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How the law of attraction fails and becomes brainwashing

by Jon Rappoport

“The focus on positive vs. negative thoughts is juvenile. It’s minor-league foolishness. And it leads people to obsess about their own minds. People aren’t passive magnets that attract and repel. That’s utter nonsense.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)
The law of attraction is stated in two ways.
First, positive thoughts attract positive results in life, and negative thoughts attract negative results. This is mainly a descriptive overview. It doesn’t apply to people who consciously do something to change their own thoughts. It’s a “philosophic” basis for understanding why people get what they get in life.
Therefore, one assumes, if a hundred thousand people are dying of thirst during a drought, they brought that on by thinking a whole lot of negative thoughts.
People who advocate the law of attraction tend to dislike such examples. They sometimes hedge their bets by asserting that external events (e.g., a drought) are quite real and they never claimed otherwise.
This produces a blurry line between events that “just happen” independent of what people are thinking, and events which are the result of negative or positive thoughts.
The second version of the law emphasizes that people, by changing the nature of their own thoughts, automatically affect what they get in life.
Certainly, this isn’t achieved by a person entering his own mind like a surgeon with a scalpel, pruning away the negative. The interior landscape is far too large, the flows of thought are too mercurial, and quite often, what seems like a successful surgery later turns out to be a dud: the old excised thoughts return.
A frontal attack on thought is like trying to wipe out air.
But there are meditations and repetitive affirmations. Some advocates of the law recommend them. Focus on thinking about what you truly want. Clarify such thoughts. Repeat them to yourself over and over. Affirm them. Or concentrate on an object of desire.
Doing this in a dispassionate way hardly calls up very much energy. It’s about as effective as trying to move forward in an active ocean while sitting in a paper boat and paddling with a soup spoon.
What, though, happens if you really believe you can get what you want by thinking positively about it over and over, or by focusing on it?
In that case, the driving engine is that belief.
And this is a whole other territory. Suppose you ardently believe that by visualizing a purple rose sitting on a boiled egg, you will become rich? Suppose you believe that a pink bulldog dropping down from the sky holding the string of a large balloon will give you a new house?
The purple rose and the boiled egg and pink bulldog aren’t the vital components. What’s vital is the underlying belief.
Is belief enough? Will it carry the freight?
There is no blanket conclusion possible. It all depends on who is believing and how they are believing and with what power they are believing, and with what conviction, and with what passion, and with what “belief in their belief.”
I have seen, and you have, too, I’m sure, people who achieve remarkable things based on what they believe.
And it doesn’t matter whether they are engaged in “changing their thoughts from negative to positive.” The law of attraction itself is irrelevant.
Furthermore, people who hold very strong beliefs act on them. They don’t sit in a room and power up that belief-engine and wait for something to happen.

They aren’t involved in some “snap-of-the-fingers” manifestation. They take massive and sustained action.
They live out their beliefs.
They create what wasn’t there before.
And in that act of creating, during a life lived, at some point along the line they experience remarkable collisions of events—the fancy label is synchronicity.

People and situations come to their aid.
You could call that magic. You could call it oobladee. It doesn’t matter.
In large numbers of people, the ordinary notion of the law of attraction helps to make them passive. They wait. They think. They re-think. They spin wheels.
Some of them begin to believe they have to banish the negative, and this process leads them into confusion and discomfort of a high order, because it doesn’t work. Thoughts, untold numbers of floating random thoughts, are the wrong target. They’re a dime a dozen, and there are billions of dozens. Who cares?
The idea of purifying one’s own thoughts is a dead-end alley in the long run.
It becomes a fetish.
And those who preach the “philosophy” are, sometimes, merely interested in controlling the flock. The more androidal members of the flock will, now and then, say, “Did you hear about Bob? He’s in the hospital. Too many negative thoughts.”
On a political level, this degenerates into “we suspect Jones just had an incorrect thought.”
Living a creative life through and by imagination is a whole other process. It’s the major leagues. It’s the expression of life-force in a voice that tears away the curtain of consensus reality.
Inventing what otherwise would never be there.
This kind of life quite naturally, without effort, defuses trillions of sputtering thoughts because they don’t matter. Negative? Positive? Makes no difference. It’s a puerile distinction.
In living a life through and by imagination, one’s past, one’s experiences, feelings, thoughts, memories—they’re all fuel for the fire. In that fire, a soul forges what he will invent, what new reality he will make.
He doesn’t diddle around with “positive and negative.”
Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, the Matrix Revealed, Exit From The Matrix, and Power Outside The Matrix. NoMoreFakeNews.com

The top of the pyramid: The Rothschilds, the British Crown and the Vatican rule the world – PART 3

FROM THE EDITOR:

I found this interesting article that addresses some parts of the history that we never saw in the past or see in present history books, and how the United States and the Federal Government came to be. Due to its length, El Reportero will publish it in parts every week. Hope you enjoy it and helps you to expand your perspective in the history of out political world.  It is also the story of why we pay income tax and to whom – MR. PART 3 of a series

by Before It’s News

http://humansarefree.com/2014/09/the-top-of-pyramid-rothschilds-british.html

“In 1606 [King] James set up the Virginia Company which was granted Royal authority to begin settlements in the province of Virginia, named after Elizabeth I, who had been popularly called the Virgin Queen. The Union Jack first flew on American soil at Jamestown in Virginia as a permanent fixture in the spring of 1607…
“The early members of the Virginia Company were aristocrats who supported the Church of England and the Royalist cause. They included Lord Southampton, the Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Montgomery, the Earl of Salisbury, the Earl of Northampton, and Sir Francis Bacon…
“As chancellor of England, Bacon was able to persuade the king to issue the charters which enabled the new colonies to proliferate in the new world…
“The Virginia Company members who actually settled in America included several members of the Bacon family, and friends of his who were initiates of the Rosy Cross.” — Michael Howard – Occult Conspiracy (quoted by Michael Tsarion)
“I understand from contacts in America that it is through organizations like the London Metal Exchange that profits from the Virginia Company (United States of America) are channeled back to London.”– David Icke – The Biggest Secret;
“The House of Burgesses was formed in Jamestown in 1619. It was the first representative legislative body in the American Colonies. The House passed measures designed to help the company prosper. But a serious Indian uprising in Jamestown in 1622 caused the adventurers to lose what little interest they had left. In 1623, King James decided that the company was being managed poorly. He took over the association in 1624 and dissolved the company.” — World Book Encyclopedia;
“Its shareholders were Londoners, and it was distinguished from the Plymouth Company, which was chartered at the same time and composed largely of men from Plymouth.
“In 1619 the company established continental America’s first true legislature, the General Assembly, which was organized bicamerally. It consisted of the governor and his council, named by the company in England, and the House of Burgesses, made up of two burgesses from each of the four boroughs and seven plantations.
“…The court ruled against the Virginia Company, which was then dissolved, with the result that Virginia was transformed into a royal colony.”– Encyclopedia Britannica;
“This means that all the rights which applied to the owners of the Virginia Company to the gold, silver, minerals and duties, mined and paid in America, still apply to the British families who own the United States of America and the lands of the united states of America.
“Those same percentages have been paid since ‘independence’ and are still being paid by the American people via their federal officials who are, in fact, officials of the Virginia Company – yes, including the President.
“…But here’s yet another twist. Who owns the assets apparently owned by the Virginia Company? Answer: the Vatican.”– David Icke – The Biggest Secret;
“After the original 13 (again!) American colonies won their ‘independence’ and an ‘independent’ country was formed after 1783, the Virginia Company simply changed its name to… the United States of America.
“You see, there are two USAs, or rather a USA and a usA. The united states of America with a lower case ‘u’ and ‘s’ are the lands of the various states. These lands, as we have seen, are still owned by the British Crown as the head of the old Virginia Company, although there is something to add about this in a moment.
“Then there is the United States of America, capital ‘U’ and ‘S’, which is the 68 square miles of land west of the Potomac River on which is built the federal capital, Washington DC and the District of Columbia. It also includes the US protectorates of Guam and Puerto Rico.
“The United States of America is not a country, it is a corporation owned by the same Brotherhood reptilian bloodlines who owned the Virginia Company, because the USA is the Virginia Company!”– David Icke – The Biggest Secret.

Your antibiotic might blind you, cripple you or kill you

by Kali Sinclair

Pharmaceutical drugs come with risks, risks most users choose to ignore. We block out the risks when we hear about a drug on television or the radio. We either skim over the words in print or ignore them altogether. Due to trust that the federal government will protect us and a belief that pharmaceutical companies have our best interest at heart, we play Russian roulette, believing we would never be so unlucky as to suffer a serious side-effect. After all, they are so rare!
We are all aware that antibiotics can cause allergic reactions, even fatal ones. It is not so common knowledge to find an antibiotic can cripple or kill in other ways.
Chris Dannelly was in the prime of his life at age 41. His physical (two months prior to his death) showed he was in excellent health. He was an athlete who stayed in shape. When he came down with the flu and pneumonia, he was prescribed levofloxacin (brand name Levaquin) an antibiotic manufactured by Jansen Pharmaceutical, a division of Johnson and Johnson. This antibiotic was the best selling antibiotic in the United States in 2010.
Chris took two pills. Those two pills killed him
Chris did not have an allergic reaction. He died an excruciatingly painful death from rhabdomyolysis, a syndrome caused by the death of muscle fibers and the release of myoglobin into the bloodstream. Death occurs due to toxic overload with resultant kidney failure, heart attack, liver damage, or compartment syndrome (which inhibits blood flow).
Chris died 48 hours after taking the second pill. The diagnosis of rhabdomyolysis was made through autopsy.
Death and injury caused by Levaquin
Rhabdomyolysis is not the only serious reaction patients have had to Levaquin. Many have experienced Achilles ruptures; severe on-going joint, muscle, or tendon pain; rupture of the retina; or neurological damage that may well be irreversible. Two other possible fatal outcomes are related to skin reactions: Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrosis (TEN). Stevens-Johnson syndrome results in blistering of the mucous membranes, while TEN causes widespread necrosis of the skin. It can literally fall off the body in sheets.
The circular for the drug includes a current standard statement for prescription drugs:
Remember that your doctor has prescribed this medication because he or she has judged that the benefit to you is greater than the risk of side effects. Many people using this medication do not have serious side effects.
This statement is one that supports the mindset that these things happen to other people, not us. Seriously, would any of us risk our health with pharmaceuticals if we really paid attention to and understood the warnings? Not if we understood that foods, herbs, and natural supplements would cure that pneumonia, sinus infection, or strep throat. Not if we all understood that natural treatment strengthens the immune system and that over time through the use of natural remedies we would catch fewer infections, and when we did, they would be less severe.
The beneficial risk profile
Pharmaceutical companies are quick to talk about the benefit risk profile – the fact that a particular drug has helped so many people as opposed to how few it damaged or killed. And though this drug has 20,000 or more lawsuits filed against it, claims can be made that it has helped many more. (And yet, many other medicines with less risk could have been used instead.)
This is a very expensive medication. It makes a great deal of money for its company. It is one of the drugs in the class called fluoroquinolones. Another well-known drug in this class is Cipro.
Do you think Johnson and Johnson bases their risk-benefit calculations on anything other than profit compared to losses through lawsuits? If you do, you drank the Kool-Aid.
If you’ve recently taken antibiotics, this is what you need to do to restore healthy intestinal flora, and check out Bulletproof Your Immune System for real immunity from bacterial infections and other pathogens. See the first source below for more on the importance of gut bacteria. Natural News.

In making a living, we all want to come home

How local oil workers see their national strike working in these times

by David Bacon

Jim Payne is financial secretary of United Steel Workers Local 5, the union for oil workers in northern California, including the struck Tesoro Golden Eagle Refinery.  Tracy Scott is a rank and file worker at the refinery, currently on leave to work for the local as a staff representative. They were recently interviewed in Martinez by David Bacon.

David:  How did the strike come about and what are the issues the union is striking over?
Jim:  The companies had been making economic proposals, but they weren’t addressing any of our proposals on fatigue risk management, contractor facility maintenance, or health and safety.  They were also unwilling to accept our “no retrogression” clause, which has been in our contracts for years.  That’ clause protects our language about successorship, safety, plant closures, layoffs and rate retention.  We’re just not willing to go backwards on those things.  In the last hour before the contract expired the company walked away from the table and was unwilling to continue talking.  It left our national leaders no choice but to start the strike at nine locations nationwide, and this past Saturday at a couple of other locations as well.
We’re striking three Tesoro refineries on the west coast, the Shell Deer Park refinery and chemical plant are out, three Marathon plants are out, and one LyondellBasell. Now two BP plants have been added.  They’re definitely the ones with all the resources. It’s been 35 years since we’ve been on strike, so we don’t take strikes lightly.  But sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
It feels a lot like David and Goliath.  They continue to operate their plants, although not as safely and efficiently as when our members are operating them.  They’re still making money, even though our folks aren’t in there.

D:  You’re a worker at the refinery here, Terry.  What does it mean to be on strike?
Tracy:  I’ve been an employee since 2000.  I was an operator in a hydro processing unit.  We basically process feed stock and take the nitrogen, sulfur and metals out of it.  Then it goes to a cat cracker, which turns it into gasoline and other components.
So striking means facing all the hardships any family would expect to see without a job.  As a union we tell our members to save and be prepared.  We have a really young workforce though, and they’re not as much into saving as they are into living, so that concerns us.  But we have a strike and defense fund that will help those who need it to get through this.  We’re doing pretty well right now.
D:  Is the Golden Eagle refinery operating right now?
J:  Any time we serve strike notice we offer the company a safe and orderly shutdown. Tesoro here accepted the offer, so we negotiated a process and then took the plant down sequentially.  The company is still operating portions of the plant as a terminal, taking product in and sending product out.  But they’re not manufacturing any product.
Golden Eagle is the only one shut down this way.  Tesoro Anacortes and Tesoro Carson are still operating.  We made sure we were striking over unfair labor practices.
Because of that the company can’t replace our folks permanently.  But they can replace us on a temporary basis, and at all the other ten locations management is continuing to operate the plants.
D:  What does “no retrogression” mean, and how does it affect rank and file workers?
J:  The most important agreement that’s covered in our “no retrogression” language is successorship. That means that if a facility is sold, it’s sold with a contract and the new owner has to honor it.  Without that language the new owner wouldn’t have to hire the employees at that location.  We’ve had a number of locations sold over the past years.  I can imagine how bad it would have been if that language hadn’t been there.  The Tesoro refinery itself was sold several times.  The last two times it was sold with the successor language in place, so the contract went with it.
T:  Having gone through three separate owners, it’s extremely important that we’re protected in those events.  The fact that the companies haven’t wanted to put “no retrogression” on the table is pretty telling about where they’re coming from.  Based on my own union involvement, without the protections of the successorship language chances are I wouldn’t be there.
D:  In the Bay Area in the last 35 years since the last strike, we’ve seen a number of industrial accidents, some of them pretty horrifying.  What does the health and safety language in the contract mean in terms of the actual safety of people on the job in the refineries and in the communities around them?

Why the elite are buying secret hideaways

by Paul Joseph Watson

This week’s revelation that the wealthy are purchasing secret hideaways in remote locations in order to escape social upheaval and possible riots is the culmination of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s warning that a worldwide “political awakening” is serving to derail the move towards further global centralization of power.
Economist Robert Johnson made headlines at the recent Davos Economic Forum when he revealed that “hedge fund managers all over the world….are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.”
Johnson cited income inequality and the potential for civil unrest and riots as the reason for the panic.
“A lot of wealthy and powerful people are quite afraid right now – they see us on an unstable trajectory,” said Johnson. “As the system doesn’t have proper resources, as it doesn’t represent people, things are getting more and more dangerous as say Ferguson, Missouri brings to bear.”
However, Johnson’s warning is nothing new – the super rich have been busy securing property in safe heavens for at least five years in anticipation of the next financial collapse.
In 2010, John Malone, billionaire chairman of Liberty Media, announced that he had bought a retreat on the Quebec border as an insurance policy to “have a place to go if things blow up here,” adding that he was concerned about the survival of the dollar and whether or not “America (was) going to make it” through the economic crisis.
In 2012, Hollywood director James Cameron also announced his decision to leave America and move his entire family to a 1,067 hectare farm in New Zealand.
The Bush family also purchased 100,000 acres in Paraguay back as far back as 2006.
There are several reasons why the rich are preparing to flee, but the main factor is the rise of income inequality – a factor that Zbigniew Brzezinski blamed for the “global political awakening” that poses a direct threat to the elite’s bid to further centralize power.
“For the first time in all of human history mankind is politically awakened – that’s a total new reality – it has not been so for most of human history,” said Brzezinski during a 2010 Council on Foreign Relations speech in Montreal, adding that the development was borne out of “global inequities, inequalities, lack of respect, exploitation.”
Brzezinski made similar comments during a November 2012 speech in Poland, in which he admitted that a worldwide “resistance” movement to “external control” driven by “populist activism” is threatening to derail the move towards a new world order.
The former US National Security Advisor also noted that “persistent and highly motivated populist resistance of politically awakened and historically resentful peoples to external control has proven to be increasingly difficult to suppress.”
It is important to note that Brzezinski was not championing this development. In his 1970 book Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technotronic Era, the former Obama advisor heralded the arrival of a technotronic era “dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values” under which citizens would be tightly controlled and manipulated.
The likelihood of widespread disenfranchisement and economic turbulence causing civil unrest has also been repeatedly invoked by economist Martin Armstrong, who correctly predicted the 1987 Black Monday crash as well as the 1998 Russian financial collapse.
“It looks more and more like a serious political uprising will erupt by 2016 once the economy turns down. That is the magic ingredient. Turn the economy down and you get civil unrest and revolution,” wrote Armstrong.
With distrust in government and leadership in the United States and other western countries continuing to remain near historic lows, the toxic cocktail of increased corruption, social alienation, and lack of community (all contributory factors to the 2011 London riots), will heighten the risk of domestic disorder.
As real wages drop it will also become increasingly harder to pacify younger generations via consumer culture. With religion, family and social mobility all declining in influence, lifestyles built around the acquisition of products will become harder to maintain as the economic environment worsens and the wealth gap widens.
Police brutality and perceived widespread injustice will also lead to more unrest in poorer areas as unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri last year.
While the move on behalf of the wealthy to purchase property in safe heavens by no means signifies a relinquishing of power, it does indicate that the super rich are readying insurance policies in the form of secret getaways in case massive political unrest leads to sustained domestic turmoil.
Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71
(Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com).

Ayotzinapa was the last drop in Mexico

by the El Reportero’s wire services

The missing 43 teaching students in Ayotzinapa sparked off a crisis for the Mexican government, because this was the last drop, writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II said.
Usual participant in the Havana International Book Fair, the Mexican novelist, of Spanish origin, talked here about the case that has moved the international public opinion.
Along with journalist Sanjuana Martinez made a thorough analysis on the circumstances leading to the facts in the state of Guerrero, a fief of drug trafficking in Mexico.
They agreed to describe the war against drug cartels as a delusion of delusions, and insisted that the official version on the Ayotzinapa case has not been demonstrated.
The Rosa Luxembourg Foundation sponsored the debate on the September 26 events, a result of the disastrous war on drugs started by former President Felipe Calderon.

Mexican Electoral Institute lives lack of credibility
The President of the National Electoral Institute (INE), Lorenzo Córdova, said that the institution today lives a deficit of public credibility, when seven of the 10 registered parties are blamed of acting in favour of the ruling party.
The seven parties that rose from the table of the General Council of the INE announced the day before that they will not participate in the commissions or until further notice on the Committee on Radio and Television, which met only with three political organizations, according to press reports.
They will also present a resource before the Electoral Court of the Judicial Power against the refusal of six advisors – who were accused of following the line of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), in government, against the refusal to discuss two agreements concerning the use of public resources and social programs.
Following the inauguration of some tables of electoral district, Cordova said that “we are aware of the deficit of the public credibility of the INE, which we have to go to rebuilding, acting in accordance with the law and decisions.”
He proposed to open dialogue with the seven political parties that left the meeting of the General Council as a sign of dissatisfaction, however, he clarified, the lines of INE will not be decisive.
He told the press that the INE does not belittles the approach of seven of 10 political parties, “but also we automatically assume are those who will decide the lines of driving or decision of the Institute.”
He pointed out that therein lies the independence and autonomy of the INE, not only with respect to other bodies of Government, but also of the political parties.”
These seven parties are: The Movement of National Regeneration (Morena), Democratic Revolution (PRD), the Labor Party (PT), left; Acción Nacional (PAN), conservative; Citizen Movement, Social Democrat; Encuentro Social, political centre, and Humanist (PH) , self-proclaimed of participation.
Meanwhile, the three major parties Mexican – PRI, PAN and PRD – began an exchange on the topic to try to stop this crisis of the INE.

Valentine’s Day with Richard Bean, Sapo

by the El Reportero’s staff

Participating Poets include Lateef McLeod, Diego Deleo, Elisabeth Gerringer, Tony Robles and others.
Proceeds will benefit our housing and other programs. Come and enjoy poetry by seniors and people with disabilities, good Mexican food and drinks and support Senior and Disability Action. On Friday, February 13 at 6:00 pm, at Puerto Alegre #2, 2950 25th Street, San Francisco, California.
Tickets available on sliding scale: $5-20. For more information call 415-546-1333 www.sdaction.org.

Dr. Rock & LRI present Valentine’s Day Show!
Richard Bean & Sapo with special guest Raul Rekow (Santana) plus Mission Varrio Project. On Saturday Feb. 14, 2015. Doors 7 p.m. Show at 8, p.m. Club Fox 2209 Broadway Street, Redwood City. For more info call us at 650-369-7770 or  visit us at http://www.clubfoxrwc.com
Tickets $15 Adv. and $20 at the door at:
latinrockinc.net/home/event/SapoValentine or by calling 415-285-7719 or writing Rossie.eros@latinrockinc.com
Do you like jazz?  Are you interested in learning more about Cuba?
Possibly interested in visiting Cuba in December 2015? An academy award nominated, animated, adult love story from Cuba, Chico and Rita, in a private movie screening fundraiser to benefit the Caribbean Basin Institute for Education and Culture.
February 15, 2015, in two showings at  6 p.m. and 8 p.m. The Guild Theater 2828 35th Street, Sacramento, California. For more information, call 916-917-5801.

49th  Friends  of  Brazil  Carnaval  Ball
Featuring from Bahia in Brazil, Sotaque Baiano Band, performing authentic, traditional Brazilian Carnaval music.
Plus the exhilarating sounds of Olodum, Timbalada, Mama Africa, with the drums and dancers of Fogo Na Roupa Escola de Samba, winner of S.F. Street Carnaval 2014, and the boldly colorful, beautifully choreographed, exotic Aquarela Dancers, the beats of DJ Ellen DJ Roberto Martins  and more.
Saturday, Feb. 21, 9:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. At Broadway Studios, 435 Broadway St., San Francisco. Tickets $30, available at Bay Area Brazilian stores, also online at www.brazilianevents.com  — And on sale at the door at $40.
More info from 415-587-4990 or 425-7242, or www.friendsofbrazil.org  or www.tukaevents.com.

Treks For Vets will be hosting a fundraiser dinner for Swords To Plowshares
Treks For Vets is founded by Joe McDonough (3rd Battallion 2nd marines wpns CO). He will be hiking the Mount Everest Base Camp to raise money for Swords to Plowshares. The 2 week trek begins in March 2015.
Swords To Plowshares is a community-based, nonprofit veteran service organization that provides wrap-around care to more than 2,000 veterans yearly in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 1974 they are committed to helping veterans break through the cultural, educational, psychological and economic barriers they often face in their transition to the civilian world.
Saturday, Feb. 21, 6 p.m.-9:30 p.m. at Punjab Chinese Restaurant, 2838 24th St. in San Francisco, cross street is Bryant. $25 at the door 100% going towards Swords to Plowshares. All you can eat buffet, silent auction and guest speakers.

World cinema captures attention in Berlin with festival opening

by the El Reportero’s news services

Recognized film makers as the Peruvian Claudia Llosa and actors of diverse origins as the French Audrey Tautou participate today in the opening of the 65 Edition of the Film Festival of Berlin.
The American director Darren Aronofsky will preside the jury of the contest that begins this Thursday with the projection of the most recent movie of the Spanish Elizabeth Coixet, Nobody wants the night, starred by a luxurious cast: Juliette Binoche, Rinko Kikuchi and Gabriel Byrne.
The official section of the festival of 2015 has 19 applicants to the Bear, icon of its award, and among the competitors there are: a Chilean-Spanish-French documentary directed by Patricio Guzmán, El Botón de Nácar, and other of Pablo Larraín, El Club.
The last Latin American tape that won a golden Bear (the most prestigious award granted in the Festival) was La Teta Asustada (2009), of the Peruvian Llosa, member of the jury in the present edition.
Film makers of Iran, France, Japan, Viet Nam and China complete the selection of this appointment that will be provided with the presence of important stars of the big screen such as Christian Bale, Natalie Portman and Fail Blanchett.
The Panorama section of the Festival will count on productions from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Chile, according to organizers of the well-known Berlinale.
The Panorama section is the second one more important of the festival, that this year will include movies of Morocco, Palestine, the United States, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, Iran, Greece, Russia, Lithuania, Holland, France and Taiwan.

Marimba to be declared Cultural Heritage of America
The Organization of American States (OAS) will declare Guatemalan marimba (variety of xylophone) Americas Cultural Heritage for the world on February 12, said the Ministry of Culture and Sports.
According to the official statement, the declaration will be issued at OAS headquarters in Washington DC, in the United States, during a solemn ceremony to honor that Guatemalan instrument and national symbol.
OAS awards this recognition to cultural expressions that best represent the heritage of American countries.
Two well-known marimba groups are expected to perform in the ceremony to offer a concert of iconic pieces of Guatemalan and Latin American repertoire.
“The marimba sounds like Guatemalans: with a sad joy”, said Guatemalan Valentina Santa Cruz.
The Congress declared the marimba national symbol in 1999, after assessing its historical, cultural, artistic and traditional values.
The Ministry of Education is required to teach the instrument in public and private schools under the 31-99 decree.
It was also agreed in the decree the celebration of the Marimba Day every February 20th in Guatemala.

Is consciousness an illusion?

by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
New America Media

There were two big takeaways from President Obama’s Cuban opening. The first is obvious. After 55 years of U.S.-backed invasions, covert efforts to sabotage and overthrow Fidel Castro, an embargo, and a Cold War freeze in diplomatic relations, the U.S. policy toward Cuba has been an abject failure. Raul Castro remains the official government head, and Fidel, is still a presence in Cuban life and a bigger than ever figure internationally. Obama took the logical step that almost certainly would have been taken years ago, except for a politically retrograde GOP and older, politically connected Cuban Americans, and that is to normalize relations with the island.
Obama pointed to the obvious when he said the old policies, meaning containment and subversion, didn’t “make sense.” More Cubans are travelling to wherever they can get a visa, political dissent and expression is more open than ever, and there are more private owned businesses and farms in Cuba. While Cuba is still officially a one party-state, Cuban leaders have repeatedly made clear they are committed to real reforms. In an extended visit to Cuba a decade ago, I saw firsthand the changes in tourism, trade, and people-friendly relations in Havana and other cities that I visited.
Given that, and the polls that show that a majority of Americans want an end to the embargo, Obama’s move was more a pragmatic than a bold step. Still, the devil is in the details about how quickly there will be full official diplomatic relations, free trade and free exchange of goods, services and technology, a formal lifting of the embargo, foreign investment, travel, and family relations restored between Cubans in the island and those living here.
But the commonsense move to normalize relations is less important than the timing of the move and the domestic political consequences of it.
The prolonged and outdated battering of Cuba was never because it posed any real military or economic threat to the U.S. It was about U.S. domestic politics. Ten presidents before Obama were held hostage to the GOP-Cuban lobby and the fear of being branded soft on Cuba. This was tossed at any president and seen as the political death knell for Democratic presidential contenders. This unremitting hostility has not abated. Florida Senator Marco Rubio, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, have repeatedly spoken out against any normalization of relations. Rubio was even more strident on the pending thaw, calling it “disgraceful.” All have their eye on a 2016 White House bid. All, as in the past, were playing the anti-Castro card, to the conservative GOP base.
Obama’s Cuba initiative can’t be separated from his escalating defiance of the GOP. In the aftermath of its November mid-term election shellacking, the Democratic Party has been in a desperate search to find its legs. It has been denounced for not fighting back harder on issues from opposition to the Keystone pipeline, the relentless GOP assaults on the Affordable Care Act and the recent budget deal that was stuffed with financial giveaway goodies to Wall Street.
With the White House and even more Senate and Congressional seats on the line in 2016, Obama is still the key to Democratic hopes for a strong comeback. Obama’s willingness to weld the executive pen on immigration reform and a defiant promise to use it whenever and wherever he can to push initiatives that a GOP -controlled House has stymied at every turn is crucial to the party.
Possible 2016 Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders were quick to pick up on the significance of Obama’s Cuba normalization proposals and applaud them. It puts the Democratic Party firmly on record as reversing a failed, flawed policy that’s been an albatross around its neck for decades. Clinton, the presumptive favorite for the Democratic nomination, would be the first official presidential candidate to call for full normalization.
Obama’s Cuba move can’t be considered on the groundbreaking magnitude of Nixon’s China opening or Reagan’s working both sides of the street with the Soviet Union, promoting exchanges between students, scientists, artists, and local officials while proclaiming the avowed intent to bring down the “evil empire.” But it sent a welcome signal that on a thorny foreign policy issue such as Cuba, Obama will not succumb to GOP mania and intimidation. This makes his Cuba opening more than just about Cuba.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: twitter.com/earlhutchinson

The top of the pyramid: The Rothschilds, the British Crown and the Vatican rule the world – Part 2

FROM THE EDITOR:

I found this interesting article that addresses some parts of the history that we never saw in the past or see in present history books. Due to its length, El Reportero will publish it in parts every week. Hope you enjoy it and helps you to expand your perspective in the history of out political world.  It is also the story of why we pay income tax and to whom — MR. PART 2 of a series

by Before It’s News

http://humansarefree.com/2014/09/the-top-of-pyramid-rothschilds-british.html

The Crown views our participation in these contracts of commercial equity as being voluntary and that any gain accrued is taxable, as the gain wouldn’t have been possible were in not for the Crown.
They view the system of interstate banks as their own property. Any profit or gain experienced by anyone with a bank account (or loan, mortgage or credit card) carries with it – as an operation of law – the identical same full force and effect as if the Crown had created the gain.
Bank accounts fall outside the umbrella of Fourth Amendment protection because a commercial contract is in effect and the Bill of Rights cannot be held to interfere with the execution of commercial contracts. The Crown also views bank account records as their own private property, pursuant to the bank contract that each of us signed and that none of us ever read.
The rare individual who actually reads the bank contract will find that they agreed to be bound by Title 26 and under section 7202 agreed not to disseminate any fraudulent tax advice.

This written contract with the Crown also acknowledges that bank notes are taxable instruments of commerce.
When we initially opened a bank account, another juristic personality was created. It is this personality (income and assets) that IRS agents are excising back to the Crown through taxation.
A lot of ink is being spilled currently over Social Security.
Possession of a Social Security Number is known in the Crown’s lex as ‘conclusive evidence’ of our having accepted federal commercial benefits. This is another example of an equity relationship with the Crown.
Presenting one’s Social Security Number to an employer seals our status as taxpayers, and gives rise to liability for a reciprocal quid pro quo payment of taxes to the Crown.
Through the Social Security Number we are accepting future retirement endowment benefits. Social Security is a strange animal. If you die, your spouse gets nothing, but rather, what would have gone to you is divided (forfeited) among other premium payers who haven’t died yet.
But the Crown views failure to reciprocate in any of these equity attachments as an act of defilement and will proceed against us with all due prejudice.
For a person to escape the tentacles of the Crown octopus, a thoroughgoing study of American jurisprudence is required. One would have to be deemed a ‘stranger to the public trust,’ forfeit all enfranchisement benefits and close all bank accounts, among other things.
Citizenship would have to be made null and forfeit and the status of ‘denizen’ enacted. If there are any persons extant who have passed through this fire, I would certainly appreciate hearing from them.
The United States of America is a corporation, ruled by the British Crown and the Vatican
The USA is, and always has been, a huge corporation ruled from abroad. Its initial name was the Virginia Company and it is owned by the British Crown and the Vatican, who receive their yearly share of the profits.
The US presidents are appointed CEO’s (they are not elected by us!), and their allegiance is to the “board of directors,” not to the American citizens. We are seen as employees of the company and voting is designed as a distraction meant to offer us the illusion that we have a say in all this.