Positive Changes That Are Occurring

In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, author George Orwell outlines the official slogans of the Party: “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.” The slogans are inscribed a big white pyramid at the Ministry of Truth. They demonstrate the idea of ‘doublethink’.

Doublethink: noun – “the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time, especially as a result of political indoctrination.”

The party weakens the minds of the populace and uses propaganda to keep them in a constant state of fear, and are able to force them to accept anything, even if it’s completely illogical. With that as a background, check out the very-mainstream press account that follows, outlining the wholesale fabrication of temperature records by the folks in charge of our temperature records:

“in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made , to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded.”

And

“Paul Homewood…had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming .”

So we live through the coldest winter in my memory, and the coolest summer in my memory, and many still actually think “ it was the hottest year ever in Earth’s history, like NPR said! ” And they think that because of the fear-inducing propaganda I mentioned previously.

The fact that the “tell all” story below about fabricated temperature records is all laid out in a mainstream media organ means two things: one, circumstances are really changing for the better, and rapidly. But it may also be a complex “Good Cop/Bad Cop” routine that’s part of a larger rearguard action, in which the architects of the plan hope that we will later beg ‘Good Cop’ Communist China to come to rescue us from the ‘Bad Cop’, the powers of the West. Who are so bad and irrational and treat us so roughly.

I think it may be both. I think they’re trying to ride the storm, and it’s not going to work out for them.

Maybe “the West” was always playing the clumsy bad cop routine, with the real drivers of the action, their secret masters, the Great White Brotherhood, the Dark masters of the Gobi, remained hidden from us rubes. “Occult” means hidden.

A “con” is a confidence game, one has to be led to through trickery to have confidence in someone whom they should not have confidence in. We know that the Bad Guys are into pyramidal control systems, and they all meet at the top. And we know they have key players on the teams of “the West” and “the East”, and every other team you can think of. Other than those that have been are or will continue to be genocided. Don just said in another thread “when you see a ‘whistleblower’ whose life isn’t threatened I recommend that you ignore that person.”

But one battle at a time – the fraudulent Poor Mother Gaia is Dying (and catastrophically heating up on the way) scam is collapsing:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new…-ever.html

The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever

New data shows that the “vanishing” of polar ice is not the result of runaway global warming

February 7, 2015

When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified.

Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.

This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world – one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.

Following my last article, Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”. First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”.

Homewood has now turned his attention to the weather stations across much of the Arctic, between Canada (51 degrees W) and the heart of Siberia (87 degrees E). Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded. This has surprised no one more than Traust Jonsson, who was long in charge of climate research for the Iceland met office (and with whom Homewood has been in touch). Jonsson was amazed to see how the new version completely “disappears” Iceland’s “sea ice years” around 1970, when a period of extreme cooling almost devastated his country’s economy.

One of the first examples of these “adjustments” was exposed in 2007 by the statistician Steve McIntyre, when he discovered a paper published in 1987 by James Hansen, the scientist (later turned fanatical climate activist) who for many years ran Giss. Hansen’s original graph showed temperatures in the Arctic as having been much higher around 1940 than at any time since. But as Homewood reveals in his blog post, “Temperature adjustments transform Arctic history”, Giss has turned this upside down. Arctic temperatures from that time have been lowered so much that that they are now dwarfed by those of the past 20 years.

Homewood’s interest in the Arctic is partly because the “vanishing” of its polar ice (and the polar bears) has become such a poster-child for those trying to persuade us that we are threatened by runaway warming. But he chose that particular stretch of the Arctic because it is where ice is affected by warmer water brought in by cyclical shifts in a major Atlantic current – this last peaked at just the time 75 years ago when Arctic ice retreated even further than it has done recently. The ice-melt is not caused by rising global temperatures at all.

Of much more serious significance, however, is the way this wholesale manipulation of the official temperature record – for reasons GHCN and Giss have never plausibly explained – has become the real elephant in the room of the greatest and most costly scare the world has known . This really does begin to look like one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time.

The great artificial drought has been broken. A pathologically-lying mainstream press and the academic and political charlatans they support would have you believe that increased Carbon Dioxide is what’s causing it to rain and snow so plentifully. That’s seen in the headline “ The Calamitous Climate Responsible for Florida’s Record Rainfall .”

Versus the truth of the matter, which is that the widespread distribution of simple, inexpensive orgonite devices in the vicinity of the weather weaponry that many still mistakenly presume only carries cell phone traffic and weather radar data has scuttled that malefic systems’ ability to create and maintain drought artificially.

Below, I’ve collected numerous accounts of record breaking precipitation.

The media’s assiduous lies and exaggerations about the drought in California can be seen here:

July 1, 2014 - “ Surprise: Few low-rainfall records set in Bay Area

For coincidence theorists, I’d note the headline below calling out “ Record-Setting Storm Dumps 13 Inches of Rain on Long Island Town , Floods Roads, Strands Drivers. ” Wow, that headline’s really got it all: multiple references to woe and suffering, and the bonus of a number of high occult significance.

Additional research quickly showed me one account that got loose on the Ministry of Truth saying “excessive rainfall amounts of as much as 10-14 inches of rain were observed in a short period of time”, before they nailed down the official number as “13.57 inches.” But I digress.

The plentiful precipitation is, of course, great news – it’s one of the key drivers behind the amazing explosion of life and vitality we’re seeing in plants and animals around the globe.

January 30, 2014 – Record wet January for parts of southern Britain - Met Office

February 20, 2014 – UK suffers wettest winter on record - The Guardian

April 24, 2014 – Seattle is close to breaking a rainfall record this spring.

Apr 30, 2014 - The Calamitous Climate Responsible for Florida’s Record Rainfall

May 1, 2014 – April 2014 narrowly misses rainfall record in Baltimore …

May 15, 2014 – North Carolina - Record rain floods Triangle roads ; storms knock out power

June 16, 2014 – Record rainfall leads to area flooding - Sioux Falls

July 1, 2014 - Surprise: Few low-rainfall records set in Bay Area - SFGate …

July 28, 2014 – Parts of New Mexico see record rainfall | KRQE News 13

August 12, 2014 – Record shattering rain across a wide region was the weather event of the week and perhaps all summer

August 13, 2014 - Record-Setting Storm Dumps 13 Inches of Rain on Long Island Town, Floods Roads, Strands Drivers. The town of Islip had more than 13 inches of rain fall overnight, smashing the state’s previous daily rainfall record, and the southern New Jersey town of Millville saw its second-highest rainfall total ever recorded.

August 29, 2014 – Fairbanks, Alaska - It’s official: 2014 wettest summer in a nearly a century in Fairbanks. A brief noon shower on Friday pushed the area into new territory, putting the overall precipitation total at 11.62 inches. That surpasses a record set in 1930, when Fairbanks was doused with 11.59 inches of rain.

September 10, 2014 – Arizona’s drought not impacted by record rainfall

October 19, 2014 –A record amount of rain fell over Hilo in the last 24 hours

October 22, 2014 – Rainfall breaks records in Portland, Vancouver - KOIN.com

November 2, 2014 – Record rain falls in Boise, snow blankets foothills - KTVB.com

November 24, 2014 – In Wichita Falls, a record rainfall provides hope | The Star …

December 2, 2014 – Powerful Storm Brings Record-Breaking Rainfall to SoCal …

December 12, 2014 – Record Precipitation Brings Snow to the Mountains – Time to Hit the Slopes

January 27, 2015 – Over 30 inches of snow falls in New England blizzard.

February 2, 2015 – Des Moines, Iowa - Weekend storm drops record-breaking rain, snow amounts

“Price of Pacific Bluefin Tuna Plummets, but Iconic Fish Still in Trouble .”

Well, geez, the only way the price for something plummets is if there is more supply than demand. You know, like this:

“Skipjack Tuna Prices Plummet due to High Supply”

And the devious, lying writers of that first headline know that you know that, so they have to include the shrill “ but Iconic Fish Still in Trouble !” finger wag at the end.

I guess they want you believe that the folks doing the fishing are so wildly aggressive, they are able to land and sell more and more fish than ever, despite a precipitously dropping population . That’s not logical. The con falls apart further when you look at other tuna populations around the globe (which are also doing great), and falls apart even more quickly when you expand out to lots of other fish populations around the globe (which are also doing great).

That’s an example of going from microanalysis to macroanalysis to prove a point. It’s also an example of investigative journalism. Versus the production of a propaganda ‘hit piece’, which contains things like shrill, finger-wagging assertions. But I don’t want to speak for them - what, exactly, does that article give me, to explain the plummeting price? Wait for it…

Just why the auction price was 95 percent less than last year’s at a time when the fish is increasingly depleted isn’t clear .”

“Isn’t clear” , I see. How does that befuddlement compare with “Skipjack Tuna Prices Plummet due to High Supply”? It would seem to me to indicate that there are lots of tuna and someone is lying and saying there’s not. The fact that the largest Bluefin ever caught was landed just last month off Southern California doesn’t help these devils in their fraudulent cause, either.

In literally hundreds of posts in this often numbingly boring and repetitive thread, the same tactic is documented – use examples of incremental conservation measures to take wholesale credit for the quantum increases we’re seeing in species of fish, and bird, and animals, around the globe.

Conservation efforts do, of course, have a positive effect. But it’s not enough to explain the boom in populations that we are seeing.

Thus “ Scientists Surprised at Bluefin Recovery .”

September 26, 2012 – Scientists Surprised at Bluefin Recovery

January 6, 2014 – Price of Pacific Bluefin Tuna Plummets , but Iconic Fish Still in Trouble . Just why the auction price was 95 percent less than last year’s at a time when the fish is increasingly depleted isn’t clear.

March 24, 2014 – Skipjack Tuna Prices Plummet due to High Supply

April 29, 2014 – Masschusetts Fisherman Reels In 920 Pound Tuna Off Cape Cod

July 11, 2014 – Pacific Bluefin Tuna Population at Brink of Collapse

September 23, 2014 – Prince Edward Island - Island’s tuna numbers climbing fast

November 22, 2014 – SAN JOSE DEL CABO BAJA, CALIFORNIA SUR, MEXICO - Yellowfin Tuna and Wahoo continue to Keep Anglers Busy

December 13, 2014 – Atlantic Beach, NC - Bluefin Tuna Season off to Promising Start. With an increase in the U.S. bluefin tuna quota and an early appearance of large tunas off the Carteret County coast, signs are out there this might be a good bluefin tuna season.

January 21, 2015 – Fisherman lands largest Bluefin ever off California Coast

February 11, 2015 – Southern California - We ended the trip with 232 yellowtail, a very respectful number for fishing in February.

I personally think the barges that Google was building are Etheric weapons platforms, versus the ludicrous explanation provided: “ floating product display showrooms .” I’ve attached a picture, so you can see the row of giant antennae running along its roof, which are described as ‘ flagpoles ’. It’s tough to get a look, because the news account was careful to use a view that didn’t show them in a row. I’ve included a second photo that shows them better.

You know how the words ‘ mystery ’, ‘ baffled ’ and ‘puzzled’ are used to cover lies? The mainstream press article says “A year ago, mysterious “Google barges ” near San Francisco and Portland, Me…” If someone’s lying about something, you can rest assured it’s to cover something unwholesome.

I personally think Google is the Skynet of our time, and that they are busy building Terminator robots and every other illin’ technology they can possibly think of. Which is why they made a funny Vince Vaughan movie about Google, so I’d think it was a nice, awesome company.

Google went on to describe the barges - I believe honestly - as “ an interactive space where people can learn about technology .” I say ‘honestly’ in that what they said is technically correct, except they took care to not continue on to elucidate exactly what horrific things the public would learn when they interacted with this new, er, technology delivery platform. It’s like “One Nation, Under God” is correct, here in the U.S., but they don’t mention that it’s Molech . They got his image hidden in the money, in D.C.'s street network. There’s a big statue of him at their fun summer camp out in California.

The story below is cheering, in that we see the U.S. Coast Guard stepping in and “Google Inc.’s contractor halted the projects, which Google said would be technology showrooms , after the Coast Guard repeatedly raised fire-safety concerns.”

It’s either a theatrical withdrawal or a real one – it feels like a real withdrawal, to me.

“Google moved it to Stockton, roughly 80 miles east of San Francisco on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where it sits, a 250-foot conversation piece . The Maine Google barge was dismantled in August, the containers sold for scrap .”

I’m having some trouble swallowing the explanation that it’s now merely a multimillion dollar “ conversation piece .” I’m also having trouble getting my head around why a “ floating product display showroom ” would have five thousand gallons of fuel on the main deck.

The Coast Guard’s job is to protect this country’s coastlines, so they’re stopping of this gambit is signal, I think. And I also think it is significant that it was a California state commission made them move it. State , you know, as in ‘ State Secession’ ?

In November, 2014, Google said “ it’s still early days” for the barge project , though the company had suspended it nearly two months earlier. I guess that they’re going to rethink their rollout of this technology, hiding it in some craftier way, you know, like they festoon Death towers with faux greenery to make them look like trees? Probably “ Google executive’s magnificent new yacht ”, or something like that.

But they’re not having it all their own way, in fact all of their gambits are failing, continuously.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/fi…1415320536

Fire-Safety Concerns Sank Google’s Barges

Documents Reveal the Project Was Halted Following Questions by the Coast Guard

November 6, 2014

A year ago, mysterious “Google barges” near San Francisco and Portland, Me., captured media and public attention. Then, as curiosity peaked, the barges sailed away.

Now, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Google Inc.’s contractor halted the projects, which Google said would be technology showrooms , after the Coast Guard repeatedly raised fire-safety concerns.

“These vessels will have over 5,000 gallons of fuel on the main deck and a substantial amount of combustible material on board,” warned Robert Gauvin, the Coast Guard’s acting chief of commercial vessel compliance, in a March 27, 2013 email to the contractor, Foss Maritime Co.

In September 2013, a Coast Guard inspector wrote that more safety measures were needed in case “people are forced to jump overboard on the waterside (like a fire).”

‘These vessels will have over 5,000 gallons of fuel on the main deck and a substantial amount of combustible material on board.’

—Robert Gauvin, a Coast Guard official in a March 2013 email to contractor Foss Maritime

Buzz around the barges mounted in part because of the secrecy Google imposed on the project, including requiring some Coast Guard officials to sign nondisclosure agreements.

“We are concerned about FOIA and confidentiality,” a Google government affairs manager wrote to the National Park Service in March 2013. The park service was involved because the San Francisco barge would have operated inside the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Google, the National Park Service, and Foss Maritime declined to comment. In a statement, the Coast Guard said it “conducted its regulatory responsibilities when inspecting the Google barges” and is “no longer involved in this issue.”

Construction of the barges began in 2011, and Google at one point considered using them as floating retail stores , documents show. By late 2012, it began gearing up to win approval from the Coast Guard, National Park Service and a California agency for the barges’ construction, mooring and safety.

In early 2013, the Coast Guard and private fire-safety companies detailed the steps Foss would need to take to make the ships safe in case of fire, including a 20-page document laying out fire-safety requirements and a spreadsheet with escape requirements.

Google estimated that 1,200 people a day would visit the San Francisco barge. Foss told the Coast Guard that no more than 150 would be on board at any time, but Coast Guard officials weren’t reassured.

“I am unaware of any measures you plan to use to actually limit the number of passengers,” Mr. Gauvin wrote in the March 27 email about fire safety. He criticized the effort by Google and Foss to seek quick approvals. “While I understand there is a sense of urgency, I am concerned that significant work has already been performed without full consent of the Coast Guard.”

Google wooed government officials , including organizing field trips. “The good folks at Google want to give us a tour of the barge that is currently under construction (it’s almost done) at Treasure Island,” wrote Rich Hillis, executive director of the nonprofit Fort Mason Center to National Park Service managers on Aug. 19, 2013. “They can pick us up in a special Google speed boat.”

But the fire-safety issue remained unresolved. “The vessel’s design doesn’t incorporate certain fire safety features typically required,” the Coast Guard wrote to Foss on Aug. 22, adding “we cannot determine if evacuation of disabled persons has been considered.”

In early September of that year, as reviews dragged on, the project was halted. A Sept. 12 Coast Guard email said, “The Foss project has been suspended until further notice.”

The West Coast barge was on hold, but no one told the Coast Guard in Maine, where emails swirled about preparations for a “confidential project.”

On Oct. 10, a month after safety concerns halted the West Coast project, Paul Rudick, a Coast Guard officer in Maine, wrote to other officers that “the public doesn’t know what the superstructure is or why it’s being built.”

The media was asking similar questions in San Francisco. Tech news site CNET on Oct. 25 disclosed the “big and mysterious” objects made of shipping containers and rising from barges anchored next to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. Within days, photos of the barges ricocheted across national and international news sites, with people speculating they could house a showroom, a data center, or something else.

Coast Guard officials later rued the secrecy created by signing nondisclosure agreements with Google. “In hindsight we should have sought legal review earlier,” a Coast Guard captain wrote a group of officers on Oct. 31. “Plenty of lessons all around here,” another email said.

On Nov. 6, Google issued a statement saying the barges were “an interactive space where people can learn about technology.” In the statement, Google said “it’s still early days” for the barge project, though the company had suspended it nearly two months earlier.

“Free publicity to keep it mysterious I suppose,” said Frank Dean, general superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in an email that day to a National Park Service official.

This March, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, a state agency, found the barge didn’t have permits to stay in the bay . Google moved it to Stockton, roughly 80 miles east of San Francisco on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where it sits, a 250-foot conversation piece. The Maine Google barge was dismantled in August, the containers sold for scrap.

Things I thought only I noticed, continued – “Police All Over the U.S. Are Issuing Fewer Traffic Tickets”

Crime is plummeting, around the globe. I guess speeding is technically a crime, although in Germany, they ticket those who tailgate, and let you drive as fast as you wish.

But for years, now, at least four or five years, I’ve noticed buttheaded, inconsiderate driving has been decreasing. There was a time there where it was epidemic, at least here on the mainland. In Hawaii, virtually everyone is polite and considerate on the road.

Check out, below, law enforcement offices who make a living on something not even considered a crime in Germany are “having trouble keeping the lights on”. Disappearing, like a lot of other negative things, these days, like frost on a Spring morning.

And what do the authorities, the fine folks in charge have to say? “ With all due respect to the citizens of Nevada, I don’t think anyone is driving better ,” Hardesty said to lawmakers. “ I think the truth is that we’re seeing less traffic violations because law enforcement’s priorities have changed and it has changed dramatically.

If their lips are moving, lies are coming out of their mouth. Wait, that was impolite, I’ve subjectively concluded he is at best incorrect and at worst a Machiavelle.

Now, if cops are evolving to where they are writing less tickets for such a non-crime, that floats my boat, too. There may be a bit of that, but my perspective is that ticket-writers have quotas to meet, and meet them, they do, or they are no longer employed as ticket-writers.

“traffic and parking citations has plummeted in Nevada, from 615,267 in 2010 to 484,913 last year. That’s a dip of more than 21% over five years.” See how they use “ dip ”, to imply it will “ pop right back up again ”?

The article exhaustively struggles on, and on, naming every possible excuse in the book, but one - that being the fact that people are getting nicer, getting mellower, which translates to plummeting violent crime, plummeting speeding, plummeting gambling rates, plummeting traffic fatalities:

“According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, there were 30,057 car crashes in which someone died on American roads in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available. That’s the second-lowest fatal car crash total ever (2011 had slightly fewer), and it marked an all-time low for the death rate per 100,000 vehicle occupants.”

In Germany, they ticket the assholes, the dangerous people who tailgate. Here, they shake us down like robbing highwaymen of ages past for driving briskly. Check out how they’re raising the extortionate price of tickets in response to the populace getting more peaceful:

What many drivers might find alarming is that even as citations were down during this period, ticket revenues were up significantly compared with the year before. How could this be? The average traffic fine simply got more expensive, hitting $125 in 2014, up from $114 the year before .”

But no matter, we are slipping from their grasp, and they will not regain it. Great positive changes are occurring at every level of our reality, and they are increasing in speed and magnitude.

http://time.com/money/3762033/…ts-police/

Police All Over the U.S. Are Issuing Fewer Traffic Tickets

March 30, 2015

Drivers appear to be catching a break from cop s, who are writing fewer tickets of late. But don’t think for a second the decrease is because police have become softies all of a sudden.

The Nevada Supreme Court says it could be completely broke by May 1. The primary reason the court won’t have enough cash to operate? Not enough people are breaking the law. Or rather, not enough people are being caught breaking the law.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal recently reported that the number of traffic and parking citations has plummeted in Nevada, from 615,267 in 2010 to 484,913 last year. That’s a dip of more than 21% over five years. The state court system’s budget relies on millions of dollars in funding from such citations , so when significantly fewer tickets are issued, it can wreak havoc on the court’s ability to do its job, and even just keep the lights on.

In mid-March, Nevada Chief Justice James Hardesty raised the problem to a group of state lawmakers, asking the legislature to provide emergency funding to make up for the shortfall in citation revenues. The court’s budget is currently running $700,000 short. As for why the number of tickets issued by police has steadily declined, Hardesty doesn’t think it’s simply because a broad swath of drivers has suddenly seen the error of their ways and stopped speeding.

“With all due respect to the citizens of Nevada, I don’t think anyone is driving better,” Hardesty said to lawmakers. “I think the truth is that we’re seeing less traffic violations because law enforcement’s priorities have changed and it has changed dramatically.”

What, then, are the new priorities? The Review-Journal noted that police have put new “emphasis on violations that could cause crashes,” with citations up for drunk driving and cellphone use behind the wheel. Understaffing may be a factor as well.

In any event, the decrease in traffic citations is hardly limited to Nevada. Speeding tickets are down sharply in Wisconsin, from 294,000 convictions in 2004 to 156,000 in 2013. In Washington, D.C., police officers issued 76,832 traffic tickets last year, down from 81,161 in 2012 and 116,509 in 2010. Citations issued on interstates in Ohio are down as well, especially on busy I-70, where the monthly number of tickets is down 25%. Over in Pennsylvania, the number of tickets issued by state police was down 22% in September 2014 and 11% in October compared with the same months the year before.

Speed Limits Up, Revenue Down

What’s to explain the decline in tickets? In some cases, it’s a matter of not having the funds to keep police out on patrol looking for violators. Police in Wisconsin, for instance, say that federal grant money that used to support anti-speeding campaigns has dried up.

What’s interesting—or perhaps sad, in a which-came-first, dog-chasing-its-own-tail sorta way—is that budget tightening is often blamed for why ticket issuance is down , at the same time a decline in citations is pointed to as a prime reason for budget shortfalls in the first place. Understaffing due to budgetary constraints has been blamed for the sudden and dramatic decline in ticket revenues in Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York as well in recent years.

Higher speed limits that are more in line with how people actually drive also appear to have handcuffed the need to issue speeding tickets . When Ohio upped its speed limit to 70 mph in 2013, it became the 37th state to OK speeds of 70 or above. In light of that, it’s no coincidence that speeding tickets have dropped 7% on Ohio’s 70 mph stretches, and they’re down 25% on rural areas of I-70 where the limit is 70 mph.

In some cases, especially in D.C., there are indications that police are writing fewer traffic tickets because automated red-light camera systems are doing the job for them . In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, traffic tickets were supposedly down steeply last fall partly because police were occupied in a seven-week manhunt for alleged cop killer Eric Frein. What many drivers might find alarming is that even as citations were down during this period, ticket revenues were up significantly compared with the year before. How could this be? The average traffic fine simply got more expensive, hitting $125 in 2014, up from $114 the year before.

The cynics among us may think that police are writing fewer tickets mainly because they have little incentive to write more tickets. This certainly seems to be the case in parts of Illinois, where police issue traffic tickets at a tiny fraction of the rate their citation-happy brethren in law enforcement do across the border in Missouri. The most infamous example of this is Ferguson, Mo., where the killing of an unarmed Michael Brown by police inspired months of protests, and where police are known to write more and more tickets to fund local budgets. Nearly 12,000 traffic tickets were issued in Ferguson (population: 21,111) last year. Across the border in Illinois, where municipalities see very little of the money taken in from traffic fines, police in cities of similar size like Alton (population: 27,690) and Edwardsville (population: 24,663) handed out only 6,653 and 3,128 tickets, respectively, in 2013.

“None of us want an officer to have a financial incentive to write citations,” Edwardsville Police Chief Jay Keevan said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

For that matter, traffic tickets aren’t supposed to be about money, right? They’re supposed to exist in order to incentivize drivers into behaving better behind the wheel and keep roads safer. The purpose of lower speed limits is supposed to be to save lives as well. With that in mind, one might assume that since speed limits have risen, and since police seem to have grown lax in their approach to writing tickets, roads would become more dangerous. But the statistics don’t bear this out.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, there were 30,057 car crashes in which someone died on American roads in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available. That’s the second-lowest fatal car crash total ever (2011 had slightly fewer), and it marked an all-time low for the death rate per 100,000 vehicle occupants.

In other words, roads today are safer, not more dangerous, and it’s hard to argue that writing more tickets is going to make anyone safer.

The sentence that opens this next article is mind-blowing: “If pushing a cart up and down the lengthy aisles of your neighborhood supermarket — past dozens of brands of packaged cereal and crackers lit by fluorescent lights — feels overwhelming and soul-sucking, you’re not alone.”

The next one’s pretty kick-ass, also: “But there’s some good news: The days of shopping this way may be numbered.”

I grew up with that soul-sucking reality as ‘normal’. I have fond childhood memories of shopping in such places. But I’ve grown, and changed, and so have we all, I’m gathering. I say that because "traditional grocers are increasingly losing market share — some 15 percent in the past 10 years — to more nimble competitors like smaller markets, convenience stores, farmers markets and even dollar stores. That, along with the rise of online food shopping, is forcing the old-school grocers to innovate in ways that should yield a better overall experience for consumers down the road.”

Hidden within that chaff blast you’ll find the real players: “smaller markets” and “farmers markets”. I’m sorry, but neither convenience stores nor the Dollar Store are where one goes because the food is better and healthier.

“The bottom line is that for the supermarket to survive and prosper and grow, it’s going to have to offer more services,”

By “more services” the duplicitous author who is tap-dancing around the driver of this phenomenon means “less-deadly food” and “less-oppressed workers who are nicer to customers.”

“‘Old-School’ Food Shopping Feels New As U.S. Cities Revive Public Markets”

Can you see how the Deadly grocery stores are withering, like frost on a Spring morning? In about a minute, it’s going to be ‘no, I’m opting out on the $140,000 ‘ green ’ car you offered me, I’m buying a horse from my friend for fifteen hundred bucks.”

To maintain Cognitive Dissonance, you can listen to your friends at Google, who want you to purchase the $180,000 driverless car , because they know what’s up, and because they care about you.

Jeff says, next comes the demise of the Home Improvement warehouse, and the return of the main street, small town hardware store.

“The days of every store having an identical assortment of food are over."

Yes, they are. Just as the days of our dark masters holding us stupidly in thrall are also over.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesa…n-you-back

Grocery Stores Are Losing You . Here’s How They Plan To Win You Back

March 30, 2015

If pushing a cart up and down the lengthy aisles of your neighborhood supermarket — past dozens of brands of packaged cereal and crackers lit by fluorescent lights — feels overwhelming and soul-sucking, you’re not alone.

But there’s some good news: The days of shopping this way may be numbered.

Here’s why. Traditional grocers are increasingly losing market share — some 15 percent in the past 10 years — to more nimble competitors like smaller markets, convenience stores, farmers markets and even dollar stores. That, along with the rise of online food shopping, is forcing the old-school grocers to innovate in ways that should yield a better overall experience for consumers down the road.

"The bottom line is that for the supermarket to survive and prosper and grow, it’s going to have to offer more services," says Phil Lempert, a consumer behavior analyst who tracks these trends on his site SupermarketGuru.

He spoke about the “grocery wars” and where the sector is headed in the next 10 years earlier this month at SXSW. (We couldn’t make it to his panel, so we got him to bend our ear afterward.)

Oxbow Public Market in Napa, Calif., opened in 2007 and was designed to blend in with the surrounding architecture.

The Salt

’Old-School’ Food Shopping Feels New As U.S. Cities Revive Public Markets

Lempert illuminated for us five ways in which grocery chains are evolving (that don’t involve fluorescent lights).

Some companies are adapting faster than others. But Lempert says most big grocery chains have realized that if they’re going to win back some of the shoppers who have drifted away, they’re going to have to get a lot more creative and flexible.

  1. The “groceraunt.” Maybe you’ve seen delis and cafes flanked by seating areas pop up in national chains like Safeway and Whole Foods. But what about a full-service restaurant?

Meet the “groceraunt,” where the food is supposed to be tempting enough to get you to sit down to a meal before or after you pick up the milk and eggs. At Market Grille, the restaurant inside several locations of the Hy-Vee chain in the Midwest and Great Plains, you can order sushi, steak, brunch and maybe even on-tap apple cider.

In Illinois, the Mariano’s grocery chain now features an oyster bar and a barbecue stall, which the Chicago Reader described as “supermarket barbecue that’s better than it should be.”

And in the Twin Cities, the Lunds and Byerlys chain has its Minnesota Grille, along with a Lunds and Byerlys Kitchen with “prepared food offerings, a wine and beer bar, a tailored selection of groceries and more all in one space.”

  1. Smaller stores. The average grocery store size started shrinking from about 45,000 square feet three years ago, after decades of increasing year after year.

As we’ve reported, part of that trend is about the return of greengrocers to cities: new versions of the neighborhood market or bodega that stock mostly high-end and local foods in spaces smaller than the produce section of the supermarket.

Why is this format taking off? Turns out, consumers may not actually want to have to choose among 10 brands of olive oil that are all pretty much the same (and unlikely to make us happier, a la The Paradox of Choice) . Rather, it may be more pleasing to choose between two bottles that are distinct in quality, flavor or price.

The big retailers have noticed these small markets encroaching on their turf and are making moves to get smaller, too. According to Lempert, Wal-Mart, Lunds and others are prototyping smaller stores. And Cincinnati-based grocery chain Kroger has been experimenting with a 7,500-square-foot format in Columbus, Ohio, that’s a sort of hybrid between a supermarket and a convenience store.

  1. 3 . More services. Lempert notes that many consumers don’t need or want all their food under one roof anymore — they’re willing to go from the farmers market to the wine shop to the butcher.

How can grocery stores stay relevant, then? Maybe by hiring a really good fishmonger.

Big grocery chains like Kroger are beginning to experiment with smaller-format stores, says Lempert.

Most chains sell meat and fish that’s been filleted and sliced and wrapped up off-site. But more are starting to install skilled butchers and fishmongers to cut meat right there in the store. They’re also hiring trained chefs, sommeliers and registered dieticians to guide shoppers to more healthful choices. Lempert points to Hy-Vee Market, which has hired several chefs trained at the Culinary Institute of America to cook its prepared food, and two dieticians who lead weight management programs.

  1. Catering to millennials. Corporate America is smitten with millennials, who seem to be leading food trends. And grocery chains are no different.

According to Lempert, the big chains are trying entice millennials with the foods they want — local, craft and fermented foods, and big international flavors (i.e., kimchi) — when they want them. Millennials also want “connection and community,” which stores can foster with seasonal events, tastings and cooking demos, Lempert says.

The Salt

Ordering Food Online? That’ll Be More Calories, Cost And Complexity

  1. More ways to get your groceries delivered. Another thing about millennials: They may want to avoid the store entirely and have their groceries dropped off.

To keep them and other online shopping enthusiasts as customers, grocery chains are partnering with tech companies like Instacart, Google Express, Amazon and Uber, which send couriers to stores to pick up groceries and then deliver them within an hour.

And while most consumers will continue to go to the store to select their tomatoes and bread themselves, Rosenheim Advisors reported in December 2014 that the food tech sector is booming. “More than $1.6 billion was invested [in 2013] into food-related tech companies, up 33 percent from $1.2 billion in 2012,” it noted.

Will all these efforts win customers back? That’s unclear, says Lempert. "To be successful, a retailer has to know its consumer. And these days, every neighborhood is different. The days of every store having an identical assortment of food are over."

Nature is booming, burgeoning, to a level not seen in my lifetime. While at the same time a deviant, dark religion claiming that precisely the opposite is true holds a large proportion of the populace spellbound. Despite clear and present data demonstrating that the basic thesis of that religion, that Poor Mother Gaia is Dying , is patently false.

Below, you’ll see that rising seabird numbers is “ a surprising trend .” The talking heads in the article, whom we can trust, earnestly warn us that “ Positive trends in seabird sightings don’t always reflect increasing populations of seabirds in the area .”

But, unforatunately for those serial liars, “Eighteen species along Puget Sound’s near coasts are on the rise.”

As you can see, whether they be programmed acolytes or Secret Handshake Club Machiavelles, they’ are doing what’s called “ talking out their ass .”

And the hedging and the lying continue: “ Nor is it clear just how much or how little traditional threats — such as contaminants, shoreline armoring, climate change or even derelict fishing gear — are having on winter seabirds.”

Yes, it is quite clear, gentlemen: bird and fish numbers are increasing across the board. But you don’t take my word for it - because another crippling blow to the criminal establishment who are for the moment using your better qualities to take advantage of you is the fact that more and more “citizen scientists” are getting involved, and the numbers they produce are not fraudulent, like those of the group I mentioned earlier in the sentence.

“The seven-year long project has tracked the visits of 18 seabird species and found an increased presence in 14 of them.”

And the citizen scientists are dimly awakening, never to sleep, again: “So if there’s something (positive) happening with the seabirds there’s likely something else happening with their food, with water quality; it just goes on from there.”

Another article below documents booming fish numbers on a lake in Mexico, where it’s cooler than usual, and water levels are higher than usual. Gee, that’s kind of exactly the opposite of the epic, wholly false missives from the dark religion I mentioned previously that include “ hottest year in the Earth’s history ” and “ water shortages are the world’s future.

The author says “this should be part of the dry season and temperatures should be warming up. Instead it has been unusually wet and temperatures have been milder .” The author is so programmed (or, far more likely, “desperate to spin the message”) that he says “ temperatures have been milder ” to describe “unseasonably cold.” He just…can’t…spit it…out.

No, milder means warmer, see: “Philly: Temperature Drop in Store Before Milder Weekend”. Or I should say “it means ‘warmer’ to anyone except a programmed dupe or ill-purposed Machiavelle.”

“I have never seen weather like this,” said camp manager Carlos Wong, estimating the lake was up five feet from the same time a year ago. “We normally get our rain in July and August, but we have been getting a lot this month.”

And the last article has the most punishing stats, of all: year-to-date at the Bonneville dam on the Columbia river, they’ve counted 1000 adult spring chinook, and 3,086 steelhead. The ten year averages? 139 and 1,947. Not wanting to do math, that’s a tenfold increase in chinook, and a third again as many steelhead.

So, you can say it like a parrot, “ Poor Mother Gaia is Dying ”, or go with “Chinook have increased tenfold on the Columbia in the last decade”.

You will need to use your personal discernment.

March 5, 2015 – Seabird numbers: a surprising trend. Some dive while others cry as they fly above choppy waters in search of food in the pouring rain. It’s a day for the annual winter seabird count along Puget Sound’s near coasts, and the birds are in full form.

Rod Brown and Cathy Conolly, citizen scientists two, are tracking seabirds at a designated spot near Myrtle Edwards Park on the Elliott Bay waterfront. “We’ve got a merganser out here that’s in breeding plumage with feathers coming off the back of its head and a nice showy crest,” says Brown, as he looks through binoculars. “It’s showing off to other birds that might find that an attractive mate.” Conoly adjusts a spotting scope and sees a Barrow’s Golden Eye. “It’s this lovely black and white duck,” she says admiringly.

In a marine world where good news is often hard to find , an increase in winter seabirds is cause for celebration. Eighteen species along Puget Sound’s near coasts are on the rise , including loons, surf scoters, buffleheads and rhinoceros auklets.

Since October, Brown and Conolly have come to this stormy observation site to count seabirds, and they will continue to do so as part of a Seattle Audubon inspired “citizen science” study that runs through April each year. A joint collaboration with NOAA, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and others, the seven-year long project has tracked the visits of 18 seabird species and found an increased presence in 14 of them.

Those doing well include loons, rhinoceros auklets, cormorants and harlequin ducks. As the wind and rain pound the coastline, Brown takes out a compass and ruler to take bearings of the direction the seabirds have come from. “The first batch is 80 degrees on the ruler from the horizon,” he says, “and the second is 250 degrees.” Conolly notes the readings in scientist-designed charts as large flocks of surf scoters, as many as 800, line up in neat rows near a cargo ship in the Bay. The ship may be acting as a buffer to keep grain from a nearby terminal from washing out to sea.

The impressive number of surf scoters is something the two citizen scientists always try to count at this particular site. “This is the only observation point where you can see these large flocks,” says Conolly. Surf scoters are a significant portion of seabird life in Elliot Bay, she adds, the males sporting a distinctive black and white head in stark contract to an orange bill tip.

Pearson, based in Olympia, notes that the citizen science study had varied results depending on whether seabird counts were in south Puget Sound or north Puget Sound. “Down here we’re starting to see a lot more jelly fish whereas in the north people are seeing a lot more forage fish.” Initial studies by NOAA scientists, he says, show a relationship between jelly fish abundance, latitude and water clarity. Seattle is only a little farther north than Olympia, but the distance could make a difference when it comes to food supply. Pearson adds that in the north part of the Sound, the tidal exchange is stronger and there are far more fresh and seawater outlets, which can result in more abundant food supply.

It’s all a part of the web, he says, the marine web, whose documentation on the seabird front wouldn’t be possible without citizen scientists willing to count and observe month after month, October through April, for the last seven years.

Positive trends in seabird sightings, caution Ward and Pearson, don’t always reflect increasing populations of seabirds in the area. Federally protected marbled murrelets, for instance, continue to decline across Washington. And many winter seabirds are migrants and do their nesting elsewhere. Nor is it clear just how much or how little traditional threats — such as contaminants, shoreline armoring, climate change or even derelict fishing gear — are having on winter seabirds.

But what seems clear from the rigorous data, says Seattle Audubon’s Toby Ross, is that 14 species along Puget Sound’s near shore are literally on the rise. “Seabirds are an intrinsic part of the ecosystem. So if there’s something happening with the seabirds there’s likely something else happening with their food, with water quality; it just goes on from there.”

March 25, 2015 - Cooler water, higher levels hurts size, but not numbers on Picachos

Puerta de San Marcos, Mexico That is something fishermen from Northeast Texas learned as February turned to March and March heads toward April. Late winter weather once again wiped out any idea of early March spawning activity in East Texas.

It is also the theme in western Mexico on Lake Picachos, where this should be part of the dry season and temperatures should be warming up. Instead it has been unusually wet and temperatures have been milder , causing the lake levels to rise and water temp to become cooler than it was a month earlier. That in turn has slowed post-spawn bass fishing to a crawl. That is if you call 60 to 100-plus bass in a day slow.

“I have never seen weather like this,” said camp manager Carlos Wong, estimating the lake was up five feet from the same time a year ago. “ We normally get our rain in July and August, but we have been getting a lot this month.”

Bonneville Dam fish count 3/31 Columbia River at Bonneville

Saturday — 185 spring chinook, 63 steelhead. Note: Counts in March are done by videotape, resulting in a delay of a few days in the availability of the numbers.

Year to date — 1,000 adult spring chinook, 3,086 steelhead. Ten-year average through March 28 is 139 adult spring chinook and 1,947 steelhead

Check out the major U.S. city banning the Roundup that was deliberately designed to quickly kill Monarch butterflies and more slowly kill the populace wherever it is distributed.

“The City Council (of Portland, Oregon – ed) unanimously approved an emergency ordinance Wednesday, making the insecticide ban effective immediately.”

Unanimously, that’s clutch. So even if there were Secret Handshake Club members on the council, they had to keep their yaps shut.

And so we see that the edifice, the house of cards through which the deviant few control the many, is collapsing, and will continue to collapse in just this way. “Portland’s ban follows similar actions in Spokane, Seattle and Eugene.” And it’s also taking the form of national and state secessions, the world over, because the public is dimly awakening to the fact that a deviant, two-faced, criminal few are controlling the many with unwholesome purpose, despite professing otherwise.

“These toxicants kill bees outright, so this ordinance is critical to protecting Portland’s burgeoning local foods movement,”

Local food movement, that’s clutch. By that, she means “growing our food here where we live, vs. shipping it from some far off nation”. Another epochal positive change, never to be undone.

People in the future are going to say, in disbelief, “I can’t conceive of it - what do you mean they were so conditioned they let their leaders manipulate them into not growing their own food anymore?” But we’re waking back up, and ever more quickly, now.

The article takes care not to mention that the Glyphosphate in Roundup gets into your G.I. tract and ruins it, creating things like the mysteriously burgeoning epidemic of Celiac disease, and Crohn’s, and does a host of other nasty things. Oh, did I mention it was just officially acknowledged to be a “Probable Carcinogen”? Let’s get the planes out there spraying that shit on the food supply right away! You know, to stop hunger in third world nations.

To maintain Cognitive Dissonance, tell self that the creators of Roundup were just that hog-wild bent on creating a better life for everyone that they missed a little technical detail.

The greatest news of all is that the tide has turned against these monsters, and as awareness grows, so will each and every one of their dark gambits fail and wither, with quicker and quicker cycle times on those failures. People are giving up Roundup like they’re giving up Diet Coke, and weaponized fast food.

“We’re doing another good thing for the people of Portland, Oregon, the United States, maybe the entire world”

Huge positive changes are occurring, and they are increasing in both speed and magnitude.

http://www.oregonlive.com/port…cific.html

Portland bans use of insecticides believed to be harmful to bees on city property

April 1, 2015

Portland banned the use of neonicotinoid insecticides, a wide-ranging classification of chemical pest killers, on city-owned property.

The City Council unanimously approved an emergency ordinance Wednesday, making the insecticide ban effective immediately.

"We’re doing another good thing for the people of Portland, Oregon, the United States, maybe the entire world," said Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who introduced the policy.

Few question the efficacy of the insecticides, which have a long shelf life and quickly kill pests. But the chemical sprays persist in the environment, and opponents say they provide a clear and documented harm to bees, birds and butterflies.

Studies indicate the insecticides may be a factor in massive die-offs of bee colonies. In Oregon, state officials blamed the 2013 deaths of tens of thousands of bees on the improper use of the pesticides. Last month state officials banned the products from use on certain trees.

Fritz thanked her staff and parks officials for their work on the ordinance, but lauded the advocacy work of the Xerces Society, Audubon Society of Portland, Center for Biological Diversity and Beyond Toxics group for pushing the idea.

"These toxicants kill bees outright, so this ordinance is critical to protecting Portland’s burgeoning local foods movement," Lisa Arkin, executive director of Beyond Toxics, said in a press release.

The ban does not apply to private property , although Fritz said last week the proposal was just a first step.

Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity said the ban would benefit the entire ecosystem. “Neonicotinoids kill the beneficial insects that form the basis of the web of life, like caddisflies and mayflies, which are important food sources for salmon and trout,” she said.

Portland’s ordinance also urges retailers to label insecticides products or other items that may contain the neonicotinoid chemicals.

The ordinance doesn’t immediately apply to two rose gardens where the city will run a “pilot program” to find an alternated insecticide or method to kill-off rose midges, a pest that is more difficult to kill without the insecticides. The city must identify alternative methods by December 2017.

Portland’s ban follows similar actions in Spokane, Seattle and Eugene. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also pledged to ban the insecticides last year on more than 150 million acres of public land.

Wow, did I mention state and national secessions? Greece: “If we have to choose between a default to the IMF or a default to our own people, it is a no-brainer.”

Iceland refused to “bail out” the banks. And Iceland is doing great . Strong currency, low unemployment.

Meanwhile, here in Uhmericuh (breathe through mouth while pronouncing), the term “ bailout ” is a euphemism for the government stealing more money from the populace and giving it to the criminals who had already previously stolen most of the populace’s money.

We’re gonna wake up, though, are waking up right now.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin…yment.html

Greece draws up drachma plans, prepares to miss IMF payment

'We are a Left-wing government. If we have to choose between a default to the IMF or a default to our own people, it is a no-brainer,’ says senior Greek official

April 2, 2015

Greece is drawing up drastic plans to nationalise the country’s banking system and introduce a parallel currency to pay bills unless the eurozone takes steps to defuse the simmering crisis and soften its demands.

Sources close to the ruling Syriza party said the government is determined to keep public services running and pay pensions as funds run critically low. It may be forced to take the unprecedented step of missing a payment to the International Monetary Fund next week.

Greece no longer has enough money to pay the IMF €458m on April 9 and also to cover payments for salaries and social security on April 14, unless the eurozone agrees to disburse the next tranche of its interim bail-out deal in time.

“We are a Left-wing government. If we have to choose between a default to the IMF or a default to our own people, it is a no-brainer,” said a senior official.

“We may have to go into a silent arrears process with the IMF. This will cause a furore in the markets and means that the clock will start to tick much faster,” the source told The Telegraph.

Syriza’s radical-Left government would prefer to confine its dispute to EU creditors but the first payments to come due are owed to the IMF. While the party does not wish to trigger a formal IMF default, it increasingly views a slide into pre-default arrears as a necessary escalation in its showdown with Brussels and Frankfurt.

The view in Athens is that the EU creditor powers have yet to grasp that the political landscape has changed dramatically since the election of Syriza in January and that they will have to make real concessions if they wish to prevent a disastrous rupture of monetary union, an outcome they have ruled out repeatedly as unthinkable.

Back in January,

as Keep Talking Greece reported,

"The joint press conference was concluding, when Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis droped a last bombshell. “…and with this if you want – and according to European Parliament – flimsily-constructed committee we have no aim to cooperate. Thank you.” Varoufakis was referring to the famous Troika, the country’s official creditors consisting of the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank…

After concluding with a “Thank you” Varoufakis gives the word to Eurogroup Chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem , who wants to hear the translation first. Then he takes off the ear phones, he stands up and sets to leave."

https://web.archive.org/web/20160728171903/https://youtu.be/LPmFHW60Ho8

Apparently after these words the Eurogroup Chief whispered to Varoufakis ears “You just killed the Troika”. The video below. It’s quite funny ;) Link to the whole article in the link above.

Michal, thanks so much for this addition.

For years, decades, no, literally for Millennia, the scoundrels in charge have had every jury rigged, every City council compromised. I’d invite you to read about the “Delta Protocols” if you’d care to learn more.

There’s a comedic homage to the Secret Handshake Club that I’m describing in the recent movie “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. In it, this particular (and fictitious) ‘secret society’ is not remotely unwholesome, and it’s called “ The Order of the Crossed Keys ”. It’s supposed to unite Concierges at hotels the world over.

Crossed Keys ”, you see, is an oblique reference to the crossed femur bones that are featured on the “skull and cross-bones” pirate flag, and also in the nickname of the decidedly un -wholesome “ Skull and Bones ” fraternity that most of our leaders here in the U.S. were members of at one point in their black careers. One of the Bush family elders, Prescott, went down with his happy-go-lucky Skull and Bones fraternity brothers and dug up Geronimo’s skull and femur bones, to use them in Black Magic rituals. You are told it was a “giddy fraternity prank”.

It’s why Hawaiians would charge their closest friends with remove and sequestering away their skulls and femur bones after their deaths, so no Black sorcerer could use them for ill purpose.

I believe that the account Michal has posted shows that the actual Secret Handshake Club’s grip is weakening, and weakening. It’s like the story of the “Little Dutch Boy”, who tries to plug the holes in the dike, but eventually runs out of fingers. It’s why state and national secessions is going to be the path to the downfall of this dark, global regime .

Below, I’ve sandwiched two lying accounts of bird troubles at either end of a string of birds-doing-amazingly-great accounts documenting a string of record bird populations, with examples from around the globe.

In the Tucson Valley, Arizona account, you can see the deeply-programmed author expecting to find the count’s numbers unsatisfactory – until analysis revealed that “ we might have a pretty good species total after all .”

The total, in fact, came to an “ amazing ” 166 species - the most ever for Arizona - up from the previous record, set just two years ago.

Now, people, I ask of you: with a “most ever” count just two years ago, what birder goes into a bird count worrying ? Wring hands: “ as there seemed to be plenty of misses ”?

Meanwhile, halfway around the globe, In Jersey, in the U.K., the number of birds was “an increase of almost three thousand birds.” But, wait, that’s a 57% increase. Why wouldn’t the author simply and plainly say “bird numbers up 57% in Jersey bird count?”

Because it’s off-message, that’s why. Because it rebuts the colossal lie, “ Poor Mother Gaia is Dying, Crushed by the Virus-Like Burden of Mankind ”, which is at the rotten heart of our State religion at this time.

When the truth is that life is burgeoning and booming to a level not seen in my lifetime, as I’ve been patiently, tediously proving in this thread, day in and day out, for well over a year, now.

The second sentence out of the Jersey article’s mouth: “ The rise in the number of birds counted over the weekend of 31 January and 1 February was driven by an increase in the number of Islanders who took part in the event .”

You can see LaPorte County, Michigan also posting second-highest on record numbers, bested only by 2012’s booming counts. Mapping exactly to Arizona’s large years. Did I mention that LaPorte’s record numbers came amid bitter cold, which drives numbers down ?

The last fear-squirt headline, “ Fears for Falling Bird Numbers in Scotland ”, talks about fears , but doesn’t state numbers about falling birds. They’re just spreading the fear meme.

The propaganda is moving farther and farther from the reality. And when that cord gets stretched thin enough, it breaks. Goodbye lying masters, hello awakened populace.

March, 2015 – Lost at Sea: Starving Birds in a Warming World | Audubon

March 2, 2015 – If you missed the Tucson Valley CBC this past December 14, or if you did participate and missed the countdown and potluck, you missed an exciting time. At the end of the initial reading down the main species list, we still had no idea how many species had been tallied, as there seemed to be plenty of misses – silences when I called out expected species . But then we went group by group and heard of some amazing finds, and it seemed we might have a pretty good species total after all. By the end of the countdown, the total came to an amazing 165 species . The previous high for Arizona was 164, which was set only two years ago by Green Valley, and which we tied just last year. Then when entering the data into a spreadsheet I discovered a Canada Goose that hadn’t been noticed during the countdown. 166 species was our official tally.

March 11, 2013 – Jersey, United Kingdom - AN increase of almost three thousand birds were counted in this year’s annual Jersey Great Garden Birdwatch. The rise in the number of birds counted over the weekend of 31 January and 1 February was driven by an increase in the number of Islanders who took part in the event, with 100 more people than last year getting involved.

The total number of individual birds in the top 20 counted in 2014 was 5,253 . That figure rose to 8,229 this year.

March 16, 2015 – La Porte County, Michigan Bird Count Reveals Record Numbers. A total of 56 species were counted, and there were 4,369 individuals birds counted. The species count is the second highest on record for this count, behind only the Dec. 17, 2012, count, which had 66 species. Of particular interest were Bald Eagle, with three individuals counted, and Common Loon, with four individuals counted. These are the highest number ever recorded for this count.

March 24, 2015 – Great Backyard Bird Count Sets Species Record. Participants from more than 100 countries submitted a record 147, 265,000 bird checklists for the annual Great Backyard Bird Count in February and broke the previous count record for the number of species identified.

The bitter cold and snowy weather in much of the northeastern United States and Canada was a major factor in this year’s count . In the Northeast, particularly frigid and windy weather reduced the number of reports.

March 27, 2015 – Fears for falling bird numbers in Scotland

German people are apparently so fed up with the lies of mass media that they are literally dropping them, in droves Smile

Here’s an article by RT.com -which is more like damage control, really - about how a gas station’s facebook post explaining why they don’t sell the Bild tabloid anymore started a snowball of boycots of that tabloid across the country.

http://rt.com/news/246417-boyc…rmanwings/

The cherry on top here is the damage control, namely how RT is selling the gas station’s message… first comes the original German-language text:

Liebe Kunden, bei uns gibt es heute KEINE BildZeitung mehr! Wir unterstützen diese Hetzkampagne nicht!
Wir hoffen auf Ihr Verständnis!

After that RT makes the following statement:

The message from the petrol station’s manager was clear when he set out his reasons for informing his customers that Bild would no longer be available at the pumps. He believed the newspaper’s reporting was too sensationalist and quick at jumping to conclusions, disregarding respect for the victims’ families as it posted images from the crash site.

Where does he say that? Where’s the source?? Only after this polluting little extra do they finally inform the public with a translation of the German text:

Dear customers, there is no Bild-Zeitung today! We do not support this smear campaign!

Now… what does “smearing” have to to with posting images from the crash site? Nothing. But talking about the victims’ families appeals to our emotions and drives the narrative away from possibly questioning the (stinky, if I might add) official story and into feeling sorry for the victims and their families, which is a perfectly understandable human thing to do, even if it’s abused for manipulative purposes all too often.

I think anyone could interpret “smearing campaign” as “scapegoating the co-pilot”, but I could be wrong

As for the Bild jumping to conclusions and having poor journalistic practices… maybe RT should stop toeing the line when it comes to “climate change”.

The Good News here is that people know they aren’t being told the truth and they are leaving the mass media “junk food” in droves, ever larger and larger droves It is simply not possible to control the flow of information anymore - the internet makes that possible. Before we pretty much relied on the TV, radio and newspapers to be in touch with the world beyond our lives. Books complemented this but the problem with books was that it was with “blind luck” or referrals from friends and family that you got to read some really good stuff. Good books haven’t disappeared either and there are probably a lot more of them now beind published than before, but the old format of “sitting in front of the TV and getting our fill of news” is over, finito. It’s probably high time that news corporations start reporting the truth or they will go bankrupt
Carlos

Carlos, thanks so much for this addition. Yes, they will go out of business, as will soda companies, and weaponized fast food merchants, and, eventually, creators of pesticides and poisons. Gambling houses, too - I’ve featured those below.

Before we dive into gambling, a quick sidebar on ‘search engines’.

So, I did some experiments moments ago. I googled ‘positive’ ‘changes’. This thread nowhere to be found, not even going deep, pages in. Then: ‘Positive’ ‘changes’ ‘occurring’…no hits, not even if you go deep pages in. Only typing, exactly: ‘Positive Changes That Are Occuring’ gave me a hit, and that was at the top of the rank list.

Then I went to altavista.com. I searched for ‘positive’ ‘changes’. This thread nowhere to be found, not even going deep, pages in. Then ‘Positive’ ‘changes’ ‘occurring’…top of the leaderboard!

So is google, A: inferior to Altavista as a search engine? Or, B: rigged? I’m guessing B.

Most of the populace can’t fathom, remotely, that governments in every nation employ thousands upon thousands of ‘trolls’ to lurk on, post on, and control internet forums, at least those that aren’t invitation only, like this one, smirk. For those having trouble getting their heads around that, I’d recommend researching the “Delta Protocols.”

Grasping the concept of rigged societal-darling Search Engine companies is probably beyond most folks, too, but no matter. In that, relatively speaking, it only takes a small percentage of the populace being aware to make the difference, like the trim tab on the rudder of a great ship, to quote Don Croft.

I’m exposing this stuff, here, to turn the lights on in the room.

Below, I’ve focused on gambling, which has been plummeting around the globe. The Las Vegas Strip blurb tells it’s down close to five percent, and doesn’t mention a reason . In fact, most of the articles are copping much, anymore, after a good solid year of ‘ it was cold last month !’ I mean ‘ competition from other new casino’s’ , and the like.

I also included the juicy “Criminal arrests down 24% in the Old West gambling town of Deadwood in 2014”, it shows dropping gambling and dropping crime, ah, mirth. Can you see all the needles moving, and in the right direction, and fast?[](javascript:void(null))

It’s just an amazing time to be alive. You have to understand, I’ve been paying attention for a long time, and things were getting steadily worse for very, very long time.

It seems, in surfing parlance, that we have made the drop and the bottom turn, the most difficult, dangerous parts of the ride. And now we’re ripping down a clean face. The attached picture is of Gerry Lopez at Pipe on O’ahu.

March 30, 2015 – Oklahoma - In 2014, the state saw a historic moment in tribal gambling. It was the first year there was a decline in the exclusivity fees collected from gaming operations.

March 31, 2015 - Las Vegas Strip leads drop in gambling revenue in February. LAS VEGAS (AP) - State regulators say Nevada casinos won less in February than a year ago with the Las Vegas Strip leading the drop.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board reported Tuesday that the state’s casino’s won 1.08 percent less than a year ago in February with $916 million total. The amount casinos won from gamblers during the month rose everywhere except the Las Vegas Strip where winnings declined 4.38 percent to $531 million.

Mar 30, 2015 - Criminal arrests down 24% in the Old West gambling town of Deadwood in 2014

April 1, 2015 – Macau gambling industry in March revenue dropped 39.4%, the 10th consecutive month of decline

April 6, 2015 - New York racino revenues drop $7 million | New York Post

You know how the Scottish secession elections were rigged, not long ago? Looks like that classic, ages-old tactic did not work, as evidenced by what I’m seeing in the article that follows. It tells about British voters “deserting Labour and the Tories in favour of resurgent Scottish nationalists and an English version of the Tea Party." And the fact that "the result could spell the end for the system as we know it.”

The only way the deceptive, criminal few can control the many is via pyramidally-architected organizations, in which earnest, credulous rubes lower in those pyramids are fleeced by two-faced, lying psychopaths higher up in same. Unfailingly, around the globe, in every nation, said psychopaths will don whatever natty attire is fashionable there, mouth pro-rube platitudes, kiss a baby or two…and then do exactly the opposite of what they promised.

The problem for them with the avalanche of national and state seccessions that are coming - and it’s a very large problem - is that they don’t have the ability to rapidly expand their ranks. They won’t be able to ‘staff’ those new governments fast enough, with enough of their Secret Handshake Club shills, to effectively control them all. I imagine that, soon, D-list Illuminists like Paris Hilton and Bruce Jenner will be foisted forward for public office, and, er, not win the elections they were charged to. It’s a house of cards, a Ponzi scheme, and it’s collapsing, God be praised.

“Since the referendum result – 55% no, 45% yes – disaffected working-class Labour voters have flocked to the SNP.”

“You can blow out a candle, but you can’t blow out a fire, once the flame begins to catch, the wind will blow it higher.” Peter Gabriel was talking about South Africa, I’m talking about Scotland. Can you see how the Secret Handshake Club gave it their best shot, rigged the election, had the controlled press play along, with literal armies of government-shill trolls in every forum on Earth parroting the party line, all of it …only to have even more disaffected working-class voters flock to the SNP.

And, lo! “ No wonder Cameron is rapidly seeking to concede greater powers to resentful English regions and threatening English-votes-only sessions of parliament .”

He’s “rapidly seeking to concede”, you see, because he can see a ride out of town on a rail in his future.

The mention of the ‘ancient Chinese curse’ at the end is interesting. I think all of this, every bit of it, may be theater, or more correctly an attempt at a controlled rearguard action, in which the Brotherhood of Death, who know no national boundaries, hope that ‘ benevolent, cuddly Communist China ’ will be begged by the people of the West to ‘save them’ from their crazy masters.

Well, I sure do know that particular con’s not going to work where I live. None of the cons seem to be working, anymore, or not very well, anyway.

At this point, you go all in on the person cheating at cards across from you, and take their stack. And that’s what’s going to happen. In every nation on Earth, pretty much all at once.

http://www.theguardian.com/pol…id-cameron

Britain’s election: rise of Scottish and English nationalists threatens old order

April 7, 2015

On 7 May, Britain goes to the polls. Voters are deserting Labour and the Tories in favour of resurgent Scottish nationalists and an English version of the Tea Party. The result could spell the end for the system as we know it.

Public mistrust of government is high in Britain, and deference to the political elite has also collapsed as economic woes erode living standards. Amid all that, voters are deserting the Conservatives and Labour, Britain’s two main parties of the right and left since the 1920s, in droves.

The Scottish national party has barely paused for breath since losing last September’s referendum on independence for Scotland – immediately declaring itself the moral victor and demanding greater powers for Edinburgh.

Since the referendum result – 55% no, 45% yes – disaffected working-class Labour voters have flocked to the SNP. Polls suggest the Scottish nationalists, now led by Scotland’s new first minister, the formidable Nicola Sturgeon, will slaughter Labour north of the border , winning dozens of Scotland’s 59 seats and perhaps holding the balance of power in London . If she finds herself in that position, Sturgeon promises to block Cameron and prop up a minority Miliband administration.

But nowhere, not even in Greece, do identity politics combine with economic grievance more disruptively than in Britain. A nightmare stalemate may be the outcome on 7 May – more populist, more localist than ever before. More unstable, too? A second 2015 election may well follow the first.

No wonder Cameron is rapidly seeking to concede greater powers to resentful English regions and threatening English-votes-only sessions of parliament. All of a sudden, some form of federalism – just like those uppity ex-colonials have – starts to look an attractive solution for Britain.

But as the Founding Fathers discovered at Philadelphia, that is even harder to achieve than it looks. It may require more luck and better judgment than currently seems available among Britain’s struggling hand-to-mouth politicians. As the old Chinese curse has it: “May you live in interesting times.” We do.

It’s gotten so bad for these clowns that their propaganda reports are now based on bad things that they profess might happen , vs. the usual formula, which is ‘gross exaggerations of bad things that actually have happened.’

Last week’s gem was ‘mile-wide super tornado sighted near Texas’, or something like that. Oh, great, you saw it – anything bad happen? I didn’t have time to research, to see if it was an actual sighting or a fake, claimed sighting.

The following link - which was by the way highlighted in red on the news page I was perusing - is headed “ Early start: Tropical System Could Form off Florida .”

The story goes on to say that the National Hurricane Center has issued “ a Special Tropical Weather Outlook ”. Geez, that’s a new one. Is it a warning? “No” Well, then, is it an advisory? “No” I see…is it a watch? “Er, no.”

We’ll what’s going on, then, what’s the big, red-letter news, the reason for this new alert category? “ it could begin to gradually acquire subtropical characteristics.

Wow! Well, what does that mean, boarded up windows, fleeing coastal residents?

A few showers along the coast will try to move inland ”.

These guys are priceless, aren’t they?

http://www.clickorlando.com/we…a/32790448

Subtropical system could head toward Florida

May 4, 2014

ORLANDO, Fla. - An area of low pressure will move into the Bahamas over the next couple of days, prompting the National Hurricane Center to issue a Special Tropical Weather Outlook.

As the low moves slowly northward, it could begin to gradually acquire subtropical characteristics as early as Thursday or Friday, the NHC said. Officials said there’s a 30 percent chance of formation through the next five days.

The low will stay weak and continue to move to the north, likely staying off the coast of Florida into the end of the week," Local 6 meteorologist Troy Bridges said. “The low moving along the coast later this week could actually bring some dry air and lower rain chances for Central Florida by the end of the week.”

Rain chances will be minimal Monday in Central Florida. " A few showers along the coast will try to move inland, with most of them dying out as they encounter dry air," Bridges said. “Moisture will increase throughout the atmosphere Thursday, with the rain chances at 30 percent Tuesday and Wednesday.”

Temperatures will warm into the low 80s for most areas Monday and Tuesday afternoon. The average high temperature in Orlando is 85 degrees. High temperatures will hit the mid-80s Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Rain chances will be 20 percent over the weekend as highs reach the upper 80s.

Both of the two sentences that follow cannot be true:

“2015 Is Shaping Up to Be the Hottest Year on Record” and “Snow, cold keep New England skiers, riders stoked into May.”

I’m stoked to report that the first sentence is the lie, and the second one is true. Below you can see how Killington in Vermont is shooting for the first of June for the first time in decade.

You can also see below how the baldfaced-lie press release telling us that 2014 was the hottest year on record is worded exactly the same as the one they used half a year later for 2015.

‘‘We’ve had so much snow and the cold to preserve it,’’ Vazzano said. ‘‘We had storm after storm after storm.’’

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/s…–spt.html

Snow, cold keep New England skiers, riders stoked into May

May 2, 2015

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Skiers and snowboarders at Vermont’s Sugarbush resort right now can spend the morning on the slopes and play golf in the afternoon - testament to the abundance of snow that extended the season at many northern New England ski areas.

Sugarbush is one of more than half dozen areas in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine still operating this weekend. New Hampshire’s Wildcat Mountain in Pinkham Notch prides itself on being the state’s last ski area open in the spring but marketing director Thomas Prindle says they haven’t made it into May in more than a decade.

’‘We’ve had six months of a phenomenal season,’’ said Prindle, noting Wildcat was the first New Hampshire area to open on Nov. 9. The mountain had a 30 percent increase in skier visits compared to past years and this weekend marks Wildcat’s grand finale.

Vermont’s Killington Resort is shooting for June 1 for the first time in a decade, marketing director Michael Joseph said Friday. The mountain sold more than 2,000 of its spring season passes that are good from March 14 on - up from 600 last year.

Meteorologist Tony Vazzano of Center Sandwich, New Hampshire, is continuing to provide forecasts to many of the still-open areas on a daily basis, albeit from his vacation location on Chincoteague Island in Virginia.

’‘We’ve had so much snow and the cold to preserve it,’’ Vazzano said. '‘We had storm after storm after storm.’'

At times the snow was so plentiful it was problematic. The blizzard in late January triggered travel warnings and skiers in the Boston area were shoveling rather than skiing. It was followed closely by four successive weekends of winter storms. Vazzano said a cold spell in February helped preserve the snow but discouraged some skiers.

‘‘When you can’t get out of your driveway you can’t get to the mountain,’’ Vazzano said. ‘‘But in the long run it helps. When there’s snow in people’s backyards they want to get up and go skiing.’’

Chris Young, who lives close enough to Vermont’s Jay Peak to ski home, said there is still a lot of snow on the mountain just south of the Canadian border. This may be the last weekend the lifts are running, but Young isn’t deterred.

‘‘That doesn’t stop us from climbing up and taking runs until the snow melts,’’ Young said.

In Maine, Ron Jacques says he has skied about 60 days this season and plans to go right through the final day at Sugarloaf on Sunday. He hopes to keep skiing until the final chair heads up the mountain.

Jacques said Sugarloaf is closing because of a lack of skiers, not a lack of snow. Others who pack it in early are missing out, he said.

‘‘There are no crowds,’’ Jacques said. ‘‘It’s 50 degrees. You’ve got the smell of suntan lotion. There’s something about it that charges my life’s battery.’’

April 15, 2015 - 2015 Is Shaping Up to Be the Hottest Year on Record - The first three months of 2015 were the warmest start to any year on record, according to new data released from NASA on Wednesday.

Nov 30, 2014 - NOAA: 2014 is shaping up as hottest year on record – The first ten months of 2014 have been the hottest since record keeping began more than 130 years ago…

You know how I just mentioned that ‘ mystery ’, ‘ baffled ’ and ‘ puzzled ’ were meme words, used whenever the mainstream press wants to lie about something?

You can see that proven again here: “Around 24 years ago, crime rates in the US started to mysteriously decline . Since then, crime has fallen by roughly half.”

It’s not a mystery to me. It’s a gigantic, sweeping, amazing societal transformation, and it’s increasing in speed and magnitude. Who does it feel like is winning the war, here, us, or them?

Below, you’ll see an official article on the drop in crime sneering “ if you believe statistics ”. Of course, any cursory review of the statistics punishingly shows that “since then, crime has fallen by roughly half.” What’s great is the phrase just after the sneer is “New Haven got safer in pretty much every measurable way this past year.”

Oh, and check out: “ increase in Hip-Hop’s popularit y” and “ because everyone, um, bought cell phones! ” - they’re this week’s most stunningly clear evidence that the folks in charge are baldfacedly lying sociopaths who do not have your best interests at heart.

Those are the same folks who say “ It’s Hard To Say What Caused A Huge Drop In Crime .”

It is hard for them to say…really hard - because they are baldfacedly lying sociopaths who do not have your best interests at heart.

December 19, 2012 – Did violent crime rates drop in the 1990s due to cellphone ownership?

January 7, 2014 – As Hip-Hop Became More Popular, Crime Dropped .

October 2, 2014 – U.S. high school dropout rate reaches record low

November 10, 2014 – U.S. violent crimes including murders fell 4.4 percent in 2013 to their lowest number since the 1970s, continuing a decades-long downturn , the FBI said on Monday…

January 9, 2015 – New Haven, CT – The official final numbers are in: If you believe statistics , then New Haven got safer in pretty much every measurable way this past year, down to quality-of-life crimes.

January 12, 2015 – the overall police-reported crime rate in Canada has been falling for more than 20 years.

January 21, 2015 – Crime dropping and infrastructure rising in Honduras …

February 13, 2015 – Around 24 years ago, crime rates in the US started to mysteriously decline . Since then, crime has fallen by roughly half

February 18, 2015 – Crime Dropping Across the US.

February 15, 2015 – It’s Hard To Say What Caused A Huge Drop In Crime

March 11, 2015 – Bill Maher asks if abortion is responsible for dropping crime …

April 9, 2015 – Overall crime is dropping in the Detroit’s public schools , district officials said Thursday

April 9, 2015 –Number of most serious crimes dropping. “This is a historic low in Coon Rapids, not seen since the 1960s in terms of numbers,” Wise said. “We are in a really good place.”

There’s an old Simpsons Halloween episode where the evil corporate kingpin, Montgomery Burns, sees Flanders-as-the-Devil, and says “Who’s that goat-legged fellow? I like the cut of his jib.” Smithers replies “Uh, the prince of darkness, sir. He’s your 11 o’clock.”

In a wild coincidence, the Greek god Pan goat-legged (and horned), also.

I mention that because today’s story is about Panera Bread, whose name comes from “ Pan-Era ”, the hoped-for era of Pan in which our dark masters so fervently wish to live, and have since ancient times.

At least that’s what I think. But what’s the official answer? Best I could find was from this busy stooge on yahoo answers:

“pan” is the romance root word for bread - thus pain, pan, pane, pão, poena, etc. In English we inherited the germanic root for bread which is why the English word is nothing like “pan”. “panera” is also the Spanish word for bread basket. Possibly they intentionally chose this word, or possibly they just made up a word using the romance root. I couldn’t find a definite answer on the web.”

Couldn’t find a definite answer ”, I see. No further questions there, your honor, let’s move on.

I bet the folks at Panera are steamed that Panera’s joining the list of chains who are removing weaponized elements from their food. Although I’m sure they’re not nearly as pissed as their fellow Secret Handshake Club members over at the top of the McDonald’s control pyramid, who are holding on to their deadly ingredients, but going broke because of it.

“The driver behind this action reflects the rapid evolution in consumer concern over artificial-anything in foods and beverages. More than 60% of consumers in a recent survey by marketing firm Nielsen said the absence of artificial colors or flavors is important to their food purchase decisions.”

http://www.ksdk.com/story/mone…/26696823/

Panera lists ‘unacceptable’ ingredients in its foods

May 5, 2015

Panera has put it in writing.

The trendy, fast-casual chain widely known for the quality of its food and integrity of its ingredients on Tuesday will become the first national restaurant chain to publicly post a comprehensive list of all artificial additives that it has has removed — or plans to remove by the end of 2016 — from the food it serves.

Panera has dubbed it the “No-No List.” The list includes more than 150 ingredients — from BHT to maltodextrin to sulfur dioxide — that Panera is in the process of removing from its foods.

Also, beginning Wednesday, Panera will only sell salads with “clean” salad dressings, all made without artificial sweeteners, colors, flavors and preservatives. The ingredients on Panera’s salad menu still evolving to meet the 2016 commitment are croutons, tortilla strips, pepperoncini and bacon.

The moves are next-steps that follow an announcement Panera made less than a year ago to ultimately junk all artificial additives from its menu. The driver behind this action reflects the rapid evolution in consumer concern over artificial-anything in foods and beverages. More than 60% of consumers in a recent survey by marketing firm Nielsen said the absence of artificial colors or flavors is important to their food purchase decisions.

“This is like our own ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval’ that says: This is a transparent list of ingredients you won’t find at Panera,” company CEO Ron Shaich said in a phone interview. “This is truly the first, real salvo in the effort for food transparency.”

The process of removing all the artificial additives has not been simple, Shaich said. “This is really hard when you have 465 different ingredients. But I want to serve food that’s clean,” he said. “I want to serve food that I feel good about my daughters eating.”

Some examples of artificial additive removal:

  • Greek salad dressing — removed hydrogenated soy protein, maltodextrin, propylene glycol alginate, and the generic spice blend.
  • Mozzarella on tomato mozzarella flatbread — removed titanium dioxide.
  • Chicken noodle soup — removed hydrolyzed soy and corn protein, autolyzed yeast extract, and modified corn starch
  • Poppyseed dressing —- removed cellulose gel and artificial flavors.

The action by Panera does not include the beverages it sells, though executives say they are working on that, too, particularly in bottled beverages.

Nutritionists are generally supportive of Panera’s actions to dump artificial additives.

“Panera is setting a high bar,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University. “These are all ingredients used in highly processed foods to make them look, taste, and hold together better — for the most part, cosmetics.”

But one consumer advocate questions Panera’s motives.

“I applaud Panera for replacing dyes and certain other questionable additives in its foods,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of Center for Science in the Public Interest. " But eliminating many of the ingredients with unfamiliar chemical names, like calcium propionate and sodium erythorbate, is done solely for PR purposes and not to make safer, more healthful foods."

Jacobson also noted that the far bigger nutritional problem with Panera’s menu is the high calorie count of many of its foods and its wide use of white flour and excessive use of sugar.

“We want to be an ally for people eating well — not the food police,” CEO Shaich said. “There are days when I love the indulgence of a blueberry muffin. We’re about the joy of food.”

McDeath is looking at going-out-of-business numbers, and it’s because the world has rejected their deliberately-weaponized food. Seventy ingredients in the McRib sandwich, that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, In-and-Out Burger continues to do wonderfully, because they sell burgers made out of actual meat, like they’ve done since they opened at roughly the same time as McDonald’s did. And new-school Five Guys is growing explosively, selling - wait for it - burgers made out of actual meat.

But the barely-closeted Death worshippers at the top of the McDonald’s control pyramid just…can’t…change…their…ways, apparently. Below, you’ll see “You call that a comeback plan? It’s a recipe for a different system, not better burgers.”

They’re big comeback plan? They’re going to increase their franchisee percentage from 81 to 90%. That’s what’s called “handing someone the bag”, in that “ Franchisees pay their fees to McDonald’s no matter how poor their own sales are .” The parent corporation will keep the hammer down on the weaponized food train, and force their franchisees to take pay cuts, as it were, as the public continues to eat elsewhere.

“People wanted a new menu. Instead we got word of a new organizational chart.”

It beggars the imagination, to see them refuse to make the simple changes, and rather go to their demise. Especially in the context of the wonderful example of In-and-Out, who have always been what McDonald’s once was, and so easily could be again. And in the wider context of five random guys saying “hey, let’s sell burgers made out of actual meat, and freshly made French fries”, and succeeding wildly.

It beggars the imagination, unless you include the key fact that they’re barely-closeted Death worshippers.

You gotta understand, I grew up loving (or is that ‘ lovin’ ?) McDonald’s cheeseburgers. I still eat them on occasion, usually after drinking too much.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/…about-food

The McDonald’s Revamp Doesn’t Have Much to Say About Food

You call that a comeback plan? It’s a recipe for a different system, not better burgers

May 4, 2015

McDonald’s promised the world a grand turnaround plan, and the 23-minute video presentation released Monday morning begins with such promise. The new chief executive, Steve Easterbrook, was humble: “No business or brand has a divine right to succeed,” he said. “The reality is our recent performance has been poor. The numbers don’t lie.” He was also optimistic, promising to get rid of “legacy attitudes” and bureaucracy to make “liberating moves.”

But then Easterbrook described the actual plan. It was underwhelming. He talked about McDonald’s operations and finances, not its food , while implicitly acknowledging that the burger giant reached its U.S. peak several years ago. Like many once-great American brands, the fast-food chain now has greater prospects overseas.

Easterbrook outlined a new structure for the company, with countries grouped by their potential for growth instead of their geographic location. In this new organization, the U.S. stands alone. The “high-growth markets” include China, Italy, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Just try to find any common traits other than the fact they have fewer McDonald’s than some of their neighbors.

The hope is that these growth countries can share ideas more quickly and at the same time customize menus to local tastes. How will that work with McDonald’s supply chain? The company’s industrial efficiency is both a strength and a problem. It allows 34,000 restaurants to serve the same French fries—and the system also requires those fries to be made with more than a dozen ingredients. Easterbrook didn’t address the issue.

He also announced that McDonald’s would sell some of the restaurants it operates to franchisees. Eighty-one percent of McDonald’s restaurants around the world are owned by franchisees now, and the company wants 90 percent to be so by the end of 2018. That shift entails losing some control while cutting corporate costs and getting a more stable, predictable cash flow. Franchisees pay their fees to McDonald’s no matter how poor their own sales are. It’s like paying the rent—except franchisees also have to invest their own money on new programs or procedures. The most recent one, Create Your Taste, costs about $100,000 for each restaurant, an amount many franchisees consider excessive. Now McDonald’s will depend even more on franchisees’ cooperation.

The impression Easterbrook left is that McDonald’s hopes to keep shareholders happy by reducing expenses (around $300 million a year) and giving them back cash ($8 billion to $9 billion this year.) During a call with investors later in the morning, Pete Benson, the company’s chief administrative officer, felt it necessary to insist: “We’re not abandoning growth.”

As for customers, most will just have to wait. "Tastes are changing, and we have to move with those," Easterbrook said during the conference call. The company has promised to curb antibiotic use in the chicken it serves, and it’s testing sirloin burgers. But all the big ideas from McDonald’s were about the “system.” People wanted a new menu. Instead we got word of a new organizational chart.

“No bother feel no way, It’s coming close to payday, I say. No bother feel no way, Every man get paid accord his work this day. Cannot be wrong and get right. Cannot be kicked and don’t fight.”

– Peter Tosh

The article that follows is curious.

“Jade Helm 15” is “ a five-month, multi-state exercise across private and public land to prepare Army special forces for threats anywhere in the world .”

It’s another in a chain of recent happenings which are either A: grotesque, Punch-and-Judy-esque “bad cop” routines, designed to condition the American public to welcome (or beg for) our new, cuddly, Chinese Communist overlords, or, B: they’re just trying to position their actor, Congressman Gohmert of Texas, to be along for the ride as a “known good guy” when Texas secedes…which it will, or, C: the pathologically-insane folks in charge only have one speed, “pathologically insane”, and they’re losing control, and losing their wits.

Frist of all, five months long ? From a military perspective, you don’t need to “train all summer” to go defeat Terra in the Heartland, or to go kick civilian ass, there, either, for that matter. You simply drive right in there and get to it, control the high ground, ensure air cover and supply lines, yada. So this whole circus is a public relations exercise. Either to say “don’t even think about seceding”, or “see, we’re the Bad Cop .”

In the Good Cop/Bad Cop con, a theatrical “Good Cop” would then be dispatched, and welcomed by the person or whole nation of persons being conned by the aforementioned Actors. In our case, it would be China. Speaking of China, the name of the summer-long “exercise” is named “ Jade Helm .” That’s not a very veiled China reference, is it? What, do they think I am, stupid? Or am I being led? Most probably B.

Speaking of actors, Chuck Norris, who is an Establishment-Approved actor, is posturing as a ‘Good Cop’, here, in this drama, too, saying “ don’t mess with Texas ”, and stuff like that.

The Texas congressman is joining others in his state calling for the Pentagon to alter the Jade Helm 15 military exercises .” Actor. Good Cop.

Thinking it through further, I’ll add option D: with the Controlled-Opposition ISIS voodoo doll being shaken this very day in the media, “ ISIS Now in the Heartland !”, maybe they’ll surface some trauma-based-mind-control stooges and have the savior military “take out the terrorists!”, so everyone thinks living in a militarized police state is the way to live.

However, I must opine that none of the aforemtioned gambits would stop the public from waking up to the fact that the folks in charge do not have their best interests at heart, as they profess.

http://www.nationaljournal.com…r-20150505

Louie Gohmert Gets Why Some Texans Are Worried About a Military Takeover

The Texas congressman is joining others in his state calling for the Pentagon to alter the Jade Helm 15 military exercises.

May 5, 2015

U.S. Special Operations Command is preparing to launch a five-month, multi-state exercise across private and public land to prepare Army special forces for threats anywhere in the world. Or at least that’s what the Pentagon would want you to believe (italics not mine – ed). Officials and citizens in Texas, one of the states involved, see something potentially more nefarious in the exercise, dubbed Jade Helm 15. And now Rep. Louie Gohmert is joining them.

“Over the past few weeks, my office has been inundated with calls referring to the Jade Helm 15 military exercise scheduled to take place between July 15 and September 15, 2015,” Gohmert said in a Tuesday statement. " This military practice has some concerned that the U.S. Army is preparing for modern-day martial law. Certainly, I can understand these concerns."

“When leaders within the current administration believe that major threats to the country include those who support the Constitution, are military veterans, or even ‘cling to guns or religion,’ patriotic Americans have reason to be concerned,” Gohmert wrote.