OASIS FORUM Post by the Golden Rule. GoldTent Oasis is not responsible for content or accuracy of posts. DYODD.

This is a great presentation and pretty well follows my own thinking and beliefs about the End Times and what will bring them about. I’d encourage all to read it end to end, but if you’re not interested then walk on by. Nobody”s twisting your arm.  All The Best…….Silverngold

http://survivetheenddays.com/nio_i4_t/

Syrian Kurds take strategic dam from ‘Islamic State’

At the same time, ISIS ‘threat’ will be unmasked as to a large degree a US-media creation, a fashionable ‘flavor of the month’; the ‘New al-Qaeda’ (as opposed to ‘Classic’ version), a militarily inept criminal group with violent tendencies but little else; an instrument to mold US public opinion into an appropriately warlike form.

An alliance of US-backed Syrian Kurdish and Arab rebels has taken a key dam on the Euphrates River from the so-called “Islamic State.” The alliance has pushed back “IS” from large swaths of territory.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a rebel alliance that includes the powerful YPG Kurdish militia and Arab rebel groups, wrested control of the strategic Tishreen Dam from Islamic State on Saturday after making rapid advances south earlier this week, Kurdish media reported.
Tishrin 2

Figure 4: In war — as with finance — leverage matters: Tishrin dam on the Euphrates carries the highway from Jarabulus to Manbij- to points south and east including Raqqa and Mosul in Iraq. (Washington Post/Institute for the Study of War). Taking the dam (intact) and establishing a bridgehead on the western side of the Euphrates leaves the landlocked ISIS group at the mercy of the Kurds.

The road connection with Turkey is the only way in- or out of the Islamic State caliphate with Jarabulus-Manbij as the main thoroughfare. Leaders, recruiters, wounded fighters traveling to- and through Turkey, troop replacements from the rest of the Middle East and elsewhere, all ISIS military supplies must travel through this territory; trucks carrying purloined crude travel the other direction. As of now there is no scheduled airline service to/from anywhere in the Islamic State.

The group is responding to the existential threat by adopting a lifeboat strategy: upping efforts to organize in Libya and elsewhere in Africa. Stripped of its precious caliphate heartland and its leadership dead, captured or on the run, the group will lose relevance, becoming target practice for other ‘Brand X’ militant groups and Western commandos. In our current Islamic world without pity, every sign of weakness is an invitation to murder. At the same time, ISIS ‘threat’ will be unmasked as to a large degree a US-media creation, a fashionable ‘flavor of the month’; the ‘New al-Qaeda’ (as opposed to ‘Classic’ version), a militarily inept criminal group with violent tendencies but little else; an instrument to mold US public opinion into an appropriately warlike form.

I’ve BEEN in total denial.

For months I pondered to either go short not just oil but equities or be all out of them. The only hard part of watching this is knowing I could be making money while watching the talking heads act like its a surprise.

“bust could easily result in a 2017 presidential race between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, neither of whom would favor bailing out the big banks.”

Sanders is one of the banker’s boys. No way he goes against his brothers at Goldman, JPM et. all.

His voting record speaks for itself.

Now the panic is spreading. China stocks entered a bear market last night, oil is down huge, and as this is written (1 PM EST on Friday) the Dow is off 450 points. A tidal wave of terrified capital is pouring into Treasury bonds, and a smaller but still significant amount is moving to precious metals. Everything else is down varying shades of big.

Readers of a certain age will notice that this feels a lot like late 2007, when pervasive optimism hit a brick wall made up of subprime mortgages and credit default swaps. Everyone then headed for exits that were far too small to accommodate all the semi-worthless paper.

But this time around there are some big differences:

In the 2000s the world’s central banks weren’t prepared for the scale of the carnage and had to improvise. Today they’re already intervening in virtually every major market and so presumably have plans drawn up for the mother of all manipulations should 2008 come calling again. So we should expect some bold, experimental (let’s just say crazy) monetary policies from major governments in the year ahead.
The big banks are now seriously out of favor, so when their derivatives books blow up they might not be able to blackmail a sitting president with threats of martial law should Goldman and JP Morgan fail. Today that’s an experiment that a lot of people would actually like to run, on the assumption that because the same number of factories, farms and hospitals would exist the day after such an event, real wealth would hardly change at all and mega-banks would be proven irrelevant.
The world is vastly more indebted today, the carnage in commodities is global rather than sector-specific as with mortgages, and formerly rock-solid political systems like the eurozone and China are now unstable — to put it mildly. A new financial crisis would energize fringe (i.e., anti-status quo) parties everywhere, vastly complicating the official response. In the US, another bust could easily result in a 2017 presidential race between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, neither of whom would favor bailing out the big banks.
And then of course there’s the Middle-East, which is now in end-to-end civil war.

Add it all up and, the picture is already grim, with lots more bad news in the pipeline. So it’s not surprising that traders are nervous about going into the weekend with long positions in retail, tech, banks, commodities, or anything, really.On days when lots of financial numbers are released, the normal pattern is for some to point one way and some another, giving everyone a little of what they want and overall presenting a reassuringly muddled picture of the economy.

Not today. A wave of economic stats flowed out of Washington, almost all of them terrible, while corporate news was, in some high-profile cases, shocking. Let’s go to the highlight reel:

Retail sales fell again in December, bringing the 2015 increase to just 2.1% versus an average of 5.1% from 2010 through 2014. This kind of deceleration is out of character for year six of a gathering recovery, but completely consistent with a descent into recession.

The New York Fed’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey index plunged to -19.37 in January from -6.21 in December. This is a recession — deep recession — level contraction. Not a single bright spot in the entire report.

U.S. industrial production fell for the third straight month in December, and the previous month was revised down sharply. Factories are already in a recession that appears to be deepening.

On the company-specific front:

UK resource giant BHP Billiton wrote down the value of its US shale assets by $7.2 billion — two-thirds of its total investment — in response to plunging oil prices. Now everyone is wondering who’s next, and the list of likely candidates spans the entire commodities complex.

Chip maker Intel reported okay earnings but really disappointing margins and outlook. Its stock is down 9% as this is written mid-morning.

Walmart is closing nearly 300 stores and laying off most of the related 16,000 workers. It also cut its forward guidance aggressively.

There’s more, much of it related to plunging oil prices and their impact on developing world economies. For countries that grew temporarily rich on China’s infrastructure build-out, the end of that ill-fated program has produced something more like a depression than a garden-variety slowdown.

Courtesy of John Rubino from Dollar Collapse

but bringing in predominately muslims without oversight  is scary! Looks like someone has a hidden agenda.

The bandwidth on this will get me into trouble with admin but IMO it is worth it to straighten out some of the food myths of the last 50 years or so.

9 Lies About Fat That Destroyed The World’s Health
January 16 2015 

The areas of nutrition and disease prevention are full of incompetence.

We have been wrongly advised to avoid saturated fat and cholesterol, despite no evidence of harm.

Here are the top 9 biggest lies, myths and misconceptions about dietary fat and cholesterol.

1. A Low-Fat, High-Carb Diet is The Optimal Human Diet

Back in 60s and 70s, many prominent scientists believed that saturated fat was the main cause of heart disease, by raising the “bad” cholesterol in the blood.

This idea was the cornerstone of the low-fat diet. Because of a few bad studies and misguided political decisions, this diet was recommended to all Americans in the year 1977 (1).

However, there wasn’t a single study on this diet at the time. The American public became participants in the largest uncontrolled experiment in history.

This experiment didn’t turn out very well and we are still suffering the consequences. This graph shows how the obesity epidemic started at almost the exact same time the low-fat guidelines came out:

The diabetes epidemic followed soon after. Of course, a graph like this doesn’t prove anything. Correlation does not equal causation.

But it seems plausible that the low-fat recommendations made things worse because people started eating less of healthy foods like meat, butter and eggs, while eating more processed foods high in sugar and refined carbohydrates.

Even though there was little evidence at the time, the low-fat diet has actually been thoroughly studied in the past few years and decades.

It was put to the test in the biggest controlled trial in nutrition history, the Women’s Health Initiative. In this study, 48,835 postmenopausal women were split into two groups. One group ate a low-fat diet (with the whole grains and all that) while the other group continued to eat “normally.”

After a period of 7.5-8 years, the low-fat group weighed only 0.4 kg (1 lb) less than the control group and there was no difference in the rate of heart disease or cancer between groups (3, 4, 5, 6). Other huge studies also found no advantages for the low-fat diet (7, 8, 9).

But it doesn’t end there, unfortunately… the low-fat diet recommended by most nutrition organizations is not only ineffective, it may even be downright harmful.

In multiple human studies, the low-fat diet has actually made some important risk factors worse, raising triglycerides, lowering HDL (the good) cholesterol and making the LDL particles smaller (10, 11, 12, 13). Despite miserable results in the studies, many nutritionists all over the world continue to recommend the low-fat diet that is hurting more people than it helps.

Bottom Line: There is no evidence that low-fat diets have any benefits. They do not cause weight loss in the long-term or reduce the risk of chronic diseases. Some studies show that they may even cause harm.

2. Cholesterol Rich Foods (Like Eggs) Are Bad For You

Nutrition professionals have had remarkable success with demonizing perfectly healthy foods. Probably the worst example of that is eggs, which are among the healthiest foods on the planet. Just think about it… the nutrients in an egg are enough to turn a single fertilized cell into an entire baby chicken.

Even so… because eggs contain large amounts of cholesterol, they were believed to cause heart disease. However, studies actually show that the cholesterol in the diet does NOT raise the bad cholesterol in the blood. Eggs raise HDL (the good) cholesterol and are not associated with an increased risk of heart disease (14, 15,16, 17, 18).

What we’re left with is an incredibly healthy food… loaded with vitamins, minerals and powerful nutrients that are important for the eyes and brain (19, 20,21).

Keep in mind that almost all the nutrients are found in the yolk… the white is nothing but protein. Telling people to ditch the yolks may be just be the most ridiculous nutrition advice in history.

Bottom Line: Eggs were demonized because of the high amount of cholesterol, but new studies show that they don’t raise cholesterol in the blood or contribute to heart disease. Eggs are among the most nutritious foods on the planet.

3. Your Total and LDL Cholesterol Levels Are Good Indicators of Heart Attack Risk

Probably the biggest mistake in modern medicine is focusing too much on Total and LDL cholesterol levels as indicators of heart attack risk. Well… it is true that elevated levels of both are associated with increased risk (22).

But the whole picture is much more complicated than that. Total cholesterol actually includes lots of things… including HDL, also known as the “good” cholesterol.

Having high HDL actually raises your Total cholesterol number. LDL cholesterol isn’t just LDL either… there are subtypes. We have the small, dense LDL particles (very bad) and then we have the large, fluffy LDL (good). The small particles are associated with heart disease, while the large ones are mostly benign (23, 24, 25, 26, 27).

Studies actually show that Total and LDL cholesterol are poor indicators of risk compared to other markers, like the Triglyceride:HDL ratio (28, 29). One study found that out of 231,986 patients hospitalized for heart disease, half of them actually had normal LDL levels (30)!

There are also studies showing that high cholesterol can be protective. In old individuals, the higher the cholesterol, the lower your risk of heart disease (31,32).

Not to mention that cholesterol levels that are too low are actually associated with increased risk of death… from other causes, like cancer and suicide (33, 34).

Despite the weak predictive value of Total and LDL cholesterol, people with elevated numbers are often instructed to lower cholesterol by any means necessary… including a low-fat diet (which doesn’t work) and statin drugs.

Right now, millions of people all around the world are taking cholesterol lowering drugs without needing them, unnecessarily suffering the risk of serious side effects.

Bottom Line: Total and LDL cholesterol levels are actually quite poor markers of heart disease risk. Many people are being unnecessarily medicated because doctors tend to focus on these numbers.

4. Processed Seed- and Vegetable Oils Are Healthy

For some very strange reason, processed seed and vegetable oils became recognized as health foods. Humans only started consuming them about a 100 years ago, because we didn’t have the technology to process them until then.

Yet, somehow the nutrition geniuses figured that these would somehow be very healthy for humans and certainly better than the “dangerous” saturated fats.

These oils, which include soybean, corn and cottonseed oils, are very high in polyunsaturated Omega-6 fatty acids, which are harmful in excess and can contribute to inflammation (35, 36, 37).

Despite these oils being recommended to reduce heart disease, there are actually multiple studies showing that they increase the risk (38, 39, 40, 41). In a study that looked at common cooking oils on the U.S. market, they found that 0.56% to 4.2% of the fatty acids in them were highly toxic trans fats (42)!

However… these oils are actually recommended by the beloved organizations that are supposed to be in charge of protecting our health. This is one example of where blindly following the conventional nutritional wisdom can put you in an early grave.

Bottom Line: Processed seed- and vegetable oils are very unhealthy, loaded with Omega-6 fatty acids and trans fats that can contribute to disease.

5. Saturated Fat Raises Your Bad Cholesterol and Causes Heart Disease

The “war on saturated fat” has been a miserable failure.

It was initially based on flawed studies, but somehow became public policy (with disastrous consequences). The worst part is… the governments and health organizations have yet to change their position despite overwhelming evidencethat they’ve been wrong all along.

Actually, saturated fat doesn’t really raise LDL that much. The effect is weak and inconsistent and appears to depend on the individual (43, 44, 45).

When saturated fat does affect LDL, it changes the particles from small, dense (very, very bad) to Large LDL, which is mostly benign (46, 47, 48). Saturated fat also raises HDL cholesterol, which is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease (49, 50).

If anything, saturated fats actually improve the lipid profile, NOT the other way around. In the past few years, many massive studies have examined the link between saturated fat and heart disease risk.

One of these studies included 347,747 participants and looked at data from 21 studies. The conclusion: there is no evidence that saturated fat increases the risk of heart disease (51).

Many other studies confirm these findings. Saturated fat is harmless (52, 53). The truth is… saturated fat never has been and never will be proven to cause heart disease, because it simply isn’t true.

Bottom Line: Despite decades of anti-fat propaganda, saturated fat has never been proven to cause heart disease. In fact, saturated fat improves some of the most important risk factors for heart disease.

6. Saturated Fats and Trans Fats Are Similar

Trans fats are unsaturated fats that have been chemically modified to be more solid and have a longer shelf life. They are also known as partially hydrogenated fats.

The manufacturing process is very disgusting… involving high pressure, high heat, a metal catalyst and hydrogen gas. The fact that anyone thought these nasty fats would be suitable for human consumption is baffling.

Some of the major health organizations have started to confuse people by grouping trans fats together with saturated fats, calling them the “bad fats” (54).

However… like I outlined above, saturated fat is completely harmless, but the same can NOT be said for trans fats. Trans fats are highly toxic and can cause insulin resistance, inflammation and significantly raise the risk of serious diseases like heart disease (55, 56, 57, 58).

Even though consumption has gone down, trans fats are still found in processed foods and the FDA still categorizes them as “Generally Regarded as Safe” (GRAS).

If you want to avoid chronic disease… then eat your butter, meat and coconut oil, but avoid trans fats as if your life depended on it (it does).

Bottom Line: Trans fats resemble saturated fat in consistency and shelf life, but the chemical composition is still very different. While saturated fats are harmless, trans fats are highly toxic and should be avoided.

7. Eating Fat Makes You Fat and High-Fat Diets Are Dangerous

Fat is the stuff that lodges under our skin and makes us look soft and puffy. Therefore, eating more fat should make us store more of it. You are what you eat, right? Well, it actually isn’t that simple.

Even though fat has more calories per gram compared to protein and carbs, foods that are naturally high in fat are very fulfilling and hard to overeat. In fact, studies on diets that are high in fat (and low in carbs) show that these diets cause more weight loss than diets that are low in fat (59, 60, 61).

Low-carb, high-fat diets also lead to all sorts of other benefits… increased HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, lower blood sugar and insulin levels, more abdominal fat loss and improved size of LDL particles (62, 63, 63, 65).

Despite this, many nutrition professionals still have the audacity to call low-carb diets harmful, then continue to peddle the failed low-fat diet that has been proven, time and time again, to be completely ineffective.

Bottom Line: Despite fat having more calories per gram than carbs or protein, studies show that high-fat (and low-carb) diets actually lead to more weight loss than low-fat diets.

8. Processed Margarine is Better Than Natural Butter

Because of the war on saturated fat, butter became recognized as an unhealthy food. Food manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon and started producing butter replicates like margarine.

Most margarines contain large amounts of processed vegetable oils, often with trans fats added to the mix. It is hard to imagine how people could think that processed, factory made margarine would be healthier than butter, which is completely natural and humans have been eating for a long time.

The studies also do NOT support the idea that margarine is healthier than butter. In the Framingham Heart Study, margarine was associated with an increased heart disease risk compared to butter (66):

Many other studies have looked at high-fat dairy products and found no evidence that they contribute to any disease… in fact, high fat dairy is associated with a lower risk of obesity (67, 68).

Despite all the fear mongering, high fat dairy products like butter are extremely healthy, especially if they are derived from grass-fed cows.

Bottom Line: Margarine is an unhealthy fake food produced in factories, usually containing trans fats and processed vegetable oils. Butter is a much healthier choice, especially if it comes from grass-fed cows.

9. Processed Low-Fat Foods Are Healthy Options

Because of the ridiculous low-fat advice, food manufacturers removed the fat from some of their foods. But there was a major problem… natural foods taste terrible without the fat.

The food manufacturers realized this and added a whole bunch of sugar to compensate for the missing fat. For this reason, most “low fat” foods are actually loaded with sugar, which is seriously harmful (69, 70, 71).

If a food has “low fat”or “diet” on the label, then you will probably find sugar, corn syrup and various artificial chemicals on the ingredients list.

However, sales of these foods have skyrocketed because many nutrition professionals still advise people to eat them… even though the “normal fat” alternatives are much healthier!

Comment: When we allow industry lobbyists to intimidate politicians by threatening to withhold campaign funds unless they do as they’re told, and when we allow so-called “scientists” to do alleged “scientific studies” designed to fit the facts around predetermined outcomes, the result is that people are fed what amounts to poisonous substances mistakenly referred to as “food,” and people are lied to about what is and isn’t truly healthy.

And, in the process of people being slowly sickened and killed by such evil behavior big agriculture and big pharma rake in billions making their leaders rich – at the expense of everyone’s health. This entire scenario is probably one of the biggest human atrocities ever perpetrated in all of the recorded history of man.

The Deflation Monster has Arrived

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-16/deflation-monster-has-arrived

don’t you just love a whiff of deflation in the morning?

“Rubio or Cruz as independents”

That’s possible although I don’t think it likely. Trump scares the hell out of the Republican establishment.

“My distrust of the establishment runs pretty deep.”

LOL! With good reason!

that forces us to do something about mental illness and all the people that are roaming the streets that in previous times would have been institutionalized  .  Now we call them democrats and allow them to vote .. …Its clear that Democrats wanted all of them released under the pretext of saving money  …Well some of those that in earlier days would have been locked up and the public protected from them have now risen to HIGH Political offices …..namely the Sociopaths and psychopaths ..

Gun Control may well backfire on these Socialpaths and they may end up being incarcerated  again along with the mass killers that use Guns instead of their WORDS  to harm people they govern.   YOU still WANT “GUN CONTROL” ?  WE need to talk about Mental Illness !

What they forget in trading people for OIL Sales ,Uranium,Money ,Lifting of Sanctions is that Iranians will never run out of Americans to KIDNAP.

Next time they need or want something lifted they create an emotional crisis and get what they want …It seems we forgot how to deal with KIDNAPPERS   Since the Lindberg baby kidnapping that the public got outraged about it and demamded it be stopped  and was for a long time in this Country …The only thing NEW is the History you dont know !

Now Obama has opened the DOOR again for a short term Political Gain and we will see more kidnappings until we get outraged again by some dastardly deed ….like a nuclear bomb dropped on us or an ally.   He has opened the DOOR AGAIN to kidnappings until something so egregious happens that we get outraged enough to stop that kind of stupid diplomacy …They will never run out of Americans to kidnap…..

Obama is the stupidest President we ever had ,he dosent care about the hard lessons learned from previous mistakes ..he just continues to make them as long as he sees that HE can gain something.He’s a selfish self centered Sociopath …

Agree.

I wonder though that if Trump were to win the Republican nomination if the establishment RINO’s might not run out Rubio or Cruz in a third party therefore sabotaging any chance for Trump to win and anointing Hillary or Sanders.

My distrust of the establishment runs pretty deep. 🙂

And American prisoners have been released. Minus a few billion for something they should be jailed for in the first place.

That would be great if Sanders gets the Demo nomination. I don’t think most democrats are ready for a true socialist president. I think it increases Trump’s chances of winning.

International sanctions against Iran are due to be lifted Saturday, according to Tehran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The move will take effect when the International Atomic Energy Agency has issued its final report concerning Iran’s nuclear program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to release a final report in the Austrian capital of Vienna, which will confirm that Iran has stuck to its end of the bargain in regard to honoring the nuclear deal, which was struck between Tehran and six world powers last year.

more https://www.rt.com/news/329164-iran-sanctions-lifted-zarif/

The smartphone case with a built-in hand crank

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35302533

Exactly so. All three of them are a disgrace. Perhaps Hillary will make it four…but, I think Trump can stop either her or sanders.

The Three (NWO) Stooges – America’s Executioners

Good to see you back. You’d think computers would be a cut and dried situation … but often there is annoying complications which should be more associated with magic or evil spirits.

Bill Still made the movie “The Money Masters”

Quite credible IMHO