to influence legislation; organize or engage in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes; and assist, promote, or deter union organizing.”

As Gary Wood writes, “Those in support of this legislation will argue this amendment is limited in scope and is not meant to interfere with the rights of citizens to protest, petition, boycott, or strike in resistance to government proposed laws. However, the people associated through service under the GIVE Act are considered volunteers, still free citizens, yet it will be unlawful for them to take part in any protests against any legislation. This is as close to a sedition act, a violation of 1st Amendment rights, as has been proposed in recent history. A basic right as a part of our natural, inalienable rights, is to resist government. Our founders not only knew it was a right but it was a responsibility. This legislation begins to break that down significantly.”

Fears about Obama’s plans to create involuntary servitude and domestic spy squads were first stoked in July 2008, when Obama told a rally in Colorado Springs, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

Despite denials that Obama plans to institute a mandatory program of national service, his original change.gov website stated that Americans would be “required” to complete “50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year”. The text was only later changed to state that Americans would be “encouraged” to undertake such programs.

Numerous other national service bills have been introduced which target everyone from schoolchildren to the elderly. They include the Service For All Ages Initiative, the Summer of Service Act, the Semester of Service Act, the Encore Service Act and the ACTION Act.

Regarding the GIVE Act, “The bill’s opponents — and there are only a few in Congress — say it could cram ideology down the throats of young “volunteers,” many of whom could be forced into service since the bill creates a “Congressional Commission on Civic Service,” reports Fox.

“We contribute our time and money under no government coercion on a scale the rest of the world doesn’t emulate and probably can’t imagine,” said Luke Sheahan, contributing editor for the Family Security Foundation. “The idea that government should order its people to perform acts of charity is contrary to the idea of charity and it removes the responsibility for charity from the people to the government, destroying private initiative.”

Lee Cary of the conservative American Thinker warns that Obama’s agenda is to, “tap into the already active volunteerism of millions of Americans and recruit them to become cogs in a gigantic government machine grinding out his social re-engineering agenda.”

The passage of such shocking legislation with barely a whimper from political activist groups goes to show how well the corporate media has performed in camouflaging the legislation with flowery characterizations of helpful volunteerism, when in reality the bill creates the pretext for mandatory national service and the creation of a multi-million man domestic civil defense unit who will be tasked with spying on their fellow Americans under the justification of protecting the country from terrorism. . .
Here's to creating those new jobs he was talking about . . . ENJOY.

The Dark Night of The Soul

The dark Night of The Soul . . .

It's a bitch ~

Roll on Sunrise . . .

More to come . . soon . . on said subject . . .

The Buddha In His Own Words . . A One Man Play

This coming Wednesday, I will be attending that which has been garnering excellent reviews; a one-man play, called . .

The life of the Buddha in his own words - the evolution of his thought, his triumphs, and the rarely portrayed tragedy at the end of his life.

I shall submit my own review here soon after . . .

The man we know as the Buddha lived in Northern India around 500BC and introduced the teaching known as Buddhism.  Approximately 300 years after his death, an extensive oral history of the movement was written down, carried and copied throughout Asia , and this canon became the taproot of the entire Buddhist tradition.  Framed in a most unusual and personal context, this original one-man play brings to the stage these authentic texts to enact the extraordinary life of the man, start to finish.

The Buddha considered his own life a model for all our spiritual struggles saying, "He who knows me, knows the Dharma."  It's no dry tale -- The Buddha's life stands among the great archetypal adventure stories.

The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB)

There is not an English Bible that will bring you closer to the full historical, literary, and religious meaning of the Bible than this one--and I've looked at all the competition up close. The format of the full edition is great, and for most people, this is the only Bible you'll ever need. The translation (made not from French, as some persist in saying, but from the Hebrew and Greek) is faithful without being awkward or obscure, and fluent without being fuzzy (NEB/REB, anyone?) or inaccurate. The scholarly apparatus (especially the footnotes, also the marginal parallel passages, introductions, and indices in the back to places, persons, and major footnotes) is outstanding. Only the Oxford Annotated can compete, and, again and again, I have found that the Oxford editors are guilty of tedious plot summary, while the NJB actually gives historical, cultural, and textual information that deepens your understanding of the text! I am a scholar, not a Roman Catholic, and moments where I think "Catholic" reading a note are EXTREMELY rare. This is not a Catholic Bible, this is a Bible for whoever wants the most objective, historically sound, and readable presentation of the original texts. The way I think, if you're going to read books that are millennia old, you need HELP. It's all here, the perfect marriage of readability (much better on this score than NRSV) and accuracy (arguably the best here too, though of course preferences in this domain are controversial).

Don't be misled by the half-truth that this literarily distinguished translation is somehow "looser" than, say, the NRSV (which, in the New Oxford Annotated Bible, is probably the NJB's only real competition). The NRSV, in the tradition of the KJV, still tilts towards word-for-word translations even when they don't give a clear and accurate sense of what the original text means. Not only is this not ideal for general readers, who will blame themselves for not understanding what the hyper-literal rendition has obscured, but it is not very helpful for more scholarly readers who too often will only see the impenetrability of the original reproduced in English. The fact is, that centuries of scholarship have given us a good understanding of most of these difficult passages. The NJB does the favor of bringing out these accurate understandings in translation; and when it really IS obscure, it explains the difficulty in a note! I have often had the experience of reading the translation of a passage I've studied closely, and thinking "Aha! of COURSE that's the correct nuance that didn't come through in my own clunky 'literal' attempt to read the original correctly."

In all fairness, some criticisms/clarifications. Some have expressed concern that this translation's intention to be "inclusive" has led to departures from the original texts' true meaning. In general, this is not a problem with the NJB. For example, in reading 1300 pp. of the Hebrew Bible, I found the translators' choices to be guided by accuracy and fidelity. (Non-philologists often don't realize that the ancient languages have loads of ways of making gender-non-specific constructions; the problem has often been to get it into modern English!) But there was one howler. In the decalogue, we read "set your heart on your neighbor's spouse." This is a bit of a stretch from the Hebrew "your neighbor's woman [wife]." I think the great fame of the Ten Commandments as "universal" principles clouded the translators' judgments here. A more frequent but minor irritation is that the translators have violated good English usage in writing "the wise" to mean "the wise one" (singular). They thought it was less awkward (and they are right to avoid the inaccurate "man"), but they judged wrong--it's just not good English to use "the wise" with a singular verb. One more complaint. As other reviewers have said, the superior notes (for which you have to buy the full edition, ISBN 0385142641) are one of the biggest reasons to use the NJB. But if you are reading whole books of the Bible at once, you will probably feel some annoyance that the explanatory notes are mixed in with the textual notes. In other words, when you see that a verse has a footnote, you don't know (without reading it) whether it has to do with a minor and uninteresting textual variation in one of the traditions, or whether it is one of the NJB's fantastic notes that contextualize the passage, give a thought-provoking reference to elsewhere, etc. In this regard, the design of Oxford study Bibles (where the two kinds of notes are segregated, though there's no marker in the text that there is an explanatory note, as there is in NJB) is probably superior. In most books, it doesn't matter, but there are some where the textual tradition is so messy that you really get tired of looking at the bottom of the page, and it disrupts the reading experience even for a reader who enjoys a complicated and scholarly view of the Bible.

There is a new movie out now, You can find it on Google video, for how much longer I am not sure; it's called The Obama Deception. . .

Personally, I am not a big fan of Alex Jones. For all we know, he may be some kind of 'baiter' used by the Gov't to bring the dissidents, who rally around him, out into the light. . . 

I am getting a little paranoid in my old age, lol . . .

Anyway, it's interesting, you should check it out. Since i.m.h.o., most of it is true . . .

Bob Marley . . ?

Did the CIA really kill Bob Marley? How’s that for a Blunt Question? This is only one of many Blunt Questions that remain unanswered nearly 22 years after Bob Marley’s translation from this world into another dimension.

When the newz broke in Jamaica on May 11, 1981, that Bob Marley had passed on from this world at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami, the immediate and initial response by politically savvy Rastafarians in Jamaica was that the Reggae Maestro had been murdered, or more correctly, assassinated! At the time, the Rastas didn’t know exactly who, when, where or how, but they knew enough to suspect foul play with extreme prejudice. Of course, anyone who heard that reasoning, scoffed at it. After all, everyone knows that cancer is a fatal disease, and Bob had it and died from it and that’s a great pity… but murdered? How ridiculous! Maybe, or maybe not. Not when you stop and really think about it. Who would want to? Who would be able to and how could it be done so skillfully without suspicion?

It’s almost like the classic scenario that Detective Lieutenant Columbo of TV fame, would stumble and fumble his bumbling way into. Only to find that the seemingly straight forward ‘death by natural causes’, was really the ‘perfect murder’ in disguise. After all, who ever would even suspect the possibility of something as bizarre as that occurring? So for the past 20 years, music lovers around the world have been mourning the ‘untimely’ passing of Bob Marley, accepting that the Reggae Legend died of ‘natural causes’ (really unnatural, because what’s ‘natural’ about cancer?) Thus, as we move swiftly into a new millennium and an impending New World Order, a mounting body of information is seriously suggesting that Bob Marley was the victim of an elaborate assassination scheme that resulted him being literally ‘taken out’ –right there in broad daylight on center stage before the eyes of the whole world.

Since the late 1970’s and on into the early 1980’s, the New York City and Houston, Texas, Police Departments have led the way in compiling official reports on the Rastafari Movement. The NYPD in particular, not only described Rastafarians as dangerous, gun-shooting, drug-dealing, criminal Jamaican Posse members, but actually profiled and described dreadlocked Rastas as “terrorists”. The largest police operation in the history of Washington DC, ‘Operation Caribbean Cruise’ back in the late 1980’s, was designed to prove once and for all the drug-dealing, gun-running connection between Rastafarians and the Jamaican criminal posses that were said to be even more ruthless and trigger happy than the Italian Mafia and Organized Crime. “Operation Caribbean Cruise’ never made the nightly news outside of DC, because the police dragnet came up empty…. But for about five guns (not the high powered automatic weapons anticipated) and a minimal amount of drugs.

Despite these failed attempts to tarnish and taint the reputation of the Rastafari Kulcha, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh continued leading the way for a world wide revolution in thinking and thought. Their militant brand of hardcore Rootz Reggae was revolutionary in its impact. The Word Sound & Power of their Muzik, inspired political, economic, social and religious changes all over the globe. The anti-apartheid movement in South Africa drew inspiration from Marley Muzik; the Zimbabwean freedom fighters engaged in a guerrilla struggle against Ian Smith’s colonial Rhodesian settler regime, drew inspiration from Marley Muzik; even young, rich White kids in America from name-brand families were starting to hang out at Wailers concerts, were starting to dig the message in Marley’s muzik and were becoming inspired to work for social change and to “Chant Down Babylon” That was motive enough for Marley’s murder.

Marley was succeeding in a rhythmic revolution that utilized music as a more efficient tool than guns and bombs. Bob Marley, his mere personae, his instantly and internationally recognized image and look, his use and promotion of the “Wisdom Weed’, his verbal and material support of global Pan-African Liberation, and the fact that Bob Marley had become a millionaire –a Black Jamaican-born, pro-African, independent-thinking millionaire Rastaman- who could now put his own money where his mouth was and finance whatever project he wanted to… All of these factors made Bob Marley a very serious threat to the North American status quo and to the hidden power brokers trying to implement their plan for a New World Order.

By 1980, Bob Marley was the most popular ‘Third World’ muzik star on the planet and his immense influence was growing geometrically. The final straw that prompted clandestine covert operations against Marley was probably when Bob put the immortal words of HIM Emperor Haile Selassie I to muzik in the brilliant composition entitled “War”. When they heard: “Until the color of a man’s skin makes no more significance than the color of his eyes, there will be war… Until there are no first or second class citizens of any nation - war… Until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, have been toppled and utterly destroyed - War. And until bigotry, prejudice and malicious and inhuman self interest have been replaced by tolerance, understanding and good will… everywhere is war.” When the CIA types heard that song, they brought in the heavyweights and the battle went to another dimension. Unfortunately, Bob Marley never really knew that he had already been “Marked For Death”. And as Del Jones chronicles inhis “Culture Bandits” series of books, Bob was soon eradicated as a revolutionary 3rd World Icon and replaced in the early 1980’s by an androgynous (blurred gender), surgically altered, cosmetically bleached Michael Jackson.

O.K., so now you agree that they had a reason and a motive to kill Marley, but now you’re wondering, how could they give him cancer? According to the popular version of events, Bob is supposed to have contracted cancer after bruising his toe and losing a toe-nail while playing soccer in France in 1977. In his revealing book, “Marley And Me”, former Wailers manager Don Taylor notes that an unknown doctor came and gave Bob a still unknown injection in his toe right after the ball game was interrupted Malignant cancer, originating in the same toe, was diagnosed some time after. But the origin of the melanoma (the most virulent and deadly kind of cancer found in Humans) that took Bob’s life, may be concealed in little known events that took place at an even earlier time.

In a very interesting cover article published in the February 2002 issue of High Times magazine, the authors [Alex Constantine was the "authors," and considering the ten years of work that went into the article, the authors of the piece could have mentioned my name] disclose that in 1976, Carl Colby, son of ex-CIA Director William Colby, visited the Hope Road home of Marley and gave the Reggae Star a gift in the form of a pair of boots. The High Times article quotes eyewitnesses as saying that Bob cried out “Ow!” when he stuck a foot in one of the boots. Something had jucked (stuck) him in the toe(s). Talk about being aware or beware of “Greeks baring gifts”. Subsequent investigation of the boot by hand, retrieved a piece of copper wire that had been sticking up inside the footwear. Entitled, “Chanting Down Babylon: The CIA and the Death of Bob Marley”, the High Times article [by me, someone the press avoids mentioning] went on to pose another Blunt Question: had the copper wire found in Bob’s new boot been chemically treated with a carcinogenic toxin? 

There is no doubting that with today’s technology, carcinogenic (that is cancer-causing) substances can be introduced into the human body very easily by a variety of means. By food, drink, smoke, sex, a pin/wire prick, or with the spike of an umbrella.

As the High Times article also observed, 1976 was a time when Jamaica, under the leadership of the Democratic Socialist and pro-Castro Prime Minister Michael Manley, was known to be under direct destabilization efforts by the CIA. According to High Times, Marley and Tosh as Reggae musicians, were targeted in particular because they were using their music to alert the Jamaican people to the dangers of the ongoing CIA covert operations. The visit to Marley by Carl Colby, who was supposedly posing as a member of a foreign film crew, took place a week after the “Ambush In the Night” during which Bob and Rita Marley and Don Taylor were all shot and wounded during the first upfront assassination attempt. Most people took that attack as involving only local partisan politics, with the opposition JLP not wanting Marley & the Wailers to perform at the PNP-Government sponsored and free Smile Jamaica concert days before a hotly contested General Election in Jamaica in December 1976. Marley appeared and performed for a mostly inner-city, urban audience on the Smile Jamaica Concert in the National Heroes Circle, in spite of the gun attack.

At the other, final end of this melodrama, we find Dr. Josef Issels, the supposedly holistic immuno-therapist who treated Bob in Germany after his collapse in Central Park, New York, in late 1980. Information is coming to light that Issels is an ex-Nazi doctor who may be implicated in some of the more nefarious practices associated with German medical studies and practices from the Hitler era. This may explain the painful, starvation-diet based treatment program inflicted on Bob by Dr. Issels. So we want to know: Who exactly is this Dr. Josef Issels? Does he indeed have a Nazi past? And what precisely did his ‘unorthodox’ cancer treatment entail? These Blunt Questions also need Blunt Answers.

At the end of the day and at the end of this article, we’re basically at the same place we were when we started. Just like the following truism indicates: “There are more questions than answers”. Nevertheless, muzik fans and people of good will owe it to themselves and to Bob Marley, to continue asking these Blunt Questions, and should demand that answers be given by the powers that be and those in the know. In the meantime, the final Blunt Question for all of you reading this, is: Bob Marley was willing to get up and pay the price for Standing Up for his Rights and for seeking Liberation from mental slavery for his people . . .

They did the same thing to Osama Bin Laden, when he went to American military hospital in May 01 for a routine kidney procedure. who knows how many countless others have fallen victim to the C.I.A's covert activities? Andy Warhol. Not to mention JFK. MLK. RFK. Controlling the poppies in Afghanistan. Controlling the oil in Iraq. Pearl Harbor. 911. The list goes on and on. Bob certainly did not fit is with the ' agenda ' of the Reagan - Bush administration . . . I wonder where they will strike next . . stay tuned . . . 

 

Obama . . .

thank you. i knew this would be the case all along. he is related to bush and cheney, didn't anyone get it? or did they just think it was a joke, that there was nothing to it . . 30+ out of all of the 40 something presidents have been related to each other. we are so numb, jaded by t.v. programmed to believe that ' oh well, whatever happens, happens, there's nothing any of us can do about it ' and this is basically true, ever since j.f.k. the mindset has changed. we have gotten to a point, and they have succeeded in getting us there, that we, with this mindset, don't really even bother to vote anymore. and that is exactly how they want us to be. in other countries, people are willing to die for the right to vote, and here we really couldn't care less, knowing that whoever the puppet masters want in office, is who will be there, our vote means nothing. they design these elections, through the media, so that the candidates are always so neck-in-neck with each other, that whoever they put/select, will always appear plausible. for christ's sake, i could go on and on al day . . . it's too late now, get right with god, because we'll be meeting him/her/them fairly soon, the nwo is in place, and moving fast. we have irreparably f*&ked ourselves, buying into this obama bullcrap. change, change, change . .every election, for the past thirty years, has had a candidate running on a 'change' platform, sheeple . . . what change? the color of a man's skin? that's the only thing that has changed here. we're so simple, primitive. we so wanted to see change, by putting a black (half black) man into office, we thought that meant change. ridiculous. next, they'll be trying to put schwarzenegger into the white house, now that they've put a man who was born in kenya . .who knows what hundreds of laws and executive decisions bush enacted without our knowledge while he was in power? you know the main reason they made cheney v.p. was so he would be immune from prosecution for all his war crimes, murders, theft, corruption, etc. that he is guilty of . . . a stupid gullible, programmed society we are here in the u.s......

Get Ready . . .

WE HAVEN'T SEEN ANYTHING YET . . . PLEASE PREPARE YOURSELVES FOR WHAT IS AHEAD; FOR IT IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER. THIS WESTERN SOCIETY OF T.V., FEAR, MATERIALISM, AND CONSUMPTION IS AN ILLUSION, THAT HAS ALREADY INFECTED MUCH OF THE REST OF THE WORLD. I PRAY THAT THE WAR IN HEAVEN, HAPPENING AS WE SPEAK, FOR THE SOULS OF MAN AND THE FUTURE OF THIS PLANET, IS OVER SOON, AND THE RIGHT PARTY PREVAIL. THIS LIFE IS BUT A STEPPING STONE OF THE SOUL, FOR THE NEXT LIFE TO COME. PLEASE DO NOT WASTE IT, THERE IS LITTLE TIME LEFT. OUR PURPOSE HERE IS TO DISCOVER THE TRUTH, ACKNOWLEDGE IT, AND ACT UPON THAT KNOWLEDGE, BEFORE WE LEAVE THIS DIMENSION. THAT TRUTH INVOLVES KNOWING WHERE WE COME FROM, AND THAT THERE IS SO MUCH MORE TO REALITY THAN WHAT WE CAN SENSE WITH OUR LIMITED TOOLS OF PERCEPTION. LIKE I SAID, I COULD GO ON FOR DAYS. TIME TO STOP RAMBLING, I AM HUNGRY. GOTTA EAT SOMETHING.