People often ask me what it means to be alive. I mean, why are we here? What is the purpose of
life? Everything appears to be so screwed up, and we can’t really do anything about it. It feels
hopeless. And then I get to thinking about a world without hope. The meaning of those words.
The scope of how that can be possible given the freedom and empowerment that I have spoken
about for the past ten years.
Hope is not really something that is given or taken away by anyone else. It is something we
make ourselves, really. Whether we crawl out of a bombed out hovel onto still smoking ground
deeply turned by bombs or tumbling mountains, or whether we just walked out of our apartment
or home into the bright morning sunshine and progressive Fall colors now painting the green and
rolling canvas from which we pray, hope is the one gift we can prepare and give to ourselves.
And what do we hope for? The evidence of things not seen? The past to change? Not usually.
We hope for the future. Ah, and then you start walking in the right territory. You see, hope is
not a gift for now. I hear people talk about the now all the time, but we physicists don’t really
have a concept of now. If there was such a thing as now, we could not tell its location in space
or even how fast it was going.
The now is merely the focal point of your consciousness at a particular moment. Time itself can
be measured, and thus observed, in remarkably resolution. We can enhance our ability to
observe time, even infinitesimal increments of it. The point is that when we observe a moment,
it changes. And thus you can, in point of fact, change the past, which changes the present, which
indeed influences the future. Oh it does, believe me.
You can let a moment go by in the rush of a day, but when you reflect on that day, and happen to
focus on that moment, the one where you lightly ignored the person behind the counter who was
completely ignoring you as well, that moment changes. You may resolve that the next counter
person or waitress or ticket taker at the movie, or the next salesperson at the clothing store will
receive your appreciation and your affection for humanity. You will look them in the eye, where
their soul waits like a thirsty flower for a drop of clean rain or some daylight, and you will pour
some of your love into that person. I guarantee you have changed that moment, and all the
moments that come after that for that person and for yourself.
Oh, you may feel like virtue is pouring out of you for a second or so, but actually it is pouring in.
It comes in through the crack you just formed in your own armor. As Leonard Cohen says, it’s
how the light gets in.
That is the easy part, changing the past, and especially how you are affected by it. You may not
think that the encounter with that person upon whom you are reflecting doesn’t feel your
observation or even care about it, but they do feel it and they do care. Consciousness is a fluid
world without the boundary of time or space, and we are intimately connected to one another and
everything else in it.
Now, let’s talk about the future for a moment. Ah, there’s that word again. It is an elusive
increment of time that defies quantity, but the quality is unlimited. The future, from where you
are right now, is like fertile soil or a blank artist’s canvas, with the exception of all the other
resonances you have started already for that moment in time. Oh yes, there is already stuff going
down on that canvas, and it is mostly from your own doing. There are decisions and scripts that
you have created or perpetuated from your own past that are creating a landscape and population
of challenges for you long before you get there. Most of these are old habits and behaviors that
you just keep doing over and over again. Some are fears or cynicisms that you have
accumulated. Some are even psychic land mines laid for you by others in your life. There are
pits your own neighbors have dug for you to fall into.
Now, I can’t take tonight’s program and go through how to clear all of these out of the way, but
trust me it can be done. You can return your canvas to the fluid and dynamic future you had
when you were a child, or you can structure it so that only certain things are allowed onto it, but I
assure it is all under your control and it is your divine right to place it in order. No god, and no
host of gods can take that from you. The threat of death has never really frightened humans. It
is the perception of losing the rights over the future, your eternal future, that compels men to
obey.
Let’s just suffice it to say that if you choose to use the power over the bounty of the universe for
evil, you will reap the outer darkness that you seek without fail. You can build a great and
terrible empire of wealth and power here on this Earth for a few moments, and you will see that
evil moments are short lived and must be replenished with greater and greater evil at a faster and
faster rate, and you will have already assured your future rule over nothing at all forever long
before you die.
Or you can use it for charity and mercy and love for others, regardless of the advantage they take
of you, or the contempt they have for you. I have often, and with completely inadequate
gratitude repeated the words of one of my greatest teachers, “It matters not how others love you.
It only matters how you love them.” At the end of the day, one needs only consider that even
Jesus had enemies.
Now, when I say charity, I am not even implying that you take everything for which you labor
and simply give to others who ask for it. You received enough political campaign requests for
money to drain your every resource, and they will neither notice your contribution nor will they
care that they have left you with nothing to eat in the exchange. Not at all. I am talking about
gifts that you have of your soul. Words, smiles, hugs, handshakes, a meal for a homeless person,
mystery groceries left on the porch of someone who lost their job or has a sick family member, a
tank of gas at a gas station, changing a tire for someone with small children.
These types of lifestyle changes rewrite scripts in your future. They remove mirrors and surfaces
that reflect your habits into the things you do over and over again that make you fail. While you
are asking for funding for your dream to become a reality, you cannot deny someone in need.
The formula does not work that way. You set up resonance of greed and selfishness, and then
you begrudge a benefactor because he will not invest in your company. Giving that smile and
that help to another when you are able, even better when you sense that person has an unspoken
need, is the very resonant energy that turns your investor back to your business plan when he is
reflecting on which deal to fund. They are all good deals, you know. Everyone’s numbers look
good. It is the story that turns the investor. More than this, it is the impact of the story that turns
him. Impact is not what you say or write; rather, it is what can be written or will be said as a
result of funding your project. That you do not do. That is done by others. The others get their
impression of impact based upon the energy they are receiving from their environment. What I
am telling you is that you can make things resonate in their environment that they will see and
feel. That is impact.
Now, you can learn much more about these skills, and I have often thought about forming a
success school to help others learn these skills, but I have found that people who really want to
learn them will find a way to get them, either from me or one of my wonderful teachers. I am
building electric cars. They do this all the time. Just write me, and I will be happy to give you
their contact information. Well, not all of them. One or two are one on one teachers,
contemporaries and soul mates. There are not many of us here, I can tell you that. Not nearly
enough.
Okay, let’s consider a bell. A large bell, like a two hundred pound church bell hanging in the air.
You can imagine striking that bell with a large wooden mallet and hearing it ring out. Well, that
is not what humans do when they dream, actually. We have been taught by various worldly
teachers that the way to dream is to get a picture of the bell and to tape it to our refrigerator, and
then to look at it every time we open or close that door.
Wonderful. Focus. Also wrong and destined to leave you depressed and confused. It is like
hitting that bell over and over again with the mallet every hour. All it is going to do is make a
powerful bell sound. Perhaps if we hold onto the bell with one hand and pound it with the other.
Maybe that will work. Fruitless and exhausting, I am afraid.
You see, the bounty of the universe does not come from matter organized. Not at all. It comes
from matter unorganized. It makes up 20 times more mass than the all the stars and planets you
could behold in this dimension. It is this matter from which God drew his working materials to
make this entire third dimensional universe. All He had to do was make two particles to make
that happen. The rules of creation did the rest. I say that is all he had to do, but for all our
smashing and collision and magnetism we have only learned how to splatter things apart. We
still cannot make a single proton or a single electron. Not one.
The rule of creation is simple enough. Combine energy at the correct proportions at the correct
ratio, and matter will form as a statistical sample of that set of energy when the correct resonance
is activated. Now, this implies intelligence and direction, because the pattern of what is to be
created must be formulated and clearly visualized. Could you clearly visualize a proton? No.
Neither could I, yet. It also requires resonance.
Why is resonance required? Because requiring more energy to create something than you could
possibly get back out of the equation does not work. There is no balance, no surplus on which
the dream can function. There is no such thing as free energy created from nothing. It can be
coaxed into the equation from outside the set of energy, or it can be converted from some other
form, but it doesn’t come from nothing. First, you have to put something in.
So, let’s go back to the bell; the dream we taped to our refrigerator door. I told you the bell is
ringing loudly after being smacked with your mallet. Right? Well, that sound energy goes out
into the universe in all directions. It washes over everything in its path, diminishing with the
square of the distance of course. Remember, it is an ever expanding sphere which means the
square of the radius multiplied by 4 pi is the surface across which the bell’s energy must spread.
Still, that set of frequencies that you gave life to by your swinging that focus of yours is out
there.
Without going into a long lesson about the observation effect, let’s just assume for a moment that
there are billions of little tuning forks out there all over the place. They are of every size and
increment of wavelength. The bell’s energy, when it matches the frequency of a tuning fork, will
be absorbed by that tuning fork. You can try this yourself with an acoustic guitar and your home
stereo. Just place the guitar against the wall near your large floor speaker and turn up the music.
Somewhere in that music there will be a frequency that matches that of a string on that guitar.
The string will absorb it and you will witness that string acting like it was invisibly plucked so
hard that it rattles against the guitar’s neck. Go ahead and try it. You’ll see.
You didn’t pluck the string. You played the stereo. The guitar absorbed energy from the room
and resonated that energy as its own sound! I say that because if you could really observe that
string in very slow motion, you would see the frequency beginning to vibrate the string. If that
vibration time was too short, the string would simply buzz a little and very little absorbance takes
place. But, if the sound level were repeated, say for a certain number of periods of that
frequency—like a sine wave long enough to hit that string repeatedly as it bounced back from
each absorbance node—then you would see the event cascade like an avalanche of sound.
Now, there are tuning forks vibrating with the bell’s energy. I have found that if you put your
energy into the tuning forks that vibrate with your bell, the reverse is true as well. Like a
symphony, rather than a single violin or cello, the total sound resonates back to your bell and
manifests the purest form of that bell. Your new bell is exactly like what you dreamed, but it is
divine now and it is created by the rules of the universe combined with your intelligence and
effort.
Now, you can learn much more about this, if you like. The minimum number of cycles required
to create resonance, the ratio of that resonance, and the skills to hear the tuning forks out there
are all yours for the learning. You can read the book Remembering the Future, or you can take
workshop from one of my teachers, or you can write me. We’ll talk about it.
It is with this little knowledge that you can make hope for the future. I have read the future as
the prophets have written it. I don’t much care for most of it. Do you? Death, smoke,
oppression, evil at every turn. I got it, it is God’s word and everything. But we can choose a
new future, if we want to. Are we disrespecting God if we do that? Hardly. Why do you think
He told us about it? Because he doesn’t want you to do anything about it? Please. He has told
us about it to empower us, to remove all surprise about what will happen to this world if we
continue our current path.
Well, you know it is written, “Many are called, but few are chosen?” Wrong. “Many are called,
but few choose.” You choose. You make the decision right here and right now whom you will
serve and what future you want. It is your choice and no others. Get up and choose. Correctly,
not having stuff. Being something. Doing something. Having is a deception and a fool’s errand.
Having will come, and more than you could ever eat or wear or hold in your warehouses. And
then learn how to make that choice a reality.
Benghazi: The Real Story
I think it is important for us to discuss the events that occurred on September 11, 2012 one more
time. Why? Well, the propagandists have had their way with you now for over three years. The
Democrats have disinfected the place, washed all the blood away, and twisted on the end of their
trap chain until it looks like a braided rug. You have forgotten what this was about. The liberal
news media wants to convert this act of war into a political witch hunt, and the other news media
wants to express their fatigue with the whole subject.
So it is time for you to be refreshed on what happened, how it was planned, why it was planned,
who planned it, and whether or not it was successful. First of all, there was only one person in
the world who had said the term Islamic State and the formation of a Caliphate in a public forum.
One. He made it so clear that he made a motion picture documentary about it, and it was the
most widely watched such production in history. It was called 2016: Barack Obama’s America
and it was written and directed and narrated and released in 2,100+ theaters in August of 2012 by
Dinesh D’Souza.
In this film, Mr. D’Souza accurately described the planning and formation of a global, well
funded organization dedicated to uniting the major countries in the Middle East into one Islamic
State. It would be armed. It would be wealthy with oil money. And it would have access to the
weapons and intelligence offered by Barack Hussein Obama and his network of the Muslim
Brotherhood.
About three weeks after the film was setting records around the country, Hillary Clinton
unleashed her plan to assassinate the president of Libya and redistribute his weapons through
Turkey to waiting military forces in Syria, which later would be known as ISIS. There was
opposition to this move, of course. The same opposition that we see today, bombing the
stuffings out of ISIS in Syria today is the same supplier of weapons, money, and trained
mercenaries that hammered the compound in Benghazi in 2012.
Four Americans were murdered as they were left defenseless. No one, not the least of which was
Hillary Clinton, wanted a stack of Russian trained soldiers filmed on CNN the day after this
event. She would market this as the spontaneous response to a 4th-rate home video production
made by a guy in Florida who was placed in jail under a gag order for years after the event took
place. To this day, his story has not been told. To this day we do not have the testimony of the
survivors of the Benghazi attack. It has been covered up so deep and so dark that no one will
know what really went on.
Remember, it was Hillary Clinton, along with her State Department staff such as Susan Rice and
Victoria Nuland who were out in front building up the case for war against Libya, a “UN
Resolution,” and support for the terrorists attempting to overthrow the Libyan leader.
In fact, in an article entitled “Hillary’s War: How Conviction Replaced Skepticism In Libya
Intervention,” the Washington Post’s Joby Warrick describes how Clinton provided yeomen’s
service in the effort to build an “international coalition” against Libya and Ghaddafi and how she
worked overtime to see to it that the nation with the highest living standards in Africa was
reduced to a burning desert of rubble and savagery.[1]
Even the Huffington Post was forced to admit that Hillary Clinton was one of the main forces
promoting the war in Libya, while also fairly pointing out that Clinton was one of many in the
US State Department and other governing bodies who supported the same.[2]
Clinton would stop at no lengths to push the United States into yet another war. Clinton would
even go so far as to give support to the propaganda line that Ghaddafi was using rape and sexual
violence to intimidate and oppress Libyan women.[3]
Such a grandiose and idiotic claim – proven inaccurate on the ground – was only eclipsed in its
absurdity by other claims coming from the Clinton State Department that Ghaddafi was handing
out Viagra for this purpose.
Disgraced US Ambassador Susan Rice was the main purveyor of this myth.[4]
However, the hands of Hillary Clinton are dripping with Libyan blood. If Clinton is ever allowed
to become President, the crimes will be buried even deeper under conspiracy and subterfuge.
We suspect. I suspect. Congressman Gowdy suspects, but it remains to be seen if he will put
nails into the clown shoes of this life of crime masquerading as a candidate for president.
Gowdy’s prosecutor’s nose has been hot on this trail for three years, and he will not relent until
every fact that can be known is found and put in order. Like Al Capone and other crime families
who thumbed their noses at police, investigators, attorneys general, and Congress, the Clintons
walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil, or any good for that matter.
The assassination of the president of Libya was public for all to see. He was chased into the
streets and gunned down like a dog. There was no due process. There was no rule of law. There
was murder and slaughter of thousands upon thousands of government employees and police to
get this man. American jets and America intelligence and all of it run like a man hunt by our
own Hillary Clinton. Can you just see her watching the screen, clenching her fists like the
emperor in Return of the Jedi, saying “Get him. Get him.”
All the while this happening, she and her talking heads were telling the American people how
evil Gaddafi was and how he had slaughtered thousands of his own people, how the freedom
fighters were being killed by government forces. How it was time for regime change. Well,
those freedom fighters were all mercenaries, and paid soldiers trained to do a job. Once Gaddafi
was out of the way, his arsenals could be robbed and distributed to Syria to feed the waiting
armies of Barack Obama for the next regime change; Assad.
Obama would move the American forces out of the way over the next three years, allowing ISIS
to walk into city after city and city unopposed to position themselves for the takeover of Syria.
Oh, we would run a few attacks from the air, but 75% of the planes would come home without
firing a shot, because the targets would receive advanced warning of the approach coming from
Turkey. Only the Peshmerga and small Christian militias would know where they really were
and would really make any progress against them. That is until they are stopped by their own
leadership receiving messages from someone up very high saying you cannot pursue and you
cannot destroy ISIS.
In many cases, the ISIS forces could be destroyed in a matter of hours, but the fighters are
constrained by politics, saying do not engage unless you are engaged.
Now, we are getting ready for Hillary’s testimony before the Benghazi committee. In secret. In
the dark, as it were. No press. No question or answer that might harm her chances to be the next
president. How does that make you feel? Do you think that Gowdy will ask nothing accusatory?
Or do you think that Hillary will take the 5th? Or not recall at all? Or decry the entire room full
of officials as a bunch of partisan hacks and spit fire at them?
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said in an interview aired Sunday that she
won't have much to add when she testifies before the Benghazi Select Committee this week.
"I think it’s pretty clear that whatever they might’ve thought they were doing, they ended up
becoming a partisan arm of the Republican National Committee with an overwhelming focus on
trying to — as they admitted — drive down my poll numbers," Clinton said on CNN’s "State of
the Union."
"I've already testified about Benghazi. I testified to the best of my ability before the Senate and
the House. I don’t know that I have very much to add," she said, pointing out that the panel
headed up by South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy is the eighth committee to look into the
Benghazi attacks.
"They’ve all looked into this and basically just rejected the conspiracy theories that are still
floating in some circles," the former secretary of state said. "I will do my very best to answer
their questions but I don’t really know what their objective is right now." She truly lives in a
voodoo fantasy world of stick pins and incantations. She believes that whatever she says is
important, and whatever anyone else says is nothing but conspiracy designed to hurt her poll
numbers.
Clinton also talked about the Republican front-runner Donald Trump, saying, "He has brought
his oversize personality and his reality television experience to the highest level of American
politics and seems to be getting a very positive response among a large part of the Republican
electorate."
She said she will keep criticizing Trump "for going beyond the bounds of what I think is
appropriate for anybody running for president," including "the attacks that he’s made on
immigrants [and] women."
It doesn’t matter really. You won’t get to see the testimony she gives. Ever. No one will ever
tell you the truth or lies that were told in that room. What you will know is that every stone was
overturned, and there was nothing there. Hillary is clean and innocent, and she is free to be the
president if she wants. That is all you will know. Any indictment after that by the FBI will be
immediately pardoned by the president, and he will say, “I think we’ve heard quite enough about
those emails,” and it is time to get back to the people’s business.
The truth that a sitting president was assassinated, his country’s weapons were used to arm ISIS,
and our president has been working to aid and abet the formation of a Caliphate against the
sovereignty and charter of the United States will come out…eventually. But by then it will be
too late. All the presidents after him will be weak and pathetic and unable to reverse the damage
that was done to this nation. The Constitution may not survive. Our system of government will
not survive. It is already completely unrecognizable.
Bills are written by a presidential team of academics. They are bound and delivered to a puppet
Speaker of the House, who sends it to the floor with no debate, no amendments, and no cloture
where they are made into law without a single member being allowed to read it. You and I are
not represented by this government, because it is tyranny. It is a laundered and starched version
of the Caliphate. And when they come for your American rights, the rest of them, you will have
no one to blame but yourself. Because you were told.
You were told in speeches, in radio broadcasts, in movies and songs and in every way you can
imagine, but you did not listen. And even if you listened, you did not act. No, that generation
that would have acted is long dead and buried now. Those men and women who knew what
freedom was and knew the price was high to have it are standing against the railing now, looking
over at us. They are screaming at the top of their lungs from up there, turn around. Watch out.
Look up from your stupid smart phone. Take cover.
Don’t worry, America. The screen will go dark very soon on that phone. Your smart car won’t
start, and your beautiful groceries will be scattered like a tornado went through. Your water will
smell like death, and your wealth will canker and rust in a matter of hours.
You can stop all of this at any moment you want. This is one of the rarest opportunities in
American history when an outsider could actually win the white house and actually stop these
machines from grinding our liberty into their bread. But you have to vote. You have to listen to
the truth and vote in such enormous numbers that they cannot cheat and they cannot alter the
numbers.
Like the Alamo, we must remember. We must have a call to action that is unmistakable and
unshakable. Remember Benghazi. When you see the face of Hillary Clinton, remember the face
of Chris Stevens as he was raped to death and her face as the mob mercenaries in Libya chased
president Gaddafi down the street with pistols in their hands to kill him. Get him. Get him.
That is what you have to fear, Earth explorers. That is what you have to fear.
Big Banks to America’s Firms: We Don’t
Want Your Cash
Profit-crunching low interest rates have banks judging cash
too costly to keep
By
Juliet Chung And
Sarah Krouse
Oct. 18, 2015 5:38 a.m. ET
189 COMMENTS
U.S. banks are going to new lengths to ward off a surprising threat to their financial health: big
cash deposits.
State Street Corp. , the Boston bank that manages assets for institutional investors, for the first
time has begun charging some customers for large dollar deposits, people familiar with the
matter said. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the nation’s largest bank by assets, has cut unwanted
deposits by more than $150 billion this year, in part by charging fees.
The developments underscore a deepening conflict over cash. Many businesses have large sums
on hand and opportunities to profitably invest it appear scarce. But banks don’t want certain
kinds of cash either, judging it costly to keep, and some are imposing fees after jawboning
customers to move it.
The banks’ actions are driven by profit-crunching low interest rates and regulations adopted
since the financial crisis to gird banks against funding disruptions.
The latest fees center on large sums deemed risky by regulators, sometimes dubbed hot-money
deposits thought likely to flee during times of crises. Finalized last September and overseen by
the Federal Reserve and other regulators, the rule involving the liquidity coverage ratio forces
banks to hold high-quality liquid assets, such as central bank reserves and government debt, to
cover projected deposit losses over 30 days. Banks must hold reserves of as much as 40% against
certain corporate deposits and as much as 100% against some deposits from hedge funds.
“At some point you wonder whether there will be a shortage of financial institutions willing to
take on these balances,” said Kelli Moll, head of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP’s hedgefund practice in New York, saying that where to hold cash has become an increasing topic of
conversation as hedge funds are shown the door by long-time banking counterparties.
ENLARGE
The push comes as the globe is awash in cash, reflecting soft economic growth and low interest
rates that limit investment. Some asset managers have been increasing the amount of cash they
are holding in their portfolios, in part because of an increased focus by the Securities and
Exchange Commission on liquidity management in mutual funds.
Domestic deposits at U.S. banks in the second quarter hit $10.59 trillion, up 38% from five years
earlier, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data show. Loans outstanding at U.S. banks as a share of
total deposits tumbled to 71% from 78% in 2010 and 92% in mid-2007, before the financial
crisis, the data show.
Jerome Schneider, head of Pacific Investment Management Co.’s short-term and funding desk,
which advises corporate and institutional clients, said that as a result of the bank actions, he and
his customers have discussed as cash alternatives boosting investments in U.S. Treasury bonds,
ultrashort-duration bond funds and money-market funds.
When it comes to cash, Mr. Schneider said, “Clients have been put on warning.”
Auctions for one- and three-month Treasury bills this week sold bills at zero yields, reflecting
outsize demand for the securities.
Few banks disclose how much in “nonoperating” deposits they hold. Credit Suisse Group AG
analysts estimated in August that the top four U.S. banks by assets hold roughly $650 billion in
those deposits that require the highest levels of reserves.
Banks are struggling to generate returns for investors. A low-interest rate environment squeezes
bank profits by narrowing the spread between the rate they lend at and their borrowing, or
funding, cost.
Some analysts have been predicting rates would rebound, likely boosting bank profits, but that
hasn’t happened. This year, slowing growth in China and recessions in some major emergingmarket nations have dimmed expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this
year.
The KBW Nasdaq Bank Index of large commercial banks has dropped about 9% since July as
rate-increase expectations waned.
Deposit fees are particularly significant at State Street because its primary business is custodying
client assets, including holding cash for clients rather than seeking to lend out those funds, as
other banks typically do.
State Street customers earlier were told that fees were possible on accounts whose
nonoperational balances had grown, the people familiar with the matter said. There is no
minimum deposit size that triggers the fee, which varies and is applied case by case to new and
existing clients, the people said.
“The persistence of the current rate environment requires that we take action consistent with
prudent financial management with certain accounts that continually maintain significant
excessive cash balances,” State Street said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.
BNY Mellon and Northern Trust haven’t yet begun charging to hold clients’ cash, people
familiar with the matter said. A Bank of New York spokesman said the bank hasn’t ruled out
doing so in the future. The fees at J.P. Morgan don’t apply to clients of its custody business, a
person familiar with the bank said.
Northern Trust has been taking a “transaction by transaction approach” to accepting very large
deposits from clients approaching the bank, said Chief Financial Officer S. Biff Bowman on the
bank’s second-quarter earnings call in July. A Northern Trust spokesman declined to say whether
charges were a possibility in the future.
State Street and others have charged clients on some large euro deposits for more than a year,
reflecting a negative interest rate on overnight deposits at the European Central Bank.
In 2011, BNY Mellon set plans to charge a small number of clients for holding their cash,
reflecting in part a large flow of deposits triggered by investors’ flight to safety that summer. The
bank rolled back the plan without imposing fees after some clients pulled money.
Since last year, Bank of America Corp. has told some institutional clients that they will need to
move their deposits or pay to keep them at the bank, people familiar with the matter said. Top
executives decided to approach clients that didn’t do other business with the bank.
Obama Decides Iran Sanctions to be Lifted Immediately
World powers and Iran set the clock ticking Sunday on a landmark accord placing limits on the
Islamic Republic’s nuclear work in return for access to oil and financial markets.
The formal adoption of the deal means that all sides will have to begin delivering on the pledges
they made three months ago. For Iran, that requires mothballing thousands of centrifuges,
eliminating 95 percent of its enriched-uranium stockpile and retrofitting a reactor. The U.S. and
Europe will make preparations to lift sanctions, which will occur on “implementation day,” once
the Iranian measures are in place.
“Today marks an important milestone toward preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon
and ensuring its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful going forward,” President Barack
Obama said in a statement. “I am confident in the extraordinary benefits to our national security
and the peace and security of the world that come with the successful implementation” of the
accord.
One of the first steps will be a statement of intention by China, Iran and the U.S. to work
together modernizing Iran’s heavy-water reactor at Arak so it can’t produce plutonium that could
be used in a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. officials who briefed reporters on condition of
anonymity to discuss details of the deal’s implementation.
Meet U.S. Commitments
Obama said he had directed his administration to prepare for meeting U.S. commitments under
the agreement. Secretary of State John Kerry will also start work on waivers of sanctions that
were imposed by law and are related to the nuclear program, the State Department said.
On Monday, all of the parties involved in the accord will meet in Vienna to set up sub-groups
required under the agreement to discuss technical issues, sanctions relief and how to manage
Iran’s commitments on restricting its nuclear program, the officials said.
More than two years of negotiations culminated in an agreement of more than 100 pages that was
signed on July 14 in Vienna. The accord survived fierce opposition in the U.S. Congress, where a
Republican bid to scuttle the deal failed, and among hard-line members of Iran’s parliament.
Twelve years after Iran was found concealing some nuclear activities, prompting concern it had
weapons ambitions, the deal has been described as a victory of diplomacy over the potential use
of force.
Missile Tests
The agreement hasn’t diffused tensions between Iran and the West. From missile tests to support
for Syria’s regime and military coordination with Russia, Iran is exerting its power in the volatile
region. U.S. allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia have said the nuclear accord will strengthen
Iran even more.
Sanctions against Iran probably will be lifted within the first three months of 2016, after the
International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed the nation has curtailed its nuclear work,
diplomats said last month. Once the restrictions are removed, relief is expected to fuel economic
growth by lowering barriers to Iran’s oil exports and ending the isolation of its banks.
Iran has said it will offer about 50 energy projects to investors and plans to boost output by about
2 million barrels a day once the deal is in place. The Persian Gulf nation, with the world’s fourthlargest oil reserves, pumped 2.8 million barrels a day last month, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg.
U.S. Waivers
One nation, Japan, plans to triple its imports of Iranian crude once sanctions are lifted, the
Iranian Oil Ministry’s Shana news agency said on Saturday, citing Seyed Mohsen Ghamsari,
director of international affairs at National Iranian Oil Co. Japan will increase purchases to
350,000 barrels a day from 110,000 barrels, the agency said.
The U.S. waivers will result in the lifting of sanctions that now restrict or penalize non-U.S.
companies for engaging in various economic activities, including buying Iranian oil and dealing
with many Iranian banks, the U.S. officials said.
But for U.S. companies, sanctions will be eased only for certain narrow categories, the officials
said. They said these include the export of civilian passenger aircraft, the import of spare aircraft
parts and handicrafts from Iran, and some activities that subsidiaries of U.S. companies can
conduct overseas.
In addition, Obama told reporters on Friday that sanctions “related to ballistic missiles, humanrights violations, terrorism -- those, we will continue to enforce.”
Intrusive Inspections
In another sign of progress, Iran told the IAEA on Sunday that it was ready to let monitors
implement their most intrusive inspections regime once the agreement was implemented.
Moreover, the government will begin providing more detailed design information about nuclear
projects, the IAEA said in a statement on its website.
International monitors last week ended their 12-year investigation into the possible military
dimensions of Iran’s nuclear past. Inspectors now have until Dec. 15 to draft and present a final
assessment of their inquiry.
Iran’s nuclear work has been the focus of international scrutiny since February 2003, when
Iranian officials told inspectors visiting Tehran of their plans to begin enriching uranium on an
industrial scale. Subsequent discoveries that Iran had secretly procured nuclear materials and
technologies led to years of mistrust. In May 2008 and again in November 2011, the IAEA
publicly disclosed its suspicions about Iran’s activities.
Iran has consistently denied ever seeking a nuclear weapon.
Timeline to lifting sanctions:




Sunday -- “Adoption Day” for July accord signed with world powers. Parties to the
agreement begin meeting their commitments.
Nov. 30 -- Iran prepares to end testing of advanced centrifuge cascades and store
machines under IAEA seal.
Dec. 15 -- IAEA to present its assessment of Iran’s past nuclear activities, which board
will use “with a view to closing the issue.”
Late 2015-early 2016 -- Oil sanctions to be lifted on “Implementation Day.” U.S.
officials have suggested it will take at least two months from “Adoption Day” to reach
this point.
Small Pork
Have you been pining for a "teacup" pig but worried that the supposedly petite porcine pet might
grow as big as your bathtub?
A Chinese biotech firm says it now has the answer: a genetically modified swine that tops out
around 33 pounds.
BGI, a company based in the southern city of Shenzhen that is known for its work sequencing
human, plant and animal DNA, recently announced that it intends to start selling $1,600
miniature pigs that it initially created as laboratory models for studying human ailments.
The pigs created a splash late last month when BGI showed them at the Shenzhen International
Biotech Leaders Summit. The pint-size porkers were created through a process known as gene
editing. Rather than introduce another organism's DNA into the pigs, scientists "edit" the swine's
own genetic material, disabling a copy of the growth hormone receptor gene so that cells don't
get a signal to grow.
Swine-loving celebrities will have to wait for further innovation for truly purse-portable pigs
(Miley Cyrus' Bubba Sue and Paris Hilton's Princess Pigelette are more than a handful, while
George Clooney's 18-year companion, Max, grew to 250 pounds before he died in 2006).
A BGI micro pig at a summit in Shenzhen, China. (BGI)
But animal breeders and advocates say the prospect of even a 33-pound pig could reduce the
problem of people abandoning pet swine that pack on the pounds beyond their owners'
expectations. Curt Mills, a board member of the Southern California Assn. for Miniature
Potbellied Pigs, says four regional shelters for the animals are all at capacity, with about 150
oinkers looking for homes.
"Pigs are good pets, but a lot of issue is the size," said Patty Morrisroe, a pig breeder in Dallas,
Ore., who says she has spent 30 years selectively breeding swine to produce pigs she calls
"Royal Dandies" and "Dandie Extremes" that can be around 39 pounds full grown. But with just
four breeding sows, her litters are limited — about 20 piglets a year — and she charges $2,500 to
$5,500 per animal.
"If you could immediately make a small pig, it would be very cool, but there are still a lot of
questions," she said.
Kenneth Bondioli, a professor of animal sciences at Louisiana State University, said BGI's geneedited micro pigs would need to be evaluated to see if they develop healthily and to determine
whether they would could harm the environment or other livestock if they were released or
escaped. It is unclear whether BGI intends to offer its pigs for sale outside China, but if
Americans wanted them, U.S. regulators would have to determine whether they could be
imported.
"If these and other questions are addressed, the fact that they are gene-edited is irrelevant,"
Bondioli said.
Researchers say the creation of micro pigs could be a boon for scientists, cutting down on the
cost of raising them as laboratory animals and making their care more manageable. "Their utility
for research will depend on whether they are otherwise normal like a regular pig and unaffected
by the edited gene other than their diminutive size," said Willard Eyestone, an associate
professor of biotechnology at Virginia Tech.
These micro pigs could be useful "especially for long-term studies, during which even currently
available 'mini pigs' grow to substantial size," he said.
But Alison Van Eenennaam, a biotechnology specialist at UC Davis who visited BGI about three
months ago and saw their micro pigs, said the fact that the company has resorted to marketing
them as pets reflects the "global regulatory gridlock" around gene-edited animals for food
production and other more serious purposes.
"Genome editing is a powerful technology that can be used for many beneficial applications …
such as producing disease-resistant animals and other things that would have real benefits for the
sustainability of food production," she said. But worldwide, she said, no genetically engineered
animal for food production has been able to be brought to market, and only a few genetically
engineered animal therapeutic products have been approved for humans. That, she believes, is
making companies hesitant to invest in the technology.
Bioengineered pets, though, have found easier acceptance. A transgenic florescent fish, marketed
under the brand GloFish, has been popular for a number of years in the United States. The fish
were created by Singaporean researchers who inserted jellyfish and sea anemone genes into
zebrafish eggs.
"People are happy to have them in their aquarium, but it's when it's on their dinner plate that they
have a different attitude," said Van Eenennaam.
A company called AquaBounty has been seeking for more than 20 years to win FDA approval to
bring a genetically modified fast-growing salmon to supermarkets. Whereas the AquAdvantage
salmon and the GloFish have been engineered to incorporate genes from other fish, the technique
used by BGI to create its micro pigs is different and presents a new question for regulatory
agencies such as the FDA if they were to be imported to the United States.
Pigs are technically food animals, said Max Rothschild, an agriculture professor at Iowa State
University, and the FDA reserves the right to regulate any genetic modification introduced into
such organisms. But in sharp contrast to genetically modified organisms with DNA added into
their genomes, he said, the micro pig was made by removing just a few, highly targeted letters of
DNA from its own genome.
"The FDA should be grappling with this major difference right now as to how it will affect
regulatory policy," he said, "and whether gene-edited organisms should be regulated in the same
way as more traditional GMOs."
It's not just pigs that have been gene-edited. The technique has been demonstrated in cattle as a
way to add muscle, and to ensure dairy cows don't grow horns (Holsteins often have their horns
mechanically chopped). But those applications have not yet been developed to commercial scale,
said Van Eenennaam.
What rules should apply to gene editing is an increasingly pressing question for not just agencies
such as the FDA but also scientists and medical ethicists as the technique moves from the animal
world to the human realm. Although gene editing holds the promise of significant medical
breakthroughs, it also could open a Pandora's box of eugenic-like applications.
For several years, scientists have been using editing to modify genes in adult human cells, by, for
example, changing bone marrow cells to make people resistant to HIV, the virus causes AIDS.
But this spring, a team of Chinese researchers caused an international stir when they announced
that they had used gene editing to alter DNA in human embryos in an attempt to repair a defect
that causes a potentially fatal blood disorder.
While Chinese researchers' application of gene-editing techniques — for pigs or people — may
give some people pause, Chinese scientists are mindful that the global regulatory environment,
particularly in the U.S., has consequences for their efforts.
"When I was in China the researchers there … were asking why isn't the FDA approving the
genetically engineered fish because it's making the global regulatory agencies hesitant to do
anything," said Van Eenennaam, who believes data show that the AquAdvantage is safe and that
gene-editing animals such as pigs and cattle is not materially different from traditional selective
breeding.
"It's impeding this technology from being utilized — if you go to all the effort of making an
animal and it's unclear whether you're going to be able to market it."
BGI agrees there is a need to regulate gene editing both for creating pets as well as for medical
research, which is central to the company's micro pig business. Yong Li, the technical director of
BGI's animal-science platform, told the journal Nature that any profits from BGI's pet micro pigs
would be plowed into medical research. BGI believes it can use gene editing not just to control
size but also to give consumers a choice of colors.
"We plan to take orders from customers now," he told the journal, "and see what the scale of the
demand is."
New Cancer Fighting Technology Showing 95% Cure Rate
Malignant Melanoma.
Rapid moving and nearly impossible to control with surgery
The Protein that controls reproduction is broken
Teach the immune system to recognize this protein and attack it.
The tumors will disappear as a immune response.
Durability is built by ramping the immune system to the point where auto-immune response is
detected. This is a subtle endpoint, and it rarely can be detected by the patient. That is to say,
you just can’t ask the patient, “How do you feel today?”
Oh, just kind of blah. Meanwhile, the liver has chemistry that we can monitor that is very
sensitive to this kind of immune response. It can jump to 10-15 times the normal range, but it
can be curtailed with anti-inflammatory hormones.
If the body can be held at this level of high immune response without the auto-immune response,
then the treatment builds durability. This means that the cancer cells will not return. The longer
they are missing from the system, the better the chances of a complete cure.