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Drones That Shoot Tasers Are Now Legal for Police Use in North Dakota

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<h2>Drones That Shoot Tasers Are Now Legal for Police Use in North Dakota</h2>
<span>Drones That Shoot Tasers Are Now Legal for Police Use in North Dakota</span>
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<div>This article originally appeared on <span><a href="http://truth-out.org/" rel="nofollow">Truthout</a></span></div>
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<p>The good news is that a new law that was passed this year in North Dakota requires police in the state to obtain a court order before using a drone for surveillance.</p>
<p>The bad news, however, is that according to an August 27 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/08/new-law-permits-north-dakota-cop-drones-to-fire-bean-bag-rounds-from-the-sky/" rel="nofollow">Ars Technica article</a>, the same legislation allows local police to equip drones with non-lethal weapons such as tasers and utilize them for law enforcement:</p>
<p>Legal experts are very concerned that a new North Dakota law which allows law enforcement drones to be armed with so-called less-than-lethal weapons – including stun guns and beanbag rounds – could be highly problematic. The law, however, explicitly forbids lethal weapons.</p>
<p>Among other reasons, such weapons have been shown that they can, in fact, kill people.</p>
<p>According to research by The Guardian, 39 Americans have died this year alone at the hands of police wielding a Taser. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that more than 20 North American cities are pursuing large silicone-based projectiles as yet another alternative weapon.</p>
<p>North Dakota is believed to be the first state in the union to allow such weapons aboard state and local police drones.</p>
<p>In a grim irony, the use of drones for tasering people does not require a court order, while surveillance, which will not physically harm an individual, does. It's a positive development to require the police to seek court approval to spy on people, but not when the tradeoff is the unsupervised use of painful and potentially deadly "non-lethal" weapons.</p>
<p>Ars Technica quotes Brian Owsley, a former federal judge and current law professor at the University of North Texas, objecting to the new law that took effect in August:</p>
<p>"Drones, like stingrays [or cell-site simulators], were designed for military applications and are now being sold by manufacturers for use by local law enforcement because they need to expand their market," he told Ars by e-mail.</p>
<p>"I question in what circumstance there would be a need for a use of force administered by a drone," Owsley said.</p>
<p>Owsley makes a couple of points worth expanding upon.</p>
<p>Firstly, he asserts that drone use expansion is due, in large part, to the need of military drone manufacturers to create a new market for their product. This exemplifies the dangers of an unrestrained "free market" approach to selling weaponry. Because a military-industrial-complex company wants to increase its profit, it creates a perceived need for drones and "non-lethal" weaponry where none exists. In doing so, it exposes the public to an increased danger of the use of excessive force by police, now in the form of unmanned technology attacking from the sky.</p>
<p>Secondly, Owsley implies that because local police drones with "non-lethal" weapons are unnecessary, cops would probably use them when there is no need to do so. One can also speculate that police officers might find it more convenient to “patrol” their beats from a room with a joystick and drone camera monitor than in a squad car.</p>
<p>North Dakota State Rep. Rick Becker, who originally sponsored the bill with the intention of it focusing mostly on the requirement of a surveillance warrant, was allegedly horrified when the law enforcement lobby – goosed on by the drone industry – hijacked the legislation.Representative Becker told Arts Technica that he worries about the desensitization that such a drone policy will create:</p>
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<p>The gist of why I don't want the non-lethals allowed is the decision to use force on another citizen, the normal morals and process of thinking goes out the window when it's like you're playing a video game. It's dehumanized, it's depersonalized.</p>
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<p>Mission creep is naturally a major concern here. Will the next step be permitting local law enforcement to use lethally armed drones? We all know where that ends up. Just ask the relatives of the estimated 2,500 people who have been killed by drone strikes authorized by President Obama.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/drones-that-shoot-tasers-now-legal-for-police-use-in-north-dakota/19524-drones-that-shoot-tasers-now-legal-for-police-use-in-north-dakota#.VfMjJgbRQJY.mailto" rel="nofollow">Originally published by Truthout</a></p>
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<p>Set to deliver record-breaking global temperatures in 2015 and 2016, the world’s climate has reached a major turning point according to a new report from the U.K. Met Office.</p>
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<p>Known as HB 40, the rule pushed by oil and gas companies declares the state of Texas can preempt any health or safety regulations written by local governments if the industry doesn't deem them “commercially reasonable.”</p>
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<p>The financial transaction tax would limit the large-scale trades that economists say are now occurring far too quickly and creating the volatility that's again on display with the recent market plunge.</p>
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<p>Unions are spreading like wildfire through the tech capital's low-wage workforce.</p>
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<div><span><em>6 days 5 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>The U.K. government this week is once again inviting tyrants and human rights abusers to buy weapons and torture equipment – and facing a loud coalition of activists.</p>
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<div><span><em>5 days 10 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>If it wasn’t clear before, it seems quite evident that the tide is turning: big biotech companies are losing influence by the day, and the addition of two more European countries banning GMOs is evidence of that.</p>
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<div><span><em>5 days 7 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>The UC system has sold off its endowment and pension fund holdings in coal and oil sands companies, a $200-million move that officials said Wednesday was in response to both environmental concerns and rising financial risk in those industries.</p>
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<div><span><em>4 days 9 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Buyer beware. And buyer, be aware – the same forces that led to the mass foreclosures and easy acquisition can also make life difficult for even the most earnest property owner.</p>
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<div><span><em>6 days 5 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Critics cry foul as production exploring youth radicalization gets mysteriously pulled after police visit, in what many people are calling informal and political censorship.</p>
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<p>This is not merely a crisis of Greece, or a crisis of debt — it's a crisis in the structure of the eurozone itself, where national governments can't implement monetary policy to support their fiscal policies.</p>
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<p>Jeremy Corbyn’s fairer rent price policy, which puts controls on the cost of rent to prevent small businesses being priced out of the soaring market, is one of many incentives for entrepreneurs and small business owners to back him and his party.</p>
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<div>Nathan Schneid…</div>
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armageddon news revolution Drones That Shoot Tasers Are Now Legal for Police Use in North Dakota

Drones That Shoot Tasers Are Now Legal for Police Use in North Dakota Drones That Shoot Tasers Are Now Legal for Police Use in North ...

Global Climate 2016: Is Earth At The Tipping Point?

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<h2>Global Climate 2016: Is Earth At The Tipping Point?</h2>
<span>Global Climate 2016: Is Earth At The Tipping Point?</span>
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<div>This article originally appeared on <span><a href="http://www.guardiannews.com/" rel="nofollow">The Guardian</a></span></div>
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<p>The world’s climate has reached a major turning point and is set to deliver record-breaking global temperatures in 2015 and 2016, according to a new report from the U.K. Met Office.</p>
<p>Natural climate cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are reversing and will amplify the strong manmade-driven global warming, the report concludes. This will change weather patterns around the world including more heatwaves, but it is possible that the U.K. will actually have cooler summers.</p>
<p>“We will look back on this period as an important turning point,” said Professor Adam Scaife, who led the Met Office analysis. “That is why we are emphasizing it, because there are so many big changes happening at once. This year and next year are likely to be at, or near, record levels of warming.”</p>
<p>The record for the hottest year was broken in 2014, when heatwaves scorched China, Russia, Australia and parts of South America. But, despite rising greenhouse gas emissions continuing to trap more heat on Earth, the last decade has seen relatively slow warming of air temperatures, dubbed a “pause” in climate change by some.</p>
<p>In fact, global warming had not paused at all. Instead, natural climate cycles led to more of the trapped heat being stored in the oceans. Now, according to the Met Office report, all the signs are that the pause in rising air temperatures is over and the rate of global warming will accelerate fast in coming years.</p>
<p>The warning comes ahead of a crunch UN summit in Paris in November at which the world’s nations must hammer out a deal to halt climate change. Opponents of action to curb climate change have cited the pause as a reason to reject urgent cuts in carbon emissions.</p>
<p>But Professor Rowan Sutton, at the University of Reading and who reviewed the Met Office report, said: “None of the debate around the pause has changed our long term understanding of greenhouse-gas-driven climate change. That is the most fundamental point for Paris. The fact that 2014, 2015 and 2016 look like being among the very warmest years on record is a further reminder about climate change.”</p>
<p>The report analyses the latest data on all the key factors that combine to determine the global climate. The warming caused by carbon emissions is the largest influence and continues to rise.</p>
<p>But the El Niño natural cycle of warming in the equatorial Pacific, that can be a significant peak in this cycle, is now underway. It is expected to be the strongest El Niño since 1998 and will push up global temperatures – it has already weakened the Indian monsoon and the Atlantic hurricane season. Another longer-term natural cycle in the Pacific (the Pacific Decadal Oscillation) also looks to be shifting into its warmer phase.</p>
<p>In contrast, there are now strong signs that a natural cycle in the North Atlantic is moving into a cooler period. This has less impact on global temperature than manmade climate change or Pacific ocean cycles but it influences conditions in the U.K. and Northern Europe.</p>
<p>“If the Atlantic cooling continues as we expect, that would favour cooler and on the whole, drier summers, but there are other factors that compete to affect our climate,” said Sutton. Periods of cooler Atlantic waters in the past, such the 1980s, have also been associated with severe African droughts but more rain in the U.S.</p>
<p>Scaife said the weather experienced in specific places from year-to-year results from the combined effects of all the natural cycles and manmade global warming. “A lot of these cycles can occur without the influence of human beings, but they are now occurring on top of the influence of man’s activities,” he said. “So now, for example, when an El Niño comes and raises the global temperature, that is the icing on the cake, the extra bit that creates the record year.”</p>
<p>“Although these natural variations continue to be important, and will probably determine exactly which year breaks the record, you have to put them into context,” Scaife said. “In terms of global temperature, they are all smaller than the amount of warming we have already created.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/14/2015-and-2016-set-to-break-global-heat-records-says-met-office" rel="nofollow">Originally published by The Guardian</a></p>
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<p>Set to deliver record-breaking global temperatures in 2015 and 2016, the world’s climate has reached a major turning point according to a new report from the U.K. Met Office.</p>
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<p>Known as HB 40, the rule pushed by oil and gas companies declares the state of Texas can preempt any health or safety regulations written by local governments if the industry doesn't deem them “commercially reasonable.”</p>
</div>
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<p>The financial transaction tax would limit the large-scale trades that economists say are now occurring far too quickly and creating the volatility that's again on display with the recent market plunge.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
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<p>Unions are spreading like wildfire through the tech capital's low-wage workforce.</p>
</div>
</div>
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<div><span><em>6 days 5 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>The U.K. government this week is once again inviting tyrants and human rights abusers to buy weapons and torture equipment – and facing a loud coalition of activists.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 10 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>If it wasn’t clear before, it seems quite evident that the tide is turning: big biotech companies are losing influence by the day, and the addition of two more European countries banning GMOs is evidence of that.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>5 days 7 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p>The UC system has sold off its endowment and pension fund holdings in coal and oil sands companies, a $200-million move that officials said Wednesday was in response to both environmental concerns and rising financial risk in those industries.</p>
</div>
<div><span><em>4 days 9 hours</em> ago</span></div>
</div>
<div>
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<p>Buyer beware. And buyer, be aware – the same forces that led to the mass foreclosures and easy acquisition can also make life difficult for even the most earnest property owner.</p>
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<div><span><em>6 days 5 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>The action follows a series of strikes this spring, when thousands of Washington teachers in more than 60 school districts demanded better pay and benefits as well as reductions in class sizes.</p>
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<p>An indigenous community called the Ka'apor in northern Brazil is fighting to achieve what the government has long failed to do: halt illegal logging in their corner of the Amazon.</p>
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<p>This week, grab your bicycle and give cars a well-deserved middle finger in a worldwide initiative to cut emissions, get outside, move your ass and interact with your city and people.</p>
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armageddon news revolution Global Climate 2016: Is Earth At The Tipping Point?

Global Climate 2016: Is Earth At The Tipping Point? Global Climate 2016: Is Earth At The Tipping Point? This article originally app...

Our Small Texas Town Banned Fracking — Then Big Oil Stepped In to Change the Laws

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<h2>Our Small Texas Town Banned Fracking — Then Big Oil Stepped In to Change the Laws</h2>
<span>Our Small Texas Town Banned Fracking — Then Big Oil Stepped In to Change the Laws</span>
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<div>This article originally appeared on <span><a href="http://www.salon.com/" rel="nofollow">Salon</a></span></div>
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<p>“Shit, the cops are here,” Jon said from behind the wheel. Our scouts had given the all clear just a few minutes ago, but now two police cars were blocking the road, red and blue lights flashing in the morning’s early glow.</p>
<p>With characteristic composure, Jon made a quick decision and jerked the wheel of the Mazda down a narrow road through the neighborhood by the fracking site. Children were walking to the school bus and stared in our windows as we drove by. Maggie got a text message and announced from the back seat that police were also blocking the road on the other end of the site.</p>
<p>“How are we going to get through?” I was panicked, and looked back over my shoulder at the tense faces of Tara Linn and Niki, jammed with Maggie in the back seat.</p>
<p>“We’ll figure it out,” Jon said as he pulled over at the end of a cul de sac and started calling the scouts. A van followed us down the street. “It’s the homies,” Maggie said, referring to a group of young friends and fracking activists who had come out to help us. They parked across the street from us and nodded nonchalantly in our direction.</p>
<p>It was 6:30 a.m. on June 1 in Denton, Texas, and we had come to defend our fracking ban. Last November, Denton citizens voted in a landslide to ban hydraulic fracturing (an oil and gas well stimulation technique that can be invasive and toxic). The ban was our last option after years of trying to accommodate an industry that refused to compromise. In January 2013, we passed rules to keep fracking away from residential areas. But in September of that year, they kept on fracking less than 200 feet from homes.</p>
<p>Gas well operators and industry representatives claimed they didn’t have to follow local rules, because they held more than 11,000 acres of Denton territory that were grandfathered under old laws written long before the impacts of fracking were understood. Without the ban, we feared our local regulations would be trampled again and again. It would be spell mass neighborhood industrialization across our town.</p>
<p>The Denton fracking ban shocked the world: We were a small Texas town that stood up to big oil and gas despite the fact that they outspent our grass-roots group 15 to 1. The industry sued the city the morning after the vote. Fearing that the ban would be upheld under the existing legal regime, however, they put most of their efforts into a legislative end run, using their outsize influence in Austin to change the rules of the game.</p>
<p>Over the next several months the industry bought itself a new law. Known widely as HB 40, it declares that the state of Texas expressly preempts (trumps) regulations written by local governments. Cities and towns can only pass laws that the industry deems to be “commercially reasonable.”</p>
<p>HB 40 has been talked about as a ban on local fracking bans, but the impetus behind it is far more nefarious. It is an attempt to upend the long Texas tradition of local control over oil and gas, a tradition that prioritized community well-being over profits. It is the product of forces that are trying to disenfranchise communities across the state and roll back hard-won protections for health and safety.</p>
<p>The industry is setting the stage for a renewed onslaught of fracking once they begin exporting liquefied natural gas to Europe and Asia where they can make much more money than on the saturated domestic market.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/piggy-bank.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/piggy-bank.jpg" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Of Fracktivists and Frackettes</strong></p>
<p>Tara Linn and I are members of the group that spearheaded the Frack Free Denton campaign. Niki and Tara Linn are two of the “Frackettes,” a parody singing troupe they created to mock the propaganda the industry had cooked up during the months leading up to the vote on the ban (at one point even claiming that I had “direct ties” to the Russian government). The plan on that June morning was for the three of us to blockade the access road to the frack site. Others would support us and take pictures. I had Maggie’s phone number written on my arm in case I needed to call her later about bail. But now the whole plan looked like it might fall through.</p>
<p>Sitting in the car, I watched the clock tick to 6:35. In 25 minutes, Vantage Energy would start fracking the first wells in Denton since the ban passed. We couldn’t sit back and just let that happen. I had stayed up past 2 a.m. polishing a post that would go live on Facebook in two hours. In it, I wrote, that “A just law would give those exposed to the harms of fracking a meaningful voice. An unjust law would subordinate those voices to the dictates of the powerful and wealthy. HB 40 is an unjust law.”</p>
<p>“All right,” Jon said as he put his phone back in his pocket. “Here’s the plan. There’s a little road up ahead that can get us close to the site. From there, we’ll just have to hope we can scurry to the gate before we are seen.”</p>
<p>We pulled up to the end of another residential street and I got out of the car, my body shaking with adrenaline. The air was still crisp and the grass was covered in dew. The homies pulled “the ordinance” out of the van – it was a 6-foot-wide piece of particle board with the preamble of our fracking ban painted on it. We were going to affix the giant ordinance to the gates of the site, so that the industry would have to literally rip apart our democratic vote in order to commence with fracking.</p>
<p>Everyone milled around aimlessly for a moment, trying to steel our nerves. Niki, Tara Linn and I decided against bringing our pillows with us, figuring we may not be on the site very long, if at all. Suddenly, Theo, a member of the support team, grabbed the ordinance with both hands and started to jog across a little ditch separating us from Nail Road, where the access gate was located. “Let’s do this!” he said looking over his shoulder at us as he lugged the ordinance through the wet grass. I turned to Tara Linn and she smiled at me before we made a run for it.</p>
<p>We got to the road in between the two police checkpoints about 50 yards from the gate. Because of the way the road curved we couldn’t see either checkpoint, and it appeared that we hadn’t been spotted. We didn’t know whether to run or walk, so we walked fast, hearts pounding. I caught up to Niki and Tara Linn and we held hands as we followed Jon to the site. There was one police car parked on the large concrete pad on the side of the road in front of the gate, but as we got close we heard Jon say, “There’s no one inside!”</p>
<p>At that point we broke into a sprint to get into our positions. The three of us sat down in front of the gate and linked our arms together. Just then, we saw a police officer running toward us as Jon walked slowly in his direction with his hands out and visible. When the officer got to us, he said, “Oh, Dr. Briggle!” He was clearly surprised to see me. After years of giving wonkish policy recommendations at city council meetings, I was now sitting near the cattle guard in front of a frack site. Next he turned to Tara Linn and said, “Ms. Hunter, I’m a big fan of the Frackettes.” He then stood back and said to the crowd, “Go ahead and take your pictures.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/fab5386e-44e9-4ab6-9ba4-62ff6510b59c-2060x1236.jpeg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="fracking bans, Denton fracking ban, Frack Free Denton, hydraulic fracturing, Denton Drilling Awareness Group" src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/fab5386e-44e9-4ab6-9ba4-62ff6510b59c-2060x1236.jpeg" title="fracking bans, Denton fracking ban, Frack Free Denton, hydraulic fracturing, Denton Drilling Awareness Group" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Local Control</strong></p>
<p>When it comes to fracking, the biggest question is often not what the rules should be but rather who should write the rules. This is the jurisdictional battle at the heart of debates about local control. Should it be the state or cities?</p>
<p>The issue of local control has its roots in the emergence of modern cities and their relationship with centralized organs of power like the crown. In the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes argued that we must have a Leviathan, a single ruler, to quash disagreements and ensure peace. For Hobbes, the thought of a bunch of cities making their own rules was anathema. It would just gum up the works. He lamented “the immoderate greatness” of towns in the commonwealth and saw cities as deviants, lesser communities in the bowels of a greater community like “wormes in the entrayles of a naturall man.” They are forever “Disputing against absolute Power . . . [and] medling with the Fundamentall Lawes.”</p>
<p>These are the origins of contemporary talk by the industry and our legislators in Austin about the need for “regulatory certainty” and the supposed ills of a “patchwork of local regulations.” I couldn’t help thinking of Austin as the Leviathan – ironic given all the lip service paid down there to small government. From the perspective of the state, Denton (or any other city on the shale) is not a community – it’s a node on an energy network.</p>
<p>Soon there were about 20 protesters on site holding banners and signs, breaking out in spontaneous chants. There must have been at least eight police officers there too. A few of them started issuing verbal warnings that we were trespassing and needed to vacate the premises. Other officers were talking through the window of a pickup truck with its driver who had stopped in front of our seated bodies. Two large tanker trucks had pulled up behind him and were parked on Nail Road, which runs alongside the entrance gate to the frack site.</p>
<p>The chief of police, Lee Howell, is a friend of my family and he briefly checked in on us. I thanked him for the way his team was handling the situation and assured him our intentions were peaceful. I would later learn he had been texting my wife, Amber, from his position at the southern police checkpoint on Nail Road. He let her know I was all right and even apologized for the fact that it appeared he was going to have to arrest me.</p>
<p>After a while, the police cleared everyone off the concrete pad except for Niki, Tara Linn and me. Sgt. Jenkins, with 30 years of service in Denton, leaned over one more time to issue a final warning and hand us a notice of criminal trespass. He stepped to the side to let us talk it over, but we were determined. We spoke not a word, and just kept staring at the bumpers of the trucks and the rooftops of the homes in the neighborhood across the street. A protester called out in a friendly, teasing voice from the side of the road, “You know you’re about to arrest the Frackettes!” The sergeant, leaning against his police cruiser, hollered back, “I know, it’s killing me!”</p>
<p>A few minutes later, our time was up and Sgt. Jenkins asked if I would walk under my own power or if they were going to have to drag me away. I said I would walk with them and for the first time I choked up as I tried to express my gratitude for their service. The sergeant leaned down and shook my hand, saying, “Thanks for all you’ve done for Denton.” Then I was put in handcuffs and escorted to the police car.</p>
<p>Tara Linn and Niki were also put in handcuffs, except theirs were pink. They joined me in the back of the police car and we drove away down Nail Road toward the city jail. I watched the neighborhood slip by out the window, trying to see the home where we had collected a water sample just a few days ago. The last time fracking happened in this area, the community well water turned oily and cloudy. This time if it happened again we would have a baseline sample to establish causality.</p>
<p>At jail, the officers took our mug shots and fingerprints. Tara Linn and Niki were put in a cell with the message “Hey girli, stay cool” scrawled in black ink on the ceiling. I was assigned to a cell down the hall, a Spartan concrete cube with a white metal door that slammed closed behind me. We were each issued a blanket and a rubber mattress to set in the metal frames of the bunk beds.</p>
<p>As I lay exhausted on my mattress I could hear the Frackettes singing down the hall, measured and powerful with voices in a harmony that flowed right through the concrete walls:</p>
<p>"People gonna rise like the water</p>
<p>Gonna slow this chaos down.</p>
<p>I hear the voice of my great granddaughter</p>
<p>Sayin’ stop this fracking now."</p>
<p>With each repetition I felt an enduring kind of fellowship I never knew existed.</p>
<p>But when the chant stopped I felt a dire anxiety – is this the way it’s going to end? We had spent years knocking on doors, organizing neighborhood meetings, marching in parades, and speaking at town hall debates. Our voices had echoed far and wide. Now all I heard was an ear-ringing silence.</p>
<p><em>Adam Briggle is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of North Texas and a member of the Denton Drilling Awareness Group, which led the successful Frack Free Denton Campaign. He is author of "A Field Philosopher’s Guide to Fracking" (W.W. Norton), which tells the story of fracking in Denton through both his personal involvement and his philosophical theory of innovation.</em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/09/07/we_were_a_small_texas_town_that_banned_fracking_then_the_oil_industry_stepped_in/" rel="nofollow">Originally published by Salon</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/dfwd-poster-2.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="" src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/dfwd-poster-2.jpg" /></a></p>
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<p>Set to deliver record-breaking global temperatures in 2015 and 2016, the world’s climate has reached a major turning point according to a new report from the U.K. Met Office.</p>
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<p>Known as HB 40, the rule pushed by oil and gas companies declares the state of Texas can preempt any health or safety regulations written by local governments if the industry doesn't deem them “commercially reasonable.”</p>
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<p>The financial transaction tax would limit the large-scale trades that economists say are now occurring far too quickly and creating the volatility that's again on display with the recent market plunge.</p>
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<p>Unions are spreading like wildfire through the tech capital's low-wage workforce.</p>
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<p>The U.K. government this week is once again inviting tyrants and human rights abusers to buy weapons and torture equipment – and facing a loud coalition of activists.</p>
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<div><span><em>5 days 10 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>If it wasn’t clear before, it seems quite evident that the tide is turning: big biotech companies are losing influence by the day, and the addition of two more European countries banning GMOs is evidence of that.</p>
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<p>The UC system has sold off its endowment and pension fund holdings in coal and oil sands companies, a $200-million move that officials said Wednesday was in response to both environmental concerns and rising financial risk in those industries.</p>
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<p>Buyer beware. And buyer, be aware – the same forces that led to the mass foreclosures and easy acquisition can also make life difficult for even the most earnest property owner.</p>
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<p>Our problems have nothing to do with what happens in bedrooms or whether women can end their pregnancies. They have have everything to do with what occurs in boardrooms and whether corporations and the wealthy get to undermine our democracy.</p>
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<p>If it wasn’t clear before, it seems quite evident that the tide is turning: big biotech companies are losing influence by the day, and the addition of two more European countries banning GMOs is evidence of that.</p>
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<p>"We need a government that is not captured by the tiniest fraction of the 1 percent."</p>
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armageddon news revolution Our Small Texas Town Banned Fracking — Then Big Oil Stepped In to Change the Laws

Our Small Texas Town Banned Fracking — Then Big Oil Stepped In to Change the Laws Our Small Texas Town Banned Fracking — Then Big Oil...

Turning Pennies Into Billion$: The Tiny Tax that Wall Street Fears

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<h2>Turning Pennies Into Billion$: The Tiny Tax that Wall Street Fears</h2>
<span>Turning Pennies Into Billion$: The Tiny Tax that Wall Street Fears</span> <a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/field/image/financial-transaction-tax.jpeg?itok=TZxmdEmk" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/styles/slide_narrow/public/field/image/financial-transaction-tax.jpeg?itok=TZxmdEmk" /></a>
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<p>In Chicago – where hunger strikers are protesting school closures, where school closures result from throwing public money into risky Wall Street ventures, where risky ventures happen under the nose of venture-capitalist-in-chief Rahm Emanuel – people want a financial transaction tax.</p>
<p>Lara Weber of the Chicago Tribune editorial board <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/blog/ct-rahm-emanuel-budget-town-halls-20150904-story.html" rel="nofollow">describes</a> a recent town hall meeting in Chicago where the mayor attended. It was a budget meeting with 500 people, many of whom “took time to register for their allotted 60 seconds of microphone time and got their brief chance to address the mayor,” writes Weber, and asked “thoughtful questions about why the city’s red-light camera system is still in place, despite its deep flaws. They asked how the mayor intends to prioritize child care funding. They recommended that Emanuel pursue a financial transaction tax.”</p>
<p>The mayor, whose loyalties are clear, loathes the idea of a financial transaction tax for the same reason that Wall Street fears it – not because it would be especially cumbersome (read on), but because it represents a democratically-imposed limit on the financial class against doing whatever it wants with our money.</p>
<p>A financial transaction tax (FTT) is a tiny charge placed on financial (rather than consumer) transactions. It can range from a dime to fifty cents per $1,000 exchanged. Many countries have particular transaction taxes – <a href="http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/peru/paying-taxes/" rel="nofollow">Peru</a> for foreign wire transfers, <a href="http://taxsummaries.pwc.com/uk/taxsummaries/wwts.nsf/ID/Finland-Corporate-Other-taxes" rel="nofollow">Finland</a> for Finnish securities and derivatives, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-31/french-lawmakers-pass-budget-bill-including-transaction-tax" rel="nofollow">France</a> for stock purchases of publicly traded French companies with a market value over €1 billion. Brazil used to have a financial transaction tax, then it didn’t, and <a href="http://en.mercopress.com/2015/08/30/brazil-wants-to-revive-financial-transaction-tax-to-increase-revenue" rel="nofollow">now it wants one again</a>.</p>
<p>Supporters of an FTT in the U.S. have been pushing the plan for years, though it’s not as alluring, loud or radical-sounding as public banks or worker-owned cooperatives. Experts on the tax tell me that global cooperation will make it work even better (money travels easily) and that we can start it anywhere – particularly in cities where financial trading is concentrated, like New York and Chicago.</p>
<p>I recently spoke with James Henry, an attorney, senior fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable International Investment, and an adviser to the Tax Justice Network. Henry says the financial transaction tax, which is designed to extract money from high-frequency trading – 68% of which is controlled by nine powerful banks, including some with criminal convictions – is a “positive project” for economic justice advocates. “Simple and intelligible,” an open-and-shut case.</p>
<p>Henry and other proponents say the tax would do two critical things to correct the imbalanced economy: slow money down, and spread it out.</p>
<p>The tax would limit the large-scale financial transactions that economists say are occurring far too quickly and creating the volatility that is again on display with the recent market plunge. As Maria Gallucci of the International Business Times <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/stock-market-mayhem-renews-calls-controversial-financial-transaction-tax-2070302" rel="nofollow">describes</a> it, the tax could “discourage the sudden sell-offs and volatile trading that are causing the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s wild swings,” since “computer-based trading accounts for roughly half today’s trade volume, exposing the markets to increasing instability.”</p>
<p>Henry adds: “This would be a tax on speed. Capitalism makes us crazy. We might as well collect something for it.” If the tax is as much a liquidity hindrance as its opponents claim it is, maybe it will slow down the “constant noise” of financial markets whose volatility hurts small investors and the general public, he says.</p>
<p>The other argument is that a transaction tax could generate much-needed redistributive revenue across America – money which, in the absence of more structural economic reform coming from government, could be used to pay for college tuition (like Bernie Sanders’s plan) or other services, or simply redistributed as a basic income or dividend.</p>
<p>“Tax proposals vary in size and target,” Gallucci writes. “But the Tax Policy Center, an independent think tank in Washington, estimates that a 0.01 percent excise tax, spread over trillions of transactions, could raise $185 billion over 10 years.”</p>
<p>That redistributive element is crucial. Although sometimes under-emphasized in alternative media coverage, the financial transaction tax carries near universal support among people on the deeper end of the economic justice movement. That’s because, while the financial transaction tax is still just a tax, it has tremendous breadth and potential for income generation at a time when we’re looking for sources of dividend distribution.</p>
<p>Recently, Kevin Zeese’s <a href="https://www.popularresistance.org/newsletter-economy-of-the-future-economic-democracy/" rel="nofollow">Popular Resistance newsletter</a> pointed out that technology has outpaced the need for labor, and thus there “will never be enough jobs in the future so we need a new way to ensure people have money on which to live and to keep the economy going.” I asked Zeese whether he felt the transaction tax was still a hot issue for progressives and the economic justice movement.</p>
<p>“The case for the tax has gotten stronger since 2006 as the finance sector has become an even larger segment of the economy,” he answered. “Even a tiny, micro tax of under 1% on stocks, bonds, and derivatives would fund essentials for creating a more diverse economy,” including basic income, free education and money for new kinds of cooperative businesses.</p>
<p>Laura Wells, California's Green Party candidate for governor in 2010 and State Controller in 2014, agrees with the “practical benefits” of the tax. But Wells, organizer of the No Corporate Money Campaign, told me she also sees the tax's potential to reduce the concentration of wealth and “increase the power of ordinary people to make our own decisions on things that deeply affect us.”</p>
<p>My colleagues at Commonomics USA like it, too. Communications director Ira Dember told me he thought a transaction tax would “either make [big volatile] trading less profitable or unaffordable, essentially killing this toxic practice.” Our outreach coordinator Susan Harman, who is more convinced than ever that we’re dealing with pathological people punching numbers on a screen, told me: “Since most financial transactions these days merely build additions onto the Wall Street house of cards, anything that discourages that construction is helpful.”</p>
<p>Like other good ideas, Wall Street hates this one, and its minions will quickly move in to sap political will and encourage politicians to act against their constituents’ interests. Earlier this month, <a href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/09/congressional-black-caucus-still-trying-to-hurt-their-constituents-by-killing-the-labor-department-fiduciary-rule.html" rel="nofollow">revelations</a> emerged about the financial sector’s hold over several members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who are being wooed into helping kill regulations designed to force financial advisers to tell the truth and not give out sham advice to investors.</p>
<p>In the case of the financial transaction tax, opponents argue that it will “decrease liquidity” – a fancy way of saying that increasing the cost of transactions decreases the amount of money floating around in the system, making it harder to invest, spend cash or extend credit.</p>
<p>Well, yeah, James Henry replied when I asked him about this. “Liquidity is not always a good thing. The world is awash in capital,” he said. The problem is a lack of investment in productive assets, which is why states and municipalities need credit (for small businesses, public spending and the like). What the world doesn’t need are more high-level breakneck-speed financial transactions.</p>
<p>How do we garner the political will to win such a policy? Keep the base broad, Henry added, and you keep the tax low – ridiculously, unable-to-notice low. A one basis-point tax would amount to ten cents per thousand dollars. At that measurement, a hundred thousand dollar financial transaction would cost ten bucks to execute. “You could raise a hell of a lot of money no one would miss,” says Henry.</p>
<p>Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, says that 75 percent of liability for an FTT would fall on the top 20% of Americans. He's skeptical of every argument against the tax. “If our financial markets will crumble in the face of a one-basis-point financial transaction tax,” Bernstein <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/opinion/the-case-for-a-tax-on-financial-transactions.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">writes</a>, “then we've got much bigger problems than I thought.”</p>
<p>Wall Street’s opposition to the financial transaction tax is even more frustrating given how much its firms charge America’s municipalities for their financial transactions. It's <a href="http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/essential_reading_on_what_wall_street_costs_america" rel="nofollow">come to light</a> in recent months that Wall Streeters make municipalities pay millions, even billions, in interest for managing public money. They frequently do so in defiance of laws; both their illegal and legal deals have ruined many of our nation’s cities and left countless people in poverty, struggling in broken neighborhoods after water and other necessities have been privatized. Against that evidence, Wall Street’s resistance to a tax of a penny per hundred dollars only adds to its image of childishness and unwarranted audacity.</p>
<p><em>Matt Stannard is policy director at Commonomics USA and a Board Member of the Public Banking Institute.</em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/InTheseTimesPrivatizationUnderRahm.png" rel="nofollow"><img alt="financial transaction tax, Rahm Emanuel, Tax Justice Network, redistributive revenue, public banks" src="http://www.occupy.com/sites/default/files/medialibrary/InTheseTimesPrivatizationUnderRahm.png" title="financial transaction tax, Rahm Emanuel, Tax Justice Network, redistributive revenue, public banks" /></a></p>
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<p>Set to deliver record-breaking global temperatures in 2015 and 2016, the world’s climate has reached a major turning point according to a new report from the U.K. Met Office.</p>
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<p>Known as HB 40, the rule pushed by oil and gas companies declares the state of Texas can preempt any health or safety regulations written by local governments if the industry doesn't deem them “commercially reasonable.”</p>
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<p>The financial transaction tax would limit the large-scale trades that economists say are now occurring far too quickly and creating the volatility that's again on display with the recent market plunge.</p>
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<p>Unions are spreading like wildfire through the tech capital's low-wage workforce.</p>
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<div><span><em>6 days 5 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>The U.K. government this week is once again inviting tyrants and human rights abusers to buy weapons and torture equipment – and facing a loud coalition of activists.</p>
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<div><span><em>5 days 10 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>If it wasn’t clear before, it seems quite evident that the tide is turning: big biotech companies are losing influence by the day, and the addition of two more European countries banning GMOs is evidence of that.</p>
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<div><span><em>5 days 7 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>The UC system has sold off its endowment and pension fund holdings in coal and oil sands companies, a $200-million move that officials said Wednesday was in response to both environmental concerns and rising financial risk in those industries.</p>
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<div><span><em>4 days 9 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>Buyer beware. And buyer, be aware – the same forces that led to the mass foreclosures and easy acquisition can also make life difficult for even the most earnest property owner.</p>
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<div><span><em>6 days 5 hours</em> ago</span></div>
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<p>If it wasn’t clear before, it seems quite evident that the tide is turning: big biotech companies are losing influence by the day, and the addition of two more European countries banning GMOs is evidence of that.</p>
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<p>Jeremy Corbyn’s fairer rent price policy, which puts controls on the cost of rent to prevent small businesses being priced out of the soaring market, is one of many incentives for entrepreneurs and small business owners to back him and his party.</p>
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<p>"We need a government that is not captured by the tiniest fraction of the 1 percent."</p>
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armageddon news revolution Turning Pennies Into Billion$: The Tiny Tax that Wall Street Fears

Turning Pennies Into Billion$: The Tiny Tax that Wall Street Fears Turning Pennies Into Billion$: The Tiny Tax that Wall Street Fears...

The Shemitah Theory Written By Jonathan Cahn Supports Adolph Hitler

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<p><strong>By Walid Shoebat</strong></p>
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<p>Jonathan Cahn is a Messianic Jew who came up with a fanciful theory that America was punished on Sabbatical years and will receive more judgments to come if it refuses to repent. One Christian university professor, Dr. Adrian Zenz, from Korntal Germany took Cahn on his challenge and tested Cahn’s sabbatical year theory (Shemitah). The expert analysis had one striking (out of many) damning conclusions: if we accept Cahn’s Shemitah (Sabbath) theory by using the stock market data we would have <em>the God of the Bible supporting the Nazis and judging America for destroying Hitler after World War II.</em></p>
<p>The study looking at the <em>Shemitah year</em> which occurs at the end of a 7-year cycle’s economic downturns to see if it is true that, according to Cahn, a nation is under judgment for having disregarded God. As it turns out, the wider claim of Shemitah cycles in past history cannot be substantiated by the facts.</p>
<p>The Shemitah cycle claims that for the past 100 or 50 years are not upheld by the data. Cahn seemed so use the 2001/08 timings that he sought to claim Shemitah effects into economic history.</p>
<p>But the facts from the research actually proved the opposite of Cahn’s claims. Regarding Cahn’s Shemita factor in most cases, God would seem to have punished the U.S. when they were heroic as the study concluded:</p>
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<p>“Shemitah mechanism of economic judgment seems <span style="text-decoration: underline;">very problematic</span>, since <span style="text-decoration: underline;">God effectively used the US to free Europe from the power of Nazism</span>.”</p>
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<p>Yet America was punished instead.</p>
<p>Zenz was not kidding.</p>
<p>He had reached out to Shoebat.com with the analysis, a Christian Lecturer on Empirical Research Methods and a PhD supervisor from Germany he understands his nation’s past history with Nazism, and now he warns that Cahn’s theory:</p>
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<p>“makes you see how deceptive Cahn’s book is: selectively pushing confirming facts, and deliberately omitting a whole host of disconfirming facts.”</p>
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<p>Hard to believe? Examine the full analysis for yourself (<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/tl40tsanm6i5aaf/Cahn%20shemitah%20research%20report.pdf?dl=0">see 20 page analysis results here</a>). Its methodical, its detailed, and it leaves no room to maneuver for any con-artist.</p>
<p>In other words, if one takes the Shemitah argument, the United States was punished right after it destroyed Hitler who killed six million Jews.</p>
<p>Zenz then destroys the theory piece by piece. As the report concluded that the trends in the market acted normally and had no connection to curses or blessings:</p>
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<p>“higher growth during non-Shemitah years was at times influenced by special factors such as World War II, during which GDP growth <span style="text-decoration: underline;">was unusually high</span> due to g<span style="text-decoration: underline;">overnment spending</span> on the war. After the war, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">this spending declined</span>, creating an <span style="text-decoration: underline;">artificial recession</span>.”</p>
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<div class="layoutArea">The problem with charts and while one sees the lines go upwards and downwards, the average for the year when analyzing the data can give an entirely different outcome. A real expert must examine GDP (National Gross Production) and not just stock charts.</div>
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<div class="layoutArea">In almost every theory Cahn proposed, the real experts demolished the argument. Take the 1973 supposed downturn as Cahn claimed that it was when “abortion was legalized,” the data revealed a stunning discovery: “In his book, Cahn argues that from 1973, the year when abortion was legalized in the U.S., economic downturns have been more severe.” Yet the report showed that the opposite is true:</div>
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<div class="layoutArea">“in 1973, economic growth was <span style="text-decoration: underline;">very strong</span> despite it being a Shemitah year, and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">despite the legalization of abortion</span>.”</div>
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<p>To gain a true sense of “blessings” vs. “curses”, again, an average GDP needed to be considered and not just looking at charts. So Zenz then studied the change of <em>Shemitah</em> with <em>non-Shemitah</em> periods and a statistical test was conducted. The <em>Statistical Analysis</em> of Shemitah-related GDP changes <em>Using Quarterly Data</em> from 1947-2015 proved disastrous to Cahn’s theory.</p>
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<p>Here, a Shemitah period was defined as ranging from the fourth quarter of the first year to the fourth quarter of the subsequent year, e.g. Q4 2000 to Q4 2001. By including five quarters, the so-called “wake” of the Shemitah (i.e. the month of Tishri) was included as per Cahn’s statement that the month of Tishri will reveal the full economic impact of the Shemitah. This is because the key point of remittance is Elul 29, the last day of the Shemitah. Consequently, Cahn argues that the quarter following the Shemitah should reflect the peak of the economic <em>downturn</em> caused by the Shemitah.</p>
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<p>He noted that besides the fourth quarter of 2008 “the “wake” of the Shemitahs (the final fourth quarter which includes the month of Tishri) has often witnessed strongly <span style="text-decoration: underline;">positive GDP growth</span>” (see red lines on chart) and “that several of the strongest negative quarters were entirely outside a Shemitah time period.(see blue lines on chart)”</p>
<p><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/s1-copy.jpg"><img alt="s1 copy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-85445" height="550" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/s1-copy.jpg" width="1096" /></a></p>
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<p>Even Cahn’s claim “that the 4th quarters following a Shemitah, which according to Cahn are supposed to reflect the strongest time of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">economic downturns</span>, have mostly <span style="text-decoration: underline;">seen the complete opposite: <em>a positive growth</em></span><em>.</em></p>
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<p>The research adds:</p>
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<p>“in four of the five cases, negative changes in third quarters were <span style="text-decoration: underline;">compensated by strongly positive growth</span> in the subsequent fourth quarters, which would <span style="text-decoration: underline;">directly contradict Cahn’s assertions</span> about the significance of Tishri and the wake of the Shemitah.”</p>
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<p><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/c2-copy.jpg"><img alt="c2 copy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-85446" height="574" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/c2-copy.jpg" width="1076" /></a></p>
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<p>Even Cahn’s the 1980-1981 “Shemitah recession” year where Cahn argues that this is an example of the Shemitah causing an economic turning point, since the data after all reflects a strong negative growth around the middle of the Shemitah year, yet the GDP (Gross National Product) debunks Cahn’s theory:</p>
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<p>However, the final two quarters of the Shemitah (its end and its wake), which are supposed to be the key time of economic “remittance” or depression, reflect <span style="text-decoration: underline;">a very powerful economic recovery</span>: from 7.9 percent negative to 7.6 percent positive growth. The <span style="text-decoration: underline;">quarter after the Shemitah’s wake</span>, which includes the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">month of Tishri</span>, again <span style="text-decoration: underline;">shows very strong and even higher growth</span> (8.5 percent). Only the second quarter of 1980, which was nearly a year after the end of the Shemitah year, marks the beginning of another downturn. This again shows how imperfect the fit between Shemitah years and actual economic developments is.</p>
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<p>And even before that, in the second half of 1973, during the oil-crisis which Cahn used as evidence, a fairly significant stock market loss was accompanied by slight GDP growth:</p>
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<p>A similar issue can be demonstrated for the Shemitah cycle <span style="text-decoration: underline;">culminating in the 1973/74 oil crisis</span>. Cahn argues that during the Shemitah, stocks fell significantly. To quote: “Four months after the Shemitah’s beginning, the stock market began to collapse.”; and: “By its (the oil crisis’) end, 45 percent of the market had been wiped out.” (both quotes from p.82).</p>
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<p>However, the chart below shows how problematic and potentially misleading these statements are when used to support the Shemitah hypothesis. Firstly, the largest stock decline during the 1966-73 Shemitah cycle actually occurred between May 1969 and May 1970, when the DJIA fell below 650 points, its lowest level since the end of 1962 (the lowest point during the 1972-3 Shemitah was just below 860 points). Secondly, the decisive time period of Elul-Tishri in 1973 actually proved to be a powerful season of recovery for the DJIA, allowing it to regain a large share of the losses incurred during the 1972-3 Shemitah period. At the end of the 1973 Elul-Shemitah phase, the DJIA stood at over 950 points, about 25 percent higher than at the beginning of the 7-year cycle in August 1966. This cannot count as a wiping out of national financial accounts.</p>
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<p><a href="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/zenz-copy.jpg"><img alt="zenz copy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-85450" height="874" src="http://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/zenz-copy.jpg" width="1404" /></a></p>
<p>Even the second half of 1987, for example, there was a major stock market downturn, but this is meaningless since the U.S. GDP grew by <span style="text-decoration: underline;">over 10 percent</span>!</p>
<p>So taking a chart without examining the full data, slapping all that in a book, is not only unprofessional, but deceptive.</p>
<p>Again, looking at stock charts is not enough. When analyzing US real GDP (Gross National Product) changes (annual and quarterly) the analysis proved beyond any doubt against Cahn’s hypothesis.</p>
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<p>Cahn strongly advocated the spiritual significance of the end of the Shemitah and the subsequent month of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Tishri</span> as a <span style="text-decoration: underline;">time of national repentance</span>. Also, Scripture commanded the remittance of debt to occur specifically at the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">end of the Shemitah</span>, but as it turns out, the professional study concluded that:</p>
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<p>“it is remarkably that the average GDP change even during the two quarters around the end of the Shemitah <span style="text-decoration: underline;">was in fact <em>positive</em></span>, and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">not <em>negative</em></span>“.</p>
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<p>In one of its conclusions the study shows:</p>
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<p>Overall, the comprehensive descriptive and inferential <span style="text-decoration: underline;">statistical tests based on real GDP</span> change in the U.S. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">cannot support Cahn’s hypothesis</span> that Shemitah years or their final phases or wakes systematically cause economic downturns.</p>
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<p>The problem with such books is that most do not examine to see if the proper experts are included. Theological books, especially in today’s markets, are many times void of expert analysis, where the author becomes everything: historian, mathematician and even an economical analyst.</p>
<p>The story of Cahn is the story of a magician who knew he was dealing with unexperienced sheep.</p>
<p>Even when using the second part of the analysis, which examines daily Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) stock market index values over an entire period of 125 years (1889-2014). Cahn’s own methodology of connecting Shemitah or Tishri periods to stock market changes as the analysis concluded is “rather fuzzy”. Cahn had made an outlandish method to prove his theory. Cahn in his book asks:</p>
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<p>“How many of the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">ten greatest point crashes</span> in Wall Street history are connected either to the biblical month of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Tishri</span> or the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">biblical Year of the Shemitah</span>? <span style="text-decoration: underline;">70 percent!</span>” (p.115)</p>
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<p>The unexperienced reader goes “wow,” but such a proposal is a complete trick.</p>
<p>In other words, if one wants to see the proof in Cahn’s pudding, the data that Cahn needed to use is only ‘the month of Tishri <em>in</em> a Shemitah year’ <em>and</em> not  ‘The month of Tishri <em>or</em> the biblical Shemitah year. This “or” makes a monumental difference. The analysis easily discovered the trick:</p>
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<p>In this statement, he includes <span style="text-decoration: underline;">not only Shemitah years</span>, but also the month of Tishri i<span style="text-decoration: underline;">n every single year</span>. But this approach is inconsistent with the scriptural approach that the remittance is to occur at <span style="text-decoration: underline;">the end of Shemitah years</span>, and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">unsuitable to prove Cahn’s Shemitah</span> hypothesis of Sabbath years causing economic downturns.</p>
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<p>Many argue that what Cahn did was not intentional. However, such trickery is still continuing. After realizing that the deadline is near two days before September 13th when Cahn knew that the stock market was closed, Cahn asked his followers to be on the lookout for September the 11th.</p>
<p>It was no problem for Cahn to pull a fast one. Anyone can search the headline and claim something was a fulfillment. So before the end of the Shemitah year, Cahn switched the theory, and instead of judgments on America, he concluded that these judgments are now on Mecca in Arabia.</p>
<p>The proof of such deception was carried out by one of his favorite publishers, World Net Daily (sorry Joseph friendships has limits). Speaking to World Net Daily, <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/strange-signs-on-shemitahs-final-days/">Cahn said</a> some of the most outlandish things:</p>
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<p>He told WND that he noticed t<span style="text-decoration: underline;">wo signs in the final day</span>s of the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">current Shemitah</span> – one involving the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">collapse of a structure in Saudi Arabia</span> on <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Sept. 11</span> and the other a <span style="text-decoration: underline;">rainbow in New York City</span>.</p>
<p>“Very strange. In the last days of the Shemitah, two striking signs. A storm causes destruction on Islam’s central mosque in Mecca (on Sept. 11). At the same time a rainbow appears (Sept. 10) over the tower at Ground Zero,” he said. “Many immediately took this as a good sign. Yet, it was not long ago that America desecrated the sign of the rainbow by using a vessel of God to celebrate the Supreme Court’s striking down the biblical definition of marriage.”</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/09/rainbow-over-ground-zero-sept.-10.jpg"><img alt="(Photo courtesy Ben Sturner @LeverageAgency/Twitter)" class="aligncenter wp-image-2419395 size-full" height="336" src="http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/09/rainbow-over-ground-zero-sept.-10.jpg" width="597" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/09/grand-mosque-lightning.jpg"><img alt="Lightning strikes the crane just before it collapses on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia." class="size-full wp-image-2418825" height="545" src="http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/09/grand-mosque-lightning.jpg" width="371" /></a></p>
<p>So now God struck the U.S. with Noah’s promise never to flood the earth, yet to Cahn God’s word is obsolete, and the warning of the rainbow is over the homosexual agenda?</p>
<p>The curses seem to switch from the U.S. to Mecca. Isn’t this what we at Shoebat.com argued for years from Scripture?</p>
<p>And then came the attacks on Shoebat.com with a hundred comments or so from his cultic supporters saying “how dare you” and “you’r not saved” and “you’r jealous”.</p>
<p>It is as someone who sends comments  to a police officer telling him he’s being “jealous” of the drug dealer and is why the officer arrested him.</p>
<p>Indeed, this is a dangerous and demonic movement, that if one follows this Jewish Sabbatical calendar set by Cahn, then God would have blessed Hitler’s Nazi Germany after World War II instead of the United States. If one insists on mixing calendars by using the Jewish calendar, <a href="http://shoebat.com/2015/09/06/bombshell-to-be-messianic-is-to-be-catholic-not-hebrew-roots/">Jesus ends up not being Messiah</a> and if one insists on using the Hebrew Codex instead of the Greek Septuagint, they undermine crucial facts of the Gospel.</p>
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<p>To see the 20 page detailed analysis report, read <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/tl40tsanm6i5aaf/Cahn%20shemitah%20research%20report.pdf?dl=0">An Empirical Statistical and Exegetical Evaluation of the Shemitah Effect</a> Suggested by Jonathan Cahn – Dr. Adrian Zenz”</p>
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