Islamic State says it'll mint its own coins

by Maamoun Youssef

 

The leader of the Islamic State group has ordered the terror organization to start minting gold, silver and copper coins for its own currency “ the Islamic dinar. 

A website affiliated with the group posted the order lin November 2014, saying IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi instructed his followers to mint the coins to exhange the tyrannical monetary system modelled on Western economies that enslaved Muslims.                        

This image posted on a militant website on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2014, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows renderings of a 1 silver dirham coin, a new coin that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group, ordered the group to start minting for its own currency - the Islamic dinar. The Arabic on the left image shows 1 for the first line and 1436 (Islamic year) for the second. The Arabic on the right image shows the Islamic State for the first line, 1 dirham (smaller denomination of the dinar) for the second line, 2 grams for the third line and A Caliphate Based on the Doctrine of the Prophet for the fourth line.UNCREDITED - AP

The order was approved by the Islamic State group's Shura Council, an advisory board, according to the website. The authenticity of the posting could not be independently verified but the website has been used in the past for IS postings. After seizing large swaths of Iraqi and Syrian territory earlier this year, the Islamic State group proclaimed a caliphate on lands under its control. It has also sought to implement its harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, and al-Baghdadi has proclaimed himself the caliph.

According to photographs of coin prototypes, they carry the words in Arabic: The Islamic State / A Caliphate Based on the Doctrine of the Prophet.

It's unclear where the Islamic State group intends to get the gold, silver and copper for the coins. It said the dinar's purchasing power would be its weight in gold, silver or copper.

One of the gold coins carries the symbol of seven stalks of wheat, mentioned in the Quran, while another has the map of the world, a reference to Islam someday ruling the entire world.

One of the silver coins shows a sword and a shield in a reference to holy war, or jihad while another has a minaret symbolizing Damascus mentioned in one of the Prophet Muhammad's sayings. 


Another coin carries the symbol of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, where the Prophet prayed. It's revered as Islam's third-holiest place, complete with the site's iconic gold-topped Dome of the Rock, which enshrines the rock from which Muslims believe the Prophet ascended to heaven.


The copper coins carry the symbol of the crescent moon and three palm trees, also significant in Islam.


The posting said instructions from the Islamic State's treasury department would be forthcoming, explaining to the people how to use the currency.



The Impartial Power Of God

by Oswald Chambers

To be an Uncommon Believer….Let the “First Voice” You Hear in the Morning….Be the Voice of the LORD

"For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." Hebrews 10:14

We trample the blood of the Son of God under foot if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation of the forgiveness of God and of the unfathomable depth of His forgetting is the Death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the outcome of our personal realization of the Atonement which He has worked out for us. "Christ Jesus . . . is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." When we realize that Christ is made all this to us, the boundless joy of God begins; wherever the joy of God is not present, the death sentence is at work.


It does not matter who or what we are, there is absolute reinstatement into God by the death of Jesus Christ and by no other way, not because Jesus Christ pleads, but because He died. It is not earned, but accepted. All the pleading which deliberately refuses to recognize the Cross is of no avail; it is battering at another door than the one which Jesus has opened. I don't want to come that way, it is too humiliating to be received as a sinner. "There is none other Name . . ." The apparent heartlessness of God is the expression of His real heart, there is boundless entrance in His way. "We have forgiveness through His blood." Identification with the death of Jesus Christ means identification with Him to the death of everything that never was in Him.

God is justified in saving bad men only as He makes them good. Our Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are all wrong. The Atonement is a propitiation whereby God through the death of Jesus makes an unholy man holy.

When we know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, it means we are free from anxiety, free from carefulness, so that, during the twenty-four hours of the day, we do what we ought to do all the time, with the strength of life bubbling up with real spontaneous joy.

 


The End of Bretton Woods

by Peter Coyne

Please, no more of this 'Nixon took us off of the gold standard' garbage!" writes one reader in response to yesterday's reckoning. If you missed it, we learned about two precursors to our present monetary woes in that episode:

First, we learned from our founder, Addison Wiggin, that 70 years ago, during the Bretton Woods Conference at the end of World War II, the world left the gold standard. The United States, being the world's undisputed hegemon, was able to snag a role as the world's reserve currency -- the most widely held and used currency. To maintain trust in the greenback, foreign nations would be able to trade $35 for an ounce of U.S. gold upon request.

Second, in our first featured video -- an interview we conducted with Mr. Lewis Lehrman last year -- we learned that the U.S. abused this privilege by running massive trade deficits. That is, by spending more money that it had to buy more than it produced. Finally, instead of worrying about balancing the books, President Nixon decided 43 years ago this Friday to remove the one hurdle to unlimited government spending -- convertability of the dollar into gold.

That brings us back to our dear reader. "FDR was the one who removed us from the gold standard when he issued an illegal executive order that prohibited citizens from owning gold":




© 2014 Agora Financial, LLC

 

QuotesHe ordered them to turn in gold, and made it impossible for any American to convert gold notes to actual gold. Nixon in fact made gold ownership legal again by ending FDR's prohibition, and protected America's gold stores, (whatever we had then), from being taken by the British, etc., by doing as this writer describes.

"If someone wants to point a finger, point it at FDR, who took us off gold, and at LBJ, who removed silver from our coinage, both unconstitutional and illegal moves that Congress went along with.
Quotes

We have no qualms over your history. Our point, however, is that the global monetary system shifted on Sunday, Aug. 15, 1971. Since then, the dollar's value has been an enigma.

What is a dollar?

It's just a claim to another dollar… or four quarters… or 10 dimes. You have to pay taxes with it, so most people use them. But it has no intrinsic value.

We're reminded of the C-SPAN clip featured in Addison's documentary I.O.U.S.A. It was between Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and our former employer, Congressman Ron Paul. Greenspan agreed that no one really knows what money is today, and therefore, there was no way the Fed could hope to ever manage it:

 Alan Greenspan: As I've said earlier, the difficulty is defining what money truly is. We have been unable to define a monetary aggregate that will give us a reliable forecast for the economy. Until we find a reliable "M" we will go light on the use of monetary aggregates for monetary policy purposes.

Ron Paul: So it's hard to manage something you can't define.

Alan Greenspan: It's impossible to manage something you cannot define…

Our theme this week, the "End of Bretton Woods," was Dr. Paul's impetus for running for Congress in the first place. "I saw 1971 as the conversion from a token commodity money,  to an absolute political money."

We can tell you from working for the good doctor that he had no delusions about the mission he was on. Dr. Paul was under no impression that he alone could reverse the ship of state's course toward monetary collapse.

In the final years of his congressional tenure, he was even able to claim a small leadership position over the Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology. That's one of the subcommittees that oversaw the Federal Reserve's decisions.
 
Politics, Dr. Paul notes, is, at best, a tool for education. 

Yet , one congressman can hardly alter the political situation. Politics, Dr. Paul notes, is, at best, a tool for education. Part of this week's theme is education, for sure. Understanding the ways that your elected representatives have altered the money at your expense for political reasons is the first step to realizing it can happen again.

It's important to keep in mind, however, that the likely solution is not a political one.







© 2014 Agora Financial, LLC

KCP&L Smart Grid not a Good Plan for Consumers

by Allen Williams


Missouri Public Service (MPS) has accepted KCPL's 5-year plan for sustainable smart grid development.  The DOE funded MPS version can be accessed here. What does this mean to you as a consumer?

Source: KCP&L Smart Grid from Missouri Public Service Commission


There are few benefits for the electric consumer, the majority of infrastructure is aimed at collecting utility customer information and transmitting it via WIFI back to the Great Plains Subsidiary.  KCP&L claims increased system reliability and fewer outages to their smart grid: "There will be increased information about customer energy usage and the ability to monitor, manage and ultimately reduce energy consumption and bills.."

But how's that different from the histogram of usage that already appears on my monthly bill? The answer is KCP&L can determine exactly what is being operated in the home. The company is marketing the smart grid as advantageous to customers but what are claimed as benefits actually favors KCP&L not the consumer. The KCP&L plan version is available here.

For the system to produce the greatest economic benefit, individual homes must allow KCP&L to remotely control their household thermostat. There is a good possibility that participation will become mandatory at some point just as smart meters have been mandated by the company. Can you refuse? I was told by the KCP&L installation technician that I couldn't opt out. When companies dictate to you what you must do in order to receive their services, you are ruled by fascism. In a similar event in Nevada, the power company took the smart meter and left a hole where the meter was, leaving the woman without electrical power. One wonders what payoff the KCC and local politicians are getting to ignore consumer health and security issues and just look the other way.

KCP&L 's plan states that the thermostat is one way communication but MPS indicates that it's bi-directional as it has to be to cycle your AC compressor and provide feedback data to the company. KCP&L has the ability to send a signal providing instructions to the thermostat in to reduce cooling demand... programmable via the Internet " Note that cycling your air conditioning unit benefits KCP&L because you pay for the surge current (inrush) for each 15-minute cycle as well as the added wear and tear on the unit. Inrush current can be as much as 3.5 times as high as the normal load current, so if your unit typically uses around 20 amps during operation that amounts to 70 amps-4 times and hour plus the normal operating current.

KCP&L claims that "Cycling event-cycle compressor off and on for 15-minute increments, for no more than four hours." However, if KCP&L and its affiliates don't like your politics, you could be 'off' a lot longer than 4 hours.

There are some 25 additional disadvantages for the smart meter consumer as documented in a sample utility letter from stopsmarmeters.org concerning Pacific Gas and Electric customers who have a similar program. PG&E issues are common to KCP&L's five year plan and it's no surprise that KCP&L omits the disadvantages of their smart grid program. Utilities stand to make enormous profits long term from smart grid technology, so it's understandable that they'd hide any consumer disadvantages. Here is a brief summary of customer concerns:

  • [Smart Meters] individually identify electrical devices inside the home and record when they are operated causing invasion of privacy. Smart Meters" are, by definition, surveillance devices which violate Federal and State wiretapping laws by recording and storing databases of private and personal activities and behaviors without the consent or knowledge of those people who are monitored.

  • Smart meters are not protected from EMP attacks, large EMPs or localized EMPs as simple as a kid with a battery and a coil (Electro Magnetic Pulse)

This second case will be a lot of fun for the consumer trying to prove that he or she hasn't consumed the kilowatts that a compromised meter is now claiming. Note that the KCPL system permits the company to download whatever EER/ECA cost factors are desired directly into your meter and who's to know? Remember, that the social mindset is always to believe the machine because computers, etc... don't make mistakes!

  • They {Smart Meters] transmit wireless signals which may be intercepted by unauthorized and unknown parties. Those signals can be used to monitor behavior and occupancy and they can be used by criminals to aid criminal activity against the occupants.

Once a hacker gains access to your programmable thermostat via any internet connection, he's uniquely positioned to know the best time to burglarize that home and sexual predators could know when young children might be alone. Those with access to the smart meter databases can review a permanent history of household activities complete with calendar and time-of-day metrics to gain a highly invasive and detailed view of the lives of the occupants. Those databases may be shared with, or fall into the hands of criminals, blackmailers, [NSA] corrupt law enforcement, private hackers of wireless transmissions, power company employees, and other unidentified parties who may act against the interests of the occupants under metered surveillance.

Newer appliances with microchips will broadcast their ID so the utility (and others) will know exactly what you're doing in your own home in real time.  And, like Microsoft, Google and other collaborators who have give the NSA access to their customer databases, KCP&L will lie to its ratepayers, denying that NSA or anyone else has acquired such information.  Even if KCP&L's smart meter employs encrypted WIFI signals, the NSA will be provided with the encryption keys and/or direct access to the consumer's account at KCP&L's data hub despite a particular customer not being a terrorist threat.  KCP&L is bringing the public a step closer to the government's Total Information Awareness system.

There are also health and fire hazards associated with smart meter use but simply chalked up to the cost of doing business. "The Saskatchewan government has ordered its power utility SaskPower to remove 105,000 so-called smart meters installed at homes and businesses across the province, following concerns about eight unexplained fires associated with the units." Then there are reported health problems due to the radiation emitted by the devices.

There are some 25 stakeholder lobby groups involved in the Great Plains Smart Grid project, "..including neighborhood groups, Congressman Cleaver, MARC, MEC, KCP&L, MGE, KCMO water, UMKC" but no mention of the KCP&L pledge to cooperate with the radical Sierra Club on legislative and regulatory changes that would reduce the company's overall emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 percent by the year 2020.

The George Soros driven Sierra Club association tends to explain why KCP&L wants so many EER/ECA type surcharges. The KCC has already approved 99% of KCP&L's surcharge requests.  The latest request is for Time of Use (TOU)  because smart grid development and operation costs are driven by fringe environmental groups to the detriment of ratepayers but you won't hear that from the utility or local media outlets.  Currently, KCP&L profits are more than adequate to enable them to pay some $1.65 per shareholder as listed in the Great Plains Energy Corp 2nd quarter 2014 report.

The KCPL smart grid is clearly an Agenda 21 sustainable development program that will impose cap and trade on the American public via subterfuge. The EER/ECA/TOU surcharges are simply a hedge against lawsuit and regulatory threats. Utility rates will continue to increase to the planned benefit of the electric cartel owners, not the consumer.  Rest assured, the smart grid concept is planned to be the electric supply standard across North America including all rural areas. 

Related: 

http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Editorial+Smart+response+meter+worries/10074297/story.html