Media Mis-information

I say in my book which is currently being written; not to believe most analysts. Now I'm also saying that we need to be careful about believing what the media tells us. Why you say? I think that much of the media is controlled by powers we are unwilling to admit does such things.

I've profited from what they did not talk about

I warned you about being taken in by a lot of internet based promotional marketing hype that is designed to get you to buy after the promoters have their money in place. Then after enough subscriptions come in, they dump their stock, and take the profits leaving you to thank for you being a big sucker!

Now I've gone with nearly a week before the Cabo Future1investors Conference and till now by not watching CNBC. This is one of the main financial/stock market news channels and also the very one that Jim Cramer, king of his own Cramerica show is on as well. That one program alone has cost me profits by persuading me to buy things that I should have avoided. While I won't say that they are made up of folks that can profit from persuading us to buy something and dumping it a day or two later before we have a clue, I will say that I've profited from what they did not talk about on the show.

Analysts thrive on selling you on something that needs cash infusion, or a bit longer rally. Media is sponsored by companies and government individuals that need much of the same. It is bad enough that they plot behind your back to take advantage of us as consumers. Its worse when they do it to our face! You are being given a check (tax money that will have to be recollected from you in the future) and told by our country leader to go out and spend it as a consumer. Should people correctly be told rather, to use it to pay down their credit cards? Mortgage? College loan?

When it comes to money, morality gets tossed out the window. Morality becomes the new conspiracy word. We have war to put others into turmoil, increase immorality, use our own american men and women as test beds and pawns on the battle field, and make more money and give favors to certain others (see special facts below). The media is used to console us into believing non-truths, to raise more money, get your vote and backing for things their puppeteers will do behind your back. Television is one of the greatest inventions ever and also one of the best tools used by our leaders and others to heard us the way they need in order to make more money despite how it can negatively affect you. I've said before that we are sheep and they are the sheep herders.

Instead of blindly following, instead of believing everything that you hear on the TV, wake up and find out the truth before you leap at their request/suggestion. You may well find that you'll be a bit richer rather than poorer for doing so. But be warned that if you look for other perspectives, find truths, find data that is contrary to what we are told, you may be labeled or called something negative. If you are however, know that it probably means that you are onto something that is more truthful than what you are being told. Know that it could mean that you'll be saving money, making more profits, being happier with the decision that you will make.

Special War Facts:

• A contractor working in Iraq as a security guard gets about $400,000 a year, for example, as opposed to a soldier, who might get about $40,000.
• Military sign-up bonuses come with conditions: a soldier injured in the first month, for example, has to pay it back.
• Some families have had to buy their children body armor, saving the government costs in the short term; those too poor to afford it sustain injuries that the government then has to pay.
• It was not until 2006, when Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, that the DOD agreed to replace Humvees with mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) armored vehicles, which are much more able to repel roadside bombs; until that time, IEDs killed 1,500 Americans.
• Many reconstruction jobs, in alignment with US procurement law, went to expensive American firms rather than cheaper Iraqi ones - a further waste of resources (one painting job, for example, cost $25m instead of $5m); these American firms, looking to keep their own costs down and profit margins high, imported cheap labor from such countries as Nepal - even though, at this point, one in two Iraqi men was out of work.
• When US military commanders wanted to re-employ Iraq's military to help secure the country, they were denied. This put 40-50% of the country's dependence on the military (families and solders) out of work and without any money, leaving them to go hungry and create an insurgency against the U.S. military that would have rather had their support and expert assistance. As a result, many more solders in the U.S. military died, tens of thousands more Iraqis were killed in response.

• $16bn
  The amount the US spends on the monthly running costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - on top of regular defense spending

  $138
  The amount paid by every US household every month towards the current operating costs of the war

  $19.3bn
  The amount Halliburton has received in single-source contracts for work in Iraq

  $25bn
  The annual cost to the US of the rising price of oil, itself a consequence of the war

  $3 trillion
  A conservative estimate of the true cost - to America alone - of Bush's Iraq adventure. The rest of the world, including Britain, will shoulder about the same amount again

  $5bn
  Cost of 10 days' fighting in Iraq

  $1 trillion
  The interest America will have paid by 2017 on the money borrowed to finance the war

  3%
  The average drop in income of 13 African countries - a direct result of the rise in oil prices. This drop has more than offset the recent increase in foreign aid to Africa

• For all this, companies prosper as do certain individuals while many suffer needlessly as a result. All because money, power, and political agenda are in control.

Source: The Three Trillion Dollar War, by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
-Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winner in economics, four years on Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and another three as chief economist at the World Bank.
-Bilmes, an economic adviser under the Clinton administration.

Iraq War De-escalation Act

Illegal War

Hillary - Roadmap Out of Iraq

Iraq War Veterans Take a Stand - (by Brad Paisley)