Glenn Beck Cultists: The New Obamites

By Jackson Cooke

My friends and I made the mistake of attempting to attend the "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington D.C. this past weekend. We normally go to any large rally there no matter what the subject is so we can engage people and discuss important issues such as ending the Federal Reserve and stopping our crazed masters in their pursuit of blood and treasure. This rally was something different, it smacked of a large cult - quite reminiscent of Obama's supporters in late 2007-2008.

Glenn Beck had been pimping this event for quite some time and instructing his flock to not bring signs and claimed the event was "not political" (yet he had Sarah Palin as a headline speaker - go figure). My friends and I are not part of any group, just independent citizen activists that are determined to spread awareness of issues that the mainstream conveniently glosses over. So, naturally, we brought signs slamming the Fed for the financial collapse and declaring War as Big Government and any person opposed to an expansive state should be opposed to being the world's policeman.

Honestly, I overestimated the crowd. I figured there'd be a decent amount of signs despite what Beck had said. We walked up to the metro station's line (stretched back 2 blocks!) with our signs and as soon as we got to the line we heard several mutterings behind and in front of us "you're not supposed to bring any signs" amongst other things. I couldn't believe my ears! These people were shooting us hostile looks (which I'm very used to) but not because of what we were saying but because we broke with Beck's party orthodoxy. The minds were shutting down, no one wanted to discuss politics, just vague platitudes they heard Beck screaming on his shows. It was disgusting to see how many "Restoring Honor" T-shirts were being worn. It instantly reminded me of the Hope T shirts warn proudly during the Obama campaign and honeymoon period. Mindless and disgusting.

The line to the metro was moving at a snail's pace and went on for quite a long distance - our estimate that it would have taken us 2 hours just to get to the metro. And gauging the crowd's demeanour we decided to bag even going to the capitol. We had brought leaflets with a great deal of information about the Fed and began to pass them out to the people in the line, most people took the leaflets (long line, they were bored) but several people that had seen us with signs (which we discarded to hand out the literature) and several people made hostile or snide comments to me and associates about how we "didn't get the memo" about the signs. I was aghast, I couldn't believe these people were following Beck so blindly. And the hostility. Trust me, I'm used to crowds being angry at my less than mainstream views but this was something new. Obamites were never like this, equally dopey - yes, but not this doctrinaire.

After returning to my friend's apartment we flipped on the corporate box and watched the coverage on the various cable news channels and once again I couldn't believe my eyes. The crowd looked frozen in time. No one was talking, just staring forward absorbing everything their Demagogue said. Beck was fashioning himself as some sort of revivalist preacher sucking in these well meaning, but misguided folks. It was all about him, all about his cult of personality.

I've never returned from a political event feeling so disillusioned. The Obama cultists were creepy, silly, childish, etc but most were at least willing to let you talk. These people were just not interested in doing anything contrary to Beck's instructions. Classic divide and conquer. Beck is inflaming his right wing followers so they can never unite with people and creating racial tensions by declaring the rally as the mantle for civil rights with a crowd that was 99.5% white and most likely affluent. Beware this man, and caution friends and relatives to his siren song.

Warning Signs Of Full Spectrum Collapse Are Everywhere

The sovereign debt crisis in Greece and many other European nations has, at least for the moment, opened a gap in the wash of financial disinformation that has prevailed in the mainstream media for the past year. The average American is now more aware of the terrible costs of living in an artificially driven and widely manipulated “global economy”, and has also been exposed (at least for the moment) to the very real frailties in our own markets, which have been hidden or downplayed by the government as well as disingenuous establishment economists. Events in the EU, however, are only a glimpse of the greater and more imminent threats we face in the near future. In this article we will look at some of the latest and most disturbing moves by governments and financial institutions, as well as tell-tale signs in our own local cities, which signal that a full-spectrum collapse of world markets and possibly our own currency is not only in progress, but nearing completion.

read in full:

Botox may diminish the experience of emotion

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2010/04/botox_may_diminish_the_experience_of_emotions.php

Botox, which is used by millions of people every year to reduce wrinkles and frown lines on the forehead, works by paralyzing the muscles involved in producing facial expressions. A study due to be published in the journal Psychological Science suggests that by doing so, it impairs the ability to process the emotional content of language, and may diminish the quality of emotional experiences.

Augmented reality puts the squeeze into virtual hugs

Connected to a computer, the device can simulate several types of heart beat, a realistic hug, the tickling sensation of a butterfly stomach, and a tingling feeling along the spine. It can also generate warmth.

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How To Prepare For Obamacare: Create Your Own Natural Medicine Chest

This article provides a list of proven home remedies and self-help strategies that readers can begin utilizing today to maintain health while avoiding costly medical care.

While I have written articles in the past at LR that have addressed heart disease, cancer and other maladies, I hadn’t yet addressed every-day and emergent health problems that cause Americans to run to the doctor.

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Bizarre speculation circles weather bureau

THEY are the digital-age equivalent of crop circles - mysterious patterns appearing on the Bureau of Meteorology's national radar system without any explanation.

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Psych doctor wrote 1,000 prescriptions a week for psychotropic drugs

http://www.naturalnews.com/028455_psychiatric_drugs_patients.html

When recently contacted about the issue, Mendez-Villamil refused to speak to the media. His attorney made a statement in his defense, insisting that all such numbers are normal for the volume of patients seen by the doctor. Mendez-Villamil did personally speak to the media back in December, however, where he explained that he typically sees patients for about 10 minutes every few months which allows him to see a large number of patients. Most of these patients, he said, are on four or five drugs each, all of which he says are necessary.

The real health reform solution: A Health Freedom Zone in America

By Mike Adams

NaturalNews) Even as America has just been handed a "reformed" health care monopoly, most Americans by now realize that the drugs-and-surgery approach to health care is a failure. Keeping people sick and diseased so that you can pump more profits into the pharmaceutical corporations just doesn't work to keep any state (or nation) healthy; and in the long run, any state or nation that traps its people in a failed system of pharma-sponsored sick-care is doomed to financial failure.

If America stays on this current path of monopolized pharmaceutical medicine while continuing to outlaw and censor natural therapies, America will be financially ruined along with its states, cities, corporations and families.

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Prisoners forced to submit to radiation experiments for private foreign companies

In Illinois, federal judges have allowed at least two lawsuits to proceed against correctional officials for using full body scanners to reveal the anatomy of both prisoners and visitors without removing their clothing. This is the very same device that airports are seeking to implement on some inbound flights to the United States.

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Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It

By Paul Craig Roberts

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Continue

Note: Word has it that this is Paul Craig Roberts last column. He's done a lot of great work and sacrificed his mainstream positions in pursuit of truth. His columns will be missed.

Injection could cure phobias

A team of researchers have found that the brain may be able to be 're-programmed' to overcome some of our most basic fears.

Scientists claim that because fear is a learned habit, they could be able to switch off the part of the brain that generates those emotions with a simple jab.

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Federal Reserve Must Disclose Bank Bailout Records

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a2rzjENZQV5k

The Federal Reserve Board must disclose documents identifying financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest U.S. government bailout ever, a federal appeals court said.

The Fed had argued that disclosure of the documents threatens to stigmatize borrowers and cause them “severe and irreparable competitive injury,” discouraging banks in distress from seeking help. A three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected that argument in a unanimous decision.

European emission trading rocked by scandal over recycled carbon permits

EUROPE'S emissions trading system was in uproar yesterday amid a mounting scandal over "recycled" carbon permits.

Two carbon exchanges were forced to suspend trading as panic hit investors fearful that they had bought invalid permits.

BlueNext and Nord Pool, the French and Nordic exchanges, suspended trading in certificates of emission reduction (CERs) when it emerged that some had been illegally reused.

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Expect a False Flag Terror Attack To Precede Invasion Of Iran

By Paul Craig Roberts

According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping “bunker-buster” bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London: “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran.”

The next step will be a staged “terrorist attack,” a “false flag” operation as per Operation Northwoods, for which Iran will be blamed. As Iran and its leadership have already been demonized, the “false flag” attack will suffice to obtain US and European public support for bombing Iran. The bombing will include more than the nuclear facilities and will continue until the Iranians agree to regime change and the installation of a puppet government. The corrupt American media will present the new puppet as “freedom and democracy.”

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Solar Powered Augmented Contact Lenses Cover Your Eye with 100s of LEDs

Want eyesight that would make the Terminator jealous? Well, in a few years, you might be able to say hasta la vista to your normal old contact lenses and hello to the solar powered augmented lenses that University of Washington professor Babak Amir Parviz and his students are working on. The technology would embed hundreds of semitransparent LEDs onto a thin lens, letting wearers experience augmented reality right through their eyes. And the applications – from health monitoring to just plain bionic sight – could be endless.

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GM crops cause liver and kidney damage

(NaturalNews) A report published in the International Journal of Microbiology has verified once again that Monsanto's genetically modified (GM) crops are causing severe health problems. A legal challenge issued against Monsanto forced the multi-national agriculture giant to release raw data revealing that animals fed its patented GM corn suffered liver and kidney damage within just three months.

Adding to the mounting evidence that GM crops are dangerous all around, this information provides a damning indictment against Monsanto which continually insists that its GM products are safe. Not only are GM crops proving disastrous for the environment, but study after study, including those conducted by Monsanto itself, is showing that GM foods are detrimental to health.

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Dems tap drug maker millions for PhRMA-friendly bill

The Obama team regularly dismisses opponents as industry lackeys. The Democratic National Committee blasted out e-mails this week warning that "for every member of Congress, there are eight anti-reform lobbyists swarming Capitol Hill" and "Congress is under attack from insurance lobbyists."

But drug industry lobbyists, according to Politico, spent the weekend "huddled with Democratic staffers" who needed the drug lobby to "sign off" on proposals before moving ahead. Meanwhile, we learn that the drug lobby is buying millions of dollars of ads in 43 districts where a Democratic candidate stands to suffer for supporting the bill. The doctors' lobby and the hospitals' lobby are also on board with the Senate bill.

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A Brief, yet Scathing Note on the Temptation of Dennis Kucinich

Stool Pigeon - n. This term alludes to a bird tied to a stool or similar perch in order to attract other birds, which will then be shot.

I ask absolutely nothing more of a politician, if we are to have them at all, than for them to be honest. If they have ideals that I disagree with, let them be founded in pure hearts and reasonable minds. Politicians, if we are to have them at all should not be weather vanes. They ought not be corrupted by high pressures or heats, but rather they ought to grow refined and perfect under these conditions and shine brighter than ever. Though I disagreed with his ideals, I always respected Dennis Kucinich as I respect any honest man, but when the weak dine with the devil at 30,000 feet, they come down wearing puppet strings.

All marionettes have manipulators, and once they give in to temptation they are strung up until we cut the ties.

Demand honesty from your politicians, if we are to have them at all.

Ownership of Land

http://mises.org/daily/4172

The collective ownership of land has these disadvantages:

1.When all land is owned and managed by the collective (government), no private point of view or interest can be maintained. This results in curtailment or abolition of those innovations and long-term developments, which flourish when land is independently and privately owned and managed.

2.The charge that private ownership of land is a monopoly is certainly not offset by creating a governmental monopoly in place of private (and necessarily competing) transactions in land.

3.It is self-evident that individual men do not labor to produce the land. By the same token, government does not labor to produce the land. The land is a natural resource and the origin of nearly all our natural resources. But one obvious fact emerges. When an individual owns land privately and knows himself to be the proprietor in fact, he will labor with enormous self-commitment to improve the land.

On the contrary, when the individual is merely a tenant, either of a farm or a dwelling or a business site, his interest is in taking out all he can to compensate for the cost of the rent he pays. This is true whether his landlord is a private person or a government. Actually, in those cases where government has become the landlord, the evidence abounds that tenants are even less interested in improving or even maintaining the property they occupy.

If a landlord-tenant relationship occurs privately, then the private owner of the land is in a position to keep up his own property and to influence the tenant against careless behavior or wanton destruction. But when the state is the only landlord, the supervision of the land by the state representative becomes parallel to that of ancient stewards who supervised the behavior of serfs. If the only land available is state land, then the entire human race will become nothing more than tenants, entirely at the mercy of state officials. If private ownership flourishes, the tenant has a remedy. He can always purchase land and thus remove himself from the renting class.

4.The charge that private ownership of land could not exist except for government protection will not stand on the strength of the evidence. Government's role in respect to land has been aggressive rather than protective. Private holdings have been wrested from the hands of individuals or groups the government attacks, either in war or by legal decree.

New World Order Put On Trial

Don't Bet on a Recovery.

Peter Schiff - Don't Bet on a Recovery

Peter Schiff was an economic adviser to Ron Paul's 2008 campaign. He writes a sobering new article about the bogus recovery frenzy that has been disseminated throughout the media. I see people shifting their perceptions about how they manage money, so an internal/consciousness 'market correction' has already taken form (without intervention, just necessity). Central economic planners at the Fed are pulling out the Keynesian stops to use the same inflationary techniques used to create the last bubble to apparently pull out a recovery. Rest assured the Fed and their lapdogs in government will blindly follow the "jobless recovery gravy train" all the way to bank bailout 2.0 or some other social distraction...

This is the first part of "What the bleep do we know!?: Down the Rabbit Hole" - quantum physics explains reality and I would say puts a whole new frame of reference to individuality and free markets. This is my first post, thanks for having me guys.

The Singularity's impact on Business leaders: a Scenario: how will technologically enhanced Individuals collaborate with "normal" employees?

Oh boy...

The "Human Singularity" refers to the radical fusion of the human body with technology to achieve levels of mental acuity and physical ability that eclipse anything humans have previously known. This would represent a singular event in human history: For the first time, people would be driven by laws other than

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5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted

So, the headlines say somebody else has died due to video game addiction. Yes, it's Korea again.

What the hell? Look, I'm not saying video games are heroin. I totally get that the victims had other shit going on in their lives. But, half of you reading this know a World of Warcraft addict and experts say video game addiction is a thing. So here's the big question: Are some games intentionally designed to keep you compulsively playing, even when you're not enjoying it?

Oh, hell yes. And their methods are downright creepy.

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Ron Paul on the Census 2010

http://www.ronpaul.com/2010-03-08/ron-paul-on-the-census-2010/

"Article I, section 2 of the Constitution calls for an enumeration of citizens every ten years, for the purpose of apportioning congressional seats among the various states. In other words, the census should be nothing more than a headcount. It was never intended to serve as a vehicle for gathering personal information on citizens."

Iceland Rejects Icesave Bank Payback Plan

Icelanders have rejected a plan to pay back the British Government for money it lost over the collapse of the Icesave bank in 2008.

The Anti-Federalist Papers Revisited

The root of libertarianism in these United States by none other than Brutus, Centinel, Cato, and friends!

http://www.wepin.com/articles/afp/

Baby dies as parents raise virtual child online

A Korean couple let their baby starve to death while they were busy raising a virtual child online, police said.

The couple, from Suwon in South Korea, would leave their three-month-old daughter home alone in their apartment while they spent up to 12 hours a day playing a Second-Life style3D fantasy game called Prius Online, The Sun newspaper reports.

Police said the couple had become totally immersed in the online game and neglected their real lives, giving their daughter just a bottle of milk per day.

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Brain scanners to be used to 'design' political candidates

Sinister news today, as psychologists in the US unveil plans for so-called "neuromarketing" - the use of magnetic-resonance brainscans to maximise the appeal of products while they are being designed.

"Neuromarketing may prove to be an affordable way for marketers to gather information that was previously unobtainable, or that consumers themselves may not even be fully aware of," says Ariely, according to a statement released yesterday by Duke University, where he is based.

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On the possibilities of secular monastic individualism

For those fortunate enough to still retain a feint respect for the inherent rights and ethical responsibilities possessed by the true individual, discourse on modern life has proven to be an insurmountable task. The self-sovereign is forever challenged by the ever-present masochistic temptations of shallow self-gratification and baseless materialistic pursuit that is routinely offered as a substitute for the quickly fading spirit of self-discovery; the endless
search for the truth that enables man to seize the rights provided to him by nature through his wit, reason and heart.

This epistemological assault is nothing more than the manifestation of the inevitable realities machinated by an unchecked techno-philic/pahlic, scientific dictatorship, that has supplanted every organic institution of social order; formally of local influence, in favor of a system that places priority on the expertise of distant bureaucrats and social architects. This radical shift of epistemological power has enabled the ruling elites to adopt a uniform and collaborative effort to brand formerly mundane and uninteresting aspects of life into fashionable, marketable consumerist institutions which begin to dominate and occupy the thoughts of those who would other-wise be ardent, vigilant defenders of liberty. The same successful marketers of war and oppression are actively engaged in a war for the minds of all. Replacing individual identity with collective, amoral thought is of the utmost importance, if the ruse of statism is to continue to exist unabashed.

It is through understanding this full spectrum assault on individualism that one is able to resist and overcome the desires of the worldly elite to crush egoism in all of its forms, through divide-and-conquer techniques, such as the construction of the false, hyper-sexualized feminist identity movement.

Therefore, it is the imperative upon the true seekers of liberty to remain on guard against the seductive allures and pleasures of the flesh presented by those unlucky enough to have fallen victim to the sexual branding of their identities. Thus, one must draw from the pleasures of the earth in a responsible manner that is consistent with the ideologies of natural law and the tablua rasa individual. Through the reckless pursuit of pleasure and temporal entertainment, the current defunct and hopelessly lost culture of state-worship is validated and acknowledged as a legitimate social institution and thus, begins to inculcate the whole with a depraved and putrid system of ethics that undermines the true philosophy and natural law principles that define the self-sovereign individual.

The frivolous and unfulfilling pursuit of casual sex and the charade of gender identity that accompanies is the ultimate tool for admirers of collectivism to undermine any individualistic order that may arise. Proponents of "sexual liberation" may often cry that sexual promiscuity is the hallmark of a society that is based upon consensual agreements between individuals. In reality, we are confronted with the opposite. Those who are considered to be the most sexually liberated are those who are victims of their own insecurities and are merely given an easy, commonly-accepted, collective method of remedy. Therefore, rather than confronting and acknowledging underlying faults and sentiments of inferiority, those who are inclined to such behaviors are encouraged and coddled by group dynamics to continue on their paths of ego-loss and sacrifice of the self. It becomes imperative upon the true individual to not enable such institutions, for they threaten the means and ends of the pursuit of liberty, such as the absence of statist coercion and the repeal of social structures that erode the foundations of individualism.

This brief treatise does in no way suggest the proper way to live as a liberty-minded citizen; it is a mere framework for perspective, a call to self-reflection, a way to deconstruct the often times foggy and obfuscated social veils, which like the endless currents of the oceans, subtly shape and create our reality through the limited discourse we engage in.

Pornography: The Self Fulfilling Prophecy (ORIGINAL)

By Jackson Cooke - ORIGINAL

Following the close of the 1960s many of the Baby Boomer generation felt we would be entering into a new world of "Free Love" where individuals could express themselves as sexually and as freely as they wanted. The cultural norms were shifting, saying that women would not be mere objects for male advances and domestic partnership but make independent choices in expressing themselves as sexual beings. Well 40 years later, sexism is alive and well and one could argue that women are in a worse societal position than behind the stove in 1950s America.

These societal wounds have been self inflicted and stealthily received from the typical Patriarchal sources - our media, our consumerist culture, our government in a tertiary role. Here I must tackle the ways men and women act as individuals and how this reverberates into our collective consciousness. Now I must say, as a staunch individualist, that I whole-heartedly disagree with the idea of a collective consciousness as I think every individual decides on their INDIVIDUAL consciousness and this is how we can shift society. As individuals change their views it will halt a collective consciousness, where truly unique ideas can flow from and be held and expressed without fear of ostracism.

It may be ironic to lead off my criticism with a look at how men navigate our social world in respect to the opposite sex. It's imperative that I start here as it can be argued that this is the main artery that sexism flows from, it is the way men act towards our choices as consumers and how they act towards women as individuals that reverberates in our society.

Consumerism is worth emphasising in this issue. This is a system where buying is compulsive and hindsight is a ghost. A consumerist society is a society with no conciousness at all, merely an ability to purchase, use/discard, purchase again. This compulsion becomes a pleasure centre where one must merely consume to be satisfied with life. This is a shallow, vapid existence but it becomes more disgusting as males attach these attitudes to how they see women.

Pornography is another term for Consumerist Sex. Pornography does everything for you that used to take experience to learn. It tells you your sexual tastes, how to go about pursuing said tastes and the attitudes of the participant(s) involved. Unfortunately for males (and females), there isn't much deviance between pornographic products, thus we have a large percentage of males, surprisingly, having strikingly similar sexual tastes and with the advent of the internet and video streaming there is even less deviance.

This becomes problematic because as males begin to internalize what they are seeing in Pornography and as males begin viewing it at younger and younger ages they are adopting these views and norms at earlier stages of sexual development, making it even harder to remove these images from their interactions in the real world.

And that's pretty much the crux of the problem with Pornography. It's not that the images are available, but that males internalize what they see, quickly discard them and lust for more, newer material. This morphs consumerism and sex into a sickening package of Lightning Fast Sexism and this translates into the real world. You have men that try to meet women only so they can consume them, just so they can have their male egos validated because they feel they can only be validated in such ways. This creates a horrifying circle of sexism where men can only attach their own poorly developed ego to the objectifying images and having these images played out in real life is the only source of validation. With rejection or acceptance the male ego is never satiated. If he is successful then he must consume more, much like he does on the Internet - merely discarding last weeks images and replacing them with fresh. If he is rebuffed then he must desperately continue to scour until he finds his precious shrine of flesh to calm and soothe his wounded ego. As pathetic as it sounds this is the truth - merely ask an average 20-something male about his sexual tastes - it'll read straight off the back of a porno box.

With the sheer number of males in this world, it would seem impossible to have such uniformity among sexual desires without help from our most generous corporations. This ties DIRECTLY to consumerism - these corporations want us buying, not thinking and then doing some more buying. Having sexual desires uniform makes the marketing agency's task a breeze; this is true of any collective consciousness spawned by corporations. They love and demand uniform, or slightly deviating, opinions because it allows them to touch on our emotional epicentres much more easily thus allowing a streamlined sale. Now, why the hell should we ever take our sexual cues from corporations? This is done in advertisements, media, etc - this puts the ethos of pornography all around us and makes it even simpler for us to internalize.

Now women are plagued by the same constructions and institutions just in a different way. Women are victims of consumerism and pornography, as are men, but this places them in a submissive role - again. Pornography portrays women in a very degrading role, often times showing women enjoying this objectified position, appearing empowered. This is utter nonsense in the real world - the people you see in pornography are actors and paid to follow the 'script' the producers give them. When women emulate this behaviour in the real word, this creates a problem because men see these instances as 'proof' that women delight in being treated this way and men go about their merry sexist way pretending they are living a porno flick.

Corporations are very savvy at playing to our emotions, fears, cultural norms beliefs, you name it - sexual tastes included. Women, in this point in time, want to believe they are empowered, independent - and in many ways they are but thanks to consumerism and 40 years of slick corporate advertisements most women truly think they are being liberated by "choosing" to dress and act as if they are merely the objects of men! A woman should determine what makes her feel sexual or attractive - not the media! Not empty headed celebrities and corporate slogans! And especially NOT MEN!

Going back to my point of how most men's sexual tastes can be read in a Penthouse Letter - what makes a woman feel empowered, at worst, reads like the same thing or, at best, like a product description of a Barbie Doll. Now this isn't true for all women, but it would be difficult to argue against the vast majority.

And we meet circular sexism, again. A woman can only feel empowered and attractive by looking and acting like Jenna Jameson and a male's sexual desire can only be satiated (for the moment) BY a women looking and acting like Jenna Jameson - what a coincidence! We can see what kind of self loathing this creates. Eating disorders and elective plastic surgeries are on the heavy rise along with anti-depressant prescriptions - just to deal with the rejection women feel by not being able to aptly condition themselves to this sexist narrative. A woman feels validated by the attention she gets by validating a male's consumerist view of sexuality! In our present cesspool of a society a woman that dresses like Barbie and doesn't have one damn opinion in her head will accrue many more lovers and friends than a woman that dresses, acts, and thinks for herself. This leads to women that may not have such corporate ready physiques or opinions (basically any at all) feeling lesser about themselves - but! - do not lament such a situation - rejoice! By choosing how to live your own life and how to express yourself - you have already won! And by choosing to accept and nurture other people's independent life choices and views you're bucking the system that has enslaved many thus far.

In Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs, Ms. Levy discusses how females are treating themselves at an earlier age such as middle and high school. She finds that women at those young ages are merely internalizing the Paris Hilton behaviour they read about in magazines and see on MTV striving to achieve the glorified validation from males. They feel that they can only do this by living out the canned sexual norm and doing whatever they can to validate the male's ego, which is also based on shallow, canned norms. How has this changed with adults? We have many Paris Hilton clones wandering around aged 20-75 who's sole purpose is to please men, either with actions, looks or both. How could any woman or man, being held to these ridiculous norms, consider themselves empowered, enlightened or even liberated? Such a restraint on thoughts and tastes has no place in a free society, such uniformity must be thrown to the wind.

And that's the crux of this essay - that we must throw this uniformity to the wind as individuals. History shows the State only acts in the corporate interest and the corporation is never going to be in the interest of the individual, so to hell with a top down approach. We must foster a new era of individualism, that starts in all of us - women and men! You and me. We do not wait for women to burn bras, we do not wait for people to shrug off chains, we change our minds right now. We stop viewing porn, or at least stop internalizing it, we treat each other with respect and dignity because that's how we would want to be treated - not just some notch on a bedpost. And for God's sake we MUST celebrate our unique minds and tastes!

Nanotech May Tap Into Your Mind

Telecommunications researchers in Japan are attempting to create electronic sensors that can not only receive information from the brain, but could manipulate our neural pathways.

While the concept might conjure science-fiction images of half-human, half-machine cyborgs, Dr Keiichi Torimitsu of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), says the research is more likely to provide relief for people with Parkinson's disease or overcoming a stroke.

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Augmented Identity

An application that lets users point a smart phone at a stranger and immediately learn about them premiered last Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Developed by The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a Swedish mobile software and design firm, the prototype software combines computer vision, cloud computing, facial recognition, social networking, and augmented reality.

"It's taking social networking to the next level," says Dan Gärdenfors, head of user experience research at TAT. "We thought the idea of bridging the way people used to meet, in the real world, and the new Internet-based ways of congregating would be really interesting."

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Comment: Frightening.

Deathbed of Keynesian Economics Will Be in U.K.

By Matthew Lynn

Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. has produced notable economists over the years, but John Maynard Keynes, the guru of government intervention, was one of truly global significance.

So it may be fitting that the U.K. will also become the deathbed of Keynesian economics.

Britain has been following the mainstream prescriptions of his followers more than any developed nation. It has cut interest rates, pumped up government spending, printed money like crazy, and nationalized almost half the banking industry.

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Comment: This article makes a good point, Keynesianism is on its deathbed - much like global warming - but the much like that issue the troops will circle the wagon and toss out red herring after red herring to save the Orthodoxy.

The Forgotten (and Dangerous) Ghost of Hegelianism (ORIGINAL)

The Forgotten Ghost of Hegeliansim

...a commonplace, inane, loathsome, repulsive and ignorant charlatan, who with unparalleled effrontery compiled a system of crazy nonsense that was trumpeted abroad as immortal wisdom by his mercenary followers... Arthur Schopenhauer on Hegel

Duty - Community - Desire. These words frequently appear in political and philosophical writings. They are seen in the words of Mussolini and in the words of Lenin. They explain Five Year Plans and Fractional Reserve Banking. They imply Cults of Personality and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. They have justified the utter failures of the twentieth century and all modern atrocities.

Duty - Community - Desire. To understand these words and their horrific application to our world one should look no further than the philosophy of George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Influenced heavily by Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel rejected Individualism on the grounds that reason is not to be determined by an individual, but rather by History. History, says Hegel, has set up the circumstances in which we desire, and so our individual choices are subject to these authoritarian, unavoidable, and completely arbitrary circumstances.

As a result, Hegel vaguely advocates in freedom through community. Though paradoxical, he claims that an individual is no less free in a community than an arm is to a body. He claims that true freedom comes through organic organisations of people who live with their consciences...an inner voice that subjects them to the true compass of History.

This irrationalism was taken up by fascists and communists in the twentieth century, and even today, though it is rarely named, can be seen in the authoritarian impulses of corporatism. Furthermore, though oppressive in theory, Hegelianism has a particularly notorious history for being bastardized by the Elite to enslave masses of individuals.

Hegelian thought has always been used as a haven for attacks on individualist and libertarian movements. They claim that people are at the whims and will of History, and so the pursuit of their individual desires are temporary and unfounded, and must be suppressed. And perhaps, in view of the sick commercialism of today there is some truth to the shallowness of people's desires.

Though anyone in my opinion is free to choose what they want for themselves despite its commercial basis, at best I further reject this attack on individualism by evoking the advice Nietzsche who claimed that one could overcome unimportant trivialties to better themselves. It is not often that I turn to Nietzsche, but think, if we are really unduly influenced by circumstance, what better way to better ourselves than to recognize the hype of our episteme and truly push ourselves, through reason, to achieve our desires.

Of course, it is the method in man which we find admirable, not his will. That is not my point. Still there is an important lesson to be learned. The minds of the Romantics in the nineteenth century were brilliant and they pushed the possibilities of the mind. Now we are stagnated by a bombardment of suppression via technology, etc. Hegel may have been correct in his analysis, but his prescription was flat-out ill-founded and wrong. Popular distractions warrant not a destruction of individual desire, but rather a call for that individual to find in themselves the clarity to seperate the distractions from their desires.

Perhaps one of the most courageous books written in the twentieth century was Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. He specifically and methodically targets Hegelianism as the basis of all totalitarian regimes, and much of his book is a deeply calculated attack on the conciousness of such a philosophy. He, as a former Communist himself, gives great insight into the question of how even a sincere revolutionary may be corrupted or compromised by Hegel's reasoning.

In the book you see the words duty, community, and desire, but you see them in their true context of a failed and tyrannical world view. Koestler best attacks Hegel by pointing out a circle in his argument: An individual is truly free only if he knows and understands the movement of History, but he can only know History when he is truly free. This fallacy, not alone in Hegel's writings, should stand as red flag to people everywhere that those who champion Hegel's philosophy will also champion the slavery of those they rule.

It seems that A=A, logic itself, is a sufficient refutation of Hegel's philosophies. After all, non-contradiction does not care what History says to us or what circumstances influence our thought. It is always true.

Even "green" technologies depend on dirty, destructive mining operations for rare metals

http://www.naturalnews.com/028160_rare_earth_metals_mining.html

The advent of new "green" technologies may seem like a perfect remedy to many former methods that caused heavy pollution and environmental destruction. The only problem is that many of these new technologies require the mining of rare earth metals which often leads to the destruction of land, farms, and water supplies.

More than 1,000 get mumps in New York, New Jersey since August

"He was completely vaccinated," Pirutinsky said. "So it was a surprise to us he came down with mumps."

Anyone fully vaccinated from mumps receives two doses of the vaccine, according to the CDC. Of the New Jersey cases, 77 percent were vaccinated, Terjesen said.

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Students brains 'rewired' by the internet

Experts say the internet encourages users to dart between pages instead of concentrating on one source such as a book, the traditional staple of student research.

This new 'associative' thinking leaves the majority incapable of 'linear' disciplines like reading and writing at length because their minds have been remoulded to function differently.

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Cellphone and Entertainment Fees Add Up for Families

John Anderson and Sharon Rapoport estimate they spend $400 a month, or close to $5,000 a year, keeping their family of four entertained at home.

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Your Future Morning View Will Make You Vomit

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Mark Faber: Social obligations will lead Western states to default

The United States’ top credit rating is at risk, with its triple 'A' status warned it may be downgraded if the economy grows at a slower pace than expected, says ratings agency Moody's.

“Maximum within 10 years time more than 35% of tax revenues will have to be used to pay the interest on the government debt and then you are in trouble – because then there will be not enough money out of the budget to pay for other stuff,” Faber warns. “I’m convinced the US government will go bankrupt, but not tomorrow. And before they go bankrupt, they’ll print money, and then you get high inflation rates, you have a depression and eventually they’ll go to war.”

The investment guru also says the cracks in the system are starting to spread, naming other countries that could follow suit. “Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain… I think, eventually, they will all default – because if one defaults, then the next would say why should we pay and will also default. The obligations of Western governments are far too high; they won’t be able to pay.” Faber suggests that governments raise the retirement age to 70 years old and cut on social spending, but he believes even that won't be enough.

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The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti

Behind the smoke, rubble and unending drama of human tragedy in the hapless Caribbean country, a drama is in full play for control of what geophysicists believe may be one of the world’s richest zones for hydrocarbons-oil and gas outside the Middle East, possibly orders of magnitude greater than that of nearby Venezuela.

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Pentagon’s Black Budget Tops $56 Billion

The Defense Department just released its king-sized, $708 billion budget for the next fiscal year. Much of the proposed spending is fairly detailed — noting exactly how many helicopters the Pentagon plans to buy and how many troops it plans on playing. But about $56 billion goes simply to “classified programs,” or to projects known only by their code names, like “Chalk Eagle” and “Link Plumeria.” That’s the Pentagon’s black budget.

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The Next Leg Of The Housing Crisis In Five Simple Charts

Everything that the government has done so far, with a few minor detours, has been almost exclusively focused on maintaining home prices high, by tweaking either the supply or the demand side of the housing equation. As the bulk of consumer net wealth is concentrated in the housing sector, and a wealthy and confident consumer, much more so than the banking system, is critical to the recovery of America's economy, the Administration will do everything in its power to achieve its goal of artificially manipulating the housing market, thereby not causing an incremental loss of wealth to those still stuck with overpriced houses, while the real intersection of actual supply and demand curves would indicate a materially lower equilibrium price. This is ironic, as proper price discovery is critical for a true recovery, since Americans realize all too well that buying a house at prevailing levels in advance of the second down-leg in housing is senseless, the continued pursuit of such flawed policies by the Fed and President Obama merely pulls the market ever further away from its equilibrium, thereby making the anticipated second dip so much more likely and not that far off in the distant future. Below are 5 simple charts the highlight just how precarious the housing situation in the U.S. is, and how likely the second, and probably much more fierce, leg down in the markets is going to be.

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JPMorgan vs. Goldman Sachs: Why the Market Was Down 7 Days in a Row

We are witnessing an epic battle between two banking giants, JPMorgan Chase (Paul Volcker) and Goldman Sachs (Rubin/Geithner). The bodies left strewn on the battleground could include your pension fund and 401K.

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Genetically Modified Forest Planned for U.S. Southeast

Genetic engineering is coming to the forests.

While the practice of splicing foreign DNA into food crops has become common in corn and soy, few companies or researchers have dared to apply genetic engineering to plants that provide an essential strut of the U.S. economy, trees.

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Teenagers 'think oats grow on trees'

The survey showed 26% of children thought bacon came from sheep, 29% thought oats grow on trees, while 17% of both children and adults under the age of 30 believed eggs were a core ingredient in bread.

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Organic Transistor Paves Way for New Generations of Neuro-Inspired Computers

For the first time, CNRS(1) and CEA(2) researchers have developed a transistor that can mimic the main functionalities of a synapse(3). This organic transistor, based on pentacene(4) and gold nanoparticles and known as a NOMFET (Nanoparticle Organic Memory Field-Effect Transistor), has opened the way to new generations of neuro-inspired computers, capable of responding in a manner similar to the nervous system.

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Running out of juice

One thing the new plug-ins and pure electrics have in common is a beefy lithium-ion battery pack that needs a lot of heavy charging. At the very least, that involves installing 220-volt wiring in the home. Trying to recharge a modern electric car with a standard American 110-volt supply takes too long to be practical (up to 18 hours in the case of the Leaf).

Of course, if not fully charged at night it may have to be recharged during the day—when electricity rates can be up to five times more expensive. Average peak rates in America are 33 cents a kilowatt-hour compared with seven cents off-peak. Charging at the peak rate is equivalent to buying petrol at $3.63 a gallon (80 cents a litre), instead of 77 cents a gallon off-peak, reckons Southern California Edison, a utility based in the Los Angeles area. In America, peak-rate charging totally destroys any economic advantage an electric car may have.

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Obama grows the drug war, with enforcement a clear priority

According to 2011 funding "highlights" released by the ONDCP (PDF link), the Obama administration is growing the drug war and tilting its funds heavily toward law enforcement over treatment.

The president's National Drug Control Budget also continues the Bush administration's public relations tactic of obscuring the costs of prosecuting and imprisoning drug offenders. "Enron style accounting," is how drug policy reform advocate Kevin Zeese described it, writing for Alternet in 2002.

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NC Schools May Cut Early American History and Require "Global Studies"

Under a new curriculum proposal for North Carolina high schools, the study of U.S. history would begin with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877, and a new course called "Global Studies" would be required for all ninth-grade students. The new "Global Studies" course will focus, in part, on issues such as the environment.

Critics say the state's decade-old high school curriculum may need an update — but not like this.

"The answer isn't to throw out fundamental portions of U.S. history," said Mike Belter, a U.S. history teacher and social studies director. "This is not preparing our kids to have a deep historical perspective that can be used to analyze modern events for themselves."

Educational policy analyst Terry Stoops agrees.

"I'm all for a global outlook, but it should not be at the expense of American history and learning about American institutions and ideas," he told Fox News.

But those considering the proposal say kids will still learn the basics.

"The students are in school for 13 years," said Garland. "They certainly are taught U.S. and North Carolina history in middle school."

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Computers that understand how you feel

Robots can now pick up the mood of their users, and can even tell if they're drunk.

Now computers can sense the mood of their users. Already they can identify smiles, frowns and blushes. Many people have commented on the contrast between Tony Blair's urbane comments to last week's Chilcott Enquiry and his physical unease in its first minutes as manifest in blinks, foot-tapping, crossed legs, and soon. Body language – non-verbal communication – is a valuable clue to innerfeelings (a truth, or half-truth, that men's magazines often use when advising their readers how to tell whether a young lady might be interested in body language of another kind).

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Soaring Deficits Projected Under Obama's New Budget

President Obama sent Congress a $3.8 trillion budget Monday for fiscal year 2011, pushing a plan that includes new jobs-creation programs but is projected to add nearly $1.3 trillion in deficit spending on top of the current year's projected $1.6 trillion deficit.

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"No Scan, No Flight" at British airports

It is now compulsory for people selected for a scan to take part, or they will not be allowed to fly.

Some passengers at Heathrow and Manchester airports will have to go through full body scanners before boarding their flights under new rules.

Transport Secretary Lord Adonis said in the immediate future only a small proportion of airline passengers would be selected for scanning.

In a written statement to the House of Commons, he said: "If a passenger is selected for scanning, and declines, they will not be permitted to fly."

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'Nobel Peace Prize-winner Barack Obama ups spending on nuclear weapons to even more than George Bush'

Barack Obama has allocated £4.3billion to spend on maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile - £370million more than what was budgeted by George Bush.

The budget will also be increased by more than £3.1billion over the next five years.

The announcement comes despite the American President declaring nuclear weapons were the ‘greatest danger’ to U.S. people during in his State of the Union address on Wednesday.

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Pentagon Report Calls for Office of ‘Strategic Deception’

The Defense Department needs to get better at lying and fooling people about its intentions. That’s the conclusion from an influential Pentagon panel, the Defense Science Board (DSB), which recommends that the military and intelligence communities join in a new agency devoted to “strategic surprise/deception.”

Tricking battlefield opponents has been a part of war since guys started beating each other with bones and sticks. But these days, such moves are harder to pull off, the DSB notes in a January report (.pdf) first unearthed by InsideDefense.com. “In an era of ubiquitous information access, anonymous leaks and public demands for transparency, deception operations are extraordinarily difficult. Nevertheless, successful strategic deception has in the past provided the United States with significant advantages that translated into operational and tactical success. Successful deception also minimizes U.S. vulnerabilities, while simultaneously setting conditions to surprise adversaries.”

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Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows

(Bloomberg) -- The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all.

Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.

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Comment: Actual Bloomberg headline!

One day after supposedly bashing the banks, the Obama-led Democrats re-nominate top banker

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was confirmed for a second term Thursday by the U.S. Senate. The final confirmation vote was 70-30.

The vote, which occurred just three days before Bernanke's first term was scheduled to end, came after heavy lobbying by Democratic leaders and the Obama administration. President Obama, himself, made calls last weekend. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., lobbied Republicans to make sure he had enough votes.

Despite the strong showing, Bernanke won his confirmation by one of the smallest margins of all time for a Fed chairman. Often the confirmation of a Fed chairman is so overwhelming and uncontroversial, it's done by a voice vote.

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Taliban: Buyout Futile Without Foreign Pullout

Just one day before the London Conference on Afghanistan is to begin, Taliban forces issued a statement condemning what is seem by many as the cornerstone proposal likely to come out of the meeting, the buyout strategy.

The nations at the conference will commit money to a “Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund,” aimed at bribing members of the Taliban into giving up the insurgency in return for cash and the promise of jobs with the Karzai government.

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Howard Zinn Passes Away at 89

Howard Zinn died of a heart attack today at age 89.

Zinn was a prominent anti-war activist in the last half of the twentieth century, speaking out against wars ranging from World War II to the American Civil War to the current war in Afghanistan. Zinn also recently wrote a piece critical of the Nobel's decision to award the Peace Prize to Obama.

“Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities until forced to by direct action from the people... Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for direct action by concerned citizens," Zinn wrote back in March 2008.

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Comment: A lot of libertarians - including myself - have significant issues with many of Zinn's positions, but it is indisputable that he was a stalwart against wars, whether conducted by a Democrat or Republican. And I have a gut feeling that if Zinn was growing up as an activist in OUR generation - a generation that has seen, more than any other, the severe abuses of the federal government - he would likely be on the side of Liberty. RIP

Compact Fluorescent Lights Dumping Mercury Directly into Landfills

(NaturalNews) Compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs have become all the rage over the past several years, touted by many as the preferable "green" way to light a home, save energy, and promote environmental responsibility. While they may use less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs, CFL bulbs are filled with toxic mercury that, when disposed of, contaminates landfills and the environment.

A report released in 2008 from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection revealed that when a CFL bulb is broken, it can release dangerously high levels of mercury into the air. Mercury-vapor standards generally allow for 300 nanograms of mercury per cubic meter of air, however a broken CFL bulb can emit upwards of 50,000 nanograms per cubic meter, or more than 166 times the safe upper threshold.

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Haiti's Oil, Gold & Iridium Resources Explains the Post Earthquake Occupation/Invasion

Scientists Daniel and Ginette Mathurin indicate that under Haitian soil is rich in oil and fuel fossible which were collected by Haitian and foreign experts. "We have identified 20 sites Oil, launches Daniel Mathurin stating that 5 of them are considered very important by practitioners and policies.

The Central Plateau, including the region of Thomond, the plain of the cul-de-sac and the bay of Port-au-Prince are filled with oil, he said, adding that Haiti's oil reserves are larger than those of Venezuela . An Olympic pool compared to a glass of water that is the comparison to show the importance of oil Haitian compared to those of Venezuela, "he explains.

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Comment: Aha!

ExxonMobil to redevelop, expand Iraq's West Qurna 1 field

ExxonMobil Iraq Ltd. signed an agreement with the Iraq Ministry of Oil to redevelop and expand West Qurna 1 field in southern Iraq.

The agreement was signed in Baghdad in the presence of the Iraq Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani and Rob Franklin, president of ExxonMobil upstream ventures. The consortium members are ExxonMobil as the lead contractor with 60% interest, Oil Exploration Co. (owned by the Iraq government) with 25% interest, and Royal Dutch Shell PLC with 15% interest.

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Comment: What do ya know!

Television, Sex Majick and the "Brainwashed" Masses

To Understand the role that modern television, and other media, plays in the Illuminati Program we have to understand that Mass communication falls under the same sphere of control as military propaganda. In other words, the Illuminati military ruling class manages and owns the global media and uses it to control public perceptions of reality and fiction.

In Freemasonry and the Illuminati, the Military Ruling class is governed over by the "Philosopher kings", and rules over the merchant and banking classes. This organization was established by Plato in his "Republic" and formed the government of the ancient civilizations of Atlantis, Egypt, Greece, Rome etc. We can see the same organizational structure in both Communism and Fascism.

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Israel Makes Waves by Simulating an Earthquake

The Seismologic Division of the Ministry of National Infrastructure's Geophysical Institute will attempt to simulate an earthquake in the southern Negev on Thursday. The experiment, financed by the U.S. Defense Department, is a joint project with the University of Hawaii and is part of a scientific project intended to improve seismological and acoustic readings in Israel and its environs, up to a 1,000 km/621 mile radius.

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Most U.S. Union Members Are Working for the Government, New Data Shows

For the first time in American history, a majority of union members are government workers rather than private-sector employees, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday.

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Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm

In June, The Times reported that a Philadelphia hospital gave the wrong radiation dose to more than 90 patients with prostate cancer — and then kept quiet about it. In 2005, a Florida hospital disclosed that 77 brain cancer patients had received 50 percent more radiation than prescribed because one of the most powerful — and supposedly precise — linear accelerators had been programmed incorrectly for nearly a year.

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Computer-driven trading raises meltdown fears

Trading in equities and derivatives is being driven increasingly by mathematical algorithms used in computer programs. They allow trading to take place automatically in response to market data and news, deciding when and how much to trade similar to the autopilot function in aircraft.

Analysts estimate that up to 60 per cent of trading in equity markets is driven in this way.

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No Climategate FoI prosecutions

First off, I was told that while there appeared to be a problem, I needed to be clear that there would be no prosecutions under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, regardless of the final outcome of the investigation. Although withholding or destroying information is a criminal offence under the terms of the Act, apparently no prosecutions can be brought for offences committed more than six months prior. As anyone who has made a UK FoI request knows, it can take six months to exhaust the internal review process before the ICO even becomes involved. The ICO can then take another six months before starting his investigation.

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US says it will stay in Haiti for long term

Despite criticism for the US military presence in quake-stricken Haiti, Washington says it has a long-term plan to stay in the country.

"We are there for the long term, this is not something that will be resolved quickly and easily," US Ambassador to the UN Alejandro Wolff said on Thursday.

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Biden says US will appeal case of Blackwater/XE mercs

US Vice President Joe Biden has announced an appeal into a US court decision to drop charges against Blackwater/XE mercenaries accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007.

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Ex-IBM Employee reveals TV Abandoned Analog Band to Make Room for RFID

(AFP/dprogram.net) According to a former 31-year IBM employee, the highly-publicized, mandatory switch from analog to digital television is mainly being done to free up analog frequencies and make room for scanners used to read implantable RFID microchips and track people and products throughout the world.

So while the American people, especially those in Texas and other busy border states, have been inundated lately with news reports advising them to hurry and get their expensive passports, “enhanced driver’s licenses,” passport cards and other “chipped” or otherwise trackable identification devices that they are being forced to own, this digital television/RFID connection has been hidden, according to Patrick Redmond.

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Truth over delusion: Hugo Chavez did not accuse the U.S. of causing the Haitian earthquakeTruth over delusion: Hugo Chavez did not accuse the U.S. of

The story was quickly picked up by websites around the globe - most quoting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez as saying the U.S. used a new tectonic weapon to induce the Haitian earthquake. This was, according to Chavez - "only a drill, and the final target is destroying and taking over Iran".

Within the actual story, ABC noted that the information came from an obscure opinion post on the website of a Venezuelan state television channel, VIVE Television. The post referenced a supposed Russian military report on American seismic weapons...

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Court Rules That Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune From Judicial Review

San Francisco - A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls and emails.

"We're deeply disappointed in the judge's ruling," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "This ruling robs innocent telecom customers of their privacy rights without due process of law. Setting limits on Executive power is one of the most important elements of America's system of government, and judicial oversight is a critical part of that."

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China has 'open mind' about cause of climate change

China's most senior climate change official surprised a summit in India when he questioned whether global warming is caused by carbon gas emissions and said Beijing is keeping an "open mind".

Xie Zhenhua was speaking at a summit between the developing world's most powerful countries, India, Brazil, South Africa and China, which is now the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the gas allegedly responsible for climate change.

Mr Xie later said that although mainstream scientific opinion blames emissions from industrial development for climate change, China is not convinced.

"There are disputes in the scientific community. We have to have an open attitude to the scientific research. There's an alternative view that climate change is caused by cyclical trends in nature itself. We have to keep an open attitude," he said.

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CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones

Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ­"routine" monitoring of antisocial motorists, ­protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.

The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.

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Batten down the hatches. Augmented reality is on its way

According to technophiles, experts, and that whispering voice in your head, 2010 will be the year that augmented reality makes a breakthrough. In case you don't know, "augmented reality" is the rather quotidian title given to a smart, gizmo-specific type of software that takes a live camera feed from the real world and superimposes stuff on to it in real time.

Being a gadget designed for people who'd rather look at a screen than the real world, the iPhone inevitably plays host to several examples of this sort of thing. Download the relevant app, hold your iPhone aloft and gawp in astonishment as it magically displays live footage of the actual world directly in front of you – just like the real thing but smaller, and with snazzy direction signs floating over it. You might see a magic hand pointing in the direction of the nearest Starbucks, for instance – a magic hand that repositions itself as you move around. It's incredibly useful, assuming you'd prefer to cause an almighty logjam by shuffling slowly along the pavement while staring into your palm than stop and ask a fellow human being for directions.

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Comment: This is creepsylvania, the author actually wants to use devices to see a fantasy world - where bums are turned into delightful cartoons. Yeesh.

US may equip Pakistan with drone aircraft, Gates says

In his first visit to the country since the inauguration of Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the US is considering supplying Pakistan with unarmed drone aircraft. While Pakistan has publicly called America's use of drones a violation of sovereignty, the Pakistani government has requested the technology for itself.

"We are in partnership with the Pakistani military and we are working to give them their own intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance vehicles, both aircraft and drones," Gates said.

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UN abandons climate change deadline

The timetable to reach a global deal to tackle "climate change" lay in tatters on Wednesday after the United Nations waived the first deadline of the process laid out at last month’s fractious Copenhagen summit.

Nations agreed then to declare their emissions reduction targets by the end of this month. Developed countries would state their intended cuts by 2020: developing countries would outline how they would curb emissions growth.

The result of Tuesday’s Massachusetts senatorial election is likely to push "climate change" legislation further down the US agenda. It was the latest in a series of setbacks that have caused efforts to push a cap-and-trade bill through the Senate to grind to a halt, making it harder for the White House to participate meaningfully in global climate negotiations. Instead, the administration has been pressing ahead with steps to limit the US’s carbon emissions through EPA regulation.

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Cold Senate reception for Ben Bernanke

The Massachusetts election storm is sending a few cold waves over the bow of the White House economic team — not to mention Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

In a matter of hours Thursday, 13 Democrats broke ranks with the Treasury over extending its financial bailout authority, and after a face-to-face meeting. Majority Leader Harry Reid was conspicuously silent on whether he would back Bernanke for a second term next week.

Treasury’s program survived the floor vote; Bernanke is still favored to win confirmation. But there’s a greater chill in the air, and with Bernanke’s term running out Jan. 31, the administration has yet to secure the 60 votes needed to cut off debate on his nomination.

Democrats had hoped to pin that down this week, with the chance of holding the final vote Friday. But then Republicans rode an anti-Washington wave in Massachusetts on Tuesday, and at a Democratic caucus the next day, senators vented their anger over a White House team seen as too close to banks and Wall Street.

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What Didn't Happen: Krugman Telling the Truth

By William L. Anderson

In reading Paul Krugman's missive today in the New York Times, "What Didn't Happen," I am reminded of Orwell. According to the Great Nobel Laureate, Krugman insists that we believe the following:

• The "stimulus" was "too small"
• The Obama administration was not "tough enough" with the banks (he should have nationalized them, I suppose -- but, then, they pretty much are nationalized already)
• Obama did not do as did Ronald Reagan and blame the previous administration.

I must admit that I admire Krugman's chutzpah at one level. Here is a guy to has the guts to claim things that patently are not true and are easily debunked, but he is able to do with (without any sanctions) in the editorial section of the NYT and get away with it, mostly because his employers at Princeton University and in New York are happy to promote his untruths.

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Comment: William Anderson owns arch- Keynsian Krugman's backward logic on the Obama administrations first year policies. Krugman obviously in the Keynesian wonderland!

Approaching “Expert Opinion” with Skepticism (Original)

by Jonathan Barth

Several years ago I heard a lecture delivered by one of my favorite historians at the time, Howard Zinn. Although I have increasingly differed with Zinn over the last couple years in respect to his particular interpretation of American history, I distinctively remember him warning his audience to always “beware of so-called ‘experts’”.

For all the disagreements I may now have with some of his ideas, Zinn was correct. “Expert opinion,” in fact, possesses an exceptionally dismal and even horrifying track record. It was the so-called “experts” who vehemently defended absolute monarchies and violations of individual liberty prior to the Enlightenment. Expert opinion fully-approved of and advocated the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans beginning in the sixteenth century. Expert opinion – including “expert scientists” – insisted on eugenics and scientific-racism at the turn of twentieth century. So-called experts also insisted that it was absolutely necessary for the United States to imprison over one-hundred-thousand innocent Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.

Our current crop of “expert opinion” likewise has a highly questionable track record. Expert opinion was used in order to get our country into war in Iraq, pass the Patriot Act, and expand the size and power of our already-large federal government. Experts today in 2010 insist upon such programs as cap-and-trade, heavy government-involvement in health care, the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars to prevent “global warming,” the expansion of the Patriot Act, global government, and the further erosion of our individual liberties. Expert opinion told us that we needed to give the Banks and Wall Street a massive unprecedented bailout, or else the entire world would collapse. Expert opinion tells us that we have no business knowing what goes on behind closed-doors at the Federal Reserve, and that we should have no worries about the Fed’s doubling of the supply of paper money over the course of the last year.

But for whatever reason, the Academic Establishment – while acknowledging the extreme faults of expert opinion in previous generations – consistently adheres to the blind faith that our current crop of contemporary experts has somehow (for the first time in history) gotten it right. That to question expert opinion in our own time is not only faulty, but borderline crazy. That if you doubt self-proclaimed expert opinion on anything from global warming to the Federal Reserve, you may even be (*gasp*) a “conspiracy theorist.” The latter attack, of course, is nothing more than a fallacious argument that philosophers and logicians call the ad hominem – or, the practice of assailing the individual rather than the specific argument that the individual is presenting. The Academic Establishment has shown to this day that it is not afraid to stoop to the level of ad hominem attacks, particularly when approached by sound, libertarian arguments that cut right through the traditional paradigm of left versus right.

History has consistently proven that most expert opinion is flawed and deceptive. The intellectual heroes that history remembers – John Locke, Isaac Newton, Galileo, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Adam Smith, Ron Paul, Thomas Paine, and others – are not the ones who blindly adhered to the opinion of experts in their own time. They rejected expert opinion and produced their own ideas, facing much criticism, ridicule, and even censorship as a result. Many of them achieved more fame after their deaths than they ever had in their lifetimes. But their names live on forever because of the courage they displayed against the Establishment. As for the other 98% of academics – well, history forgets most of them as quickly as they leave.

Settlers attack cemetery in West Bank village

Nablus – Israeli settlers attacked a cemetery on Wednesday in the Orta Village, southeast of Nablus, and vandalized graves, officials said.

Ghassan Doghlas, official for the settlement file in the West Bank, said additionally that Israeli settlers broke the gate to the village school and left graffiti on the walls.

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Comment: I'm so sick of these bastards. Nothing is sacred to them.

If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones.

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Comment: I'm sick and tired of hearing about what great "educational tools" overstimulating technology has become. If it screws up the way we process information and turns the attention span to that of a goldfish - then what good is it? If we care more about what's going on in a 2" x 3" screen than in the real world then what kind of society is that going to yield?

Is The U.S. Economy Being Tanked By Mistake or By Intent?

The government wants Americans to believe the greatest economic collapse in history was the result of ineptness and mistakes yet still have confidence in their financial institutions.

Should American bankers be let off the hook because they self-declare, before an investigational panel, that the failure of their newly invented risk swaps and other highly leveraged investment schemes was simply due to "mistakes"? Not malfeasance – just every-day mistakes? Bankers just fell asleep at the helm at a critical juncture in American history. Is that what we are being led to believe?

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The UN’s dangerous plan for global taxation

George Russell of Fox News has a very important report on a United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) plan “to ask governments to impose a global consumer tax on such things as Internet activity or everyday financial transactions like paying bills online.” As Russell writes:

Such a scheme could raise “tens of billions of dollars” on behalf of the United Nations’ public health arm from a broad base of consumers, which would then be used to transfer drug-making research, development and manufacturing capabilities, among other things, to the developing world.

The multibillion-dollar “indirect consumer tax” is only one of a “suite of proposals” for financing the rapid transformation of the global medical industry that will go before WHO’s 34-member supervisory Executive Board at its biannual meeting in Geneva.

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France alarmed over anthrax-tainted heroin in Europe

PARIS — The French health ministry issued a warning on Tuesday after eight people died and seven fell sick in two European countries from using heroin contaminated by anthrax.

"Since December 6, there have been 15 confirmed cases of anthrax among heroin users, 14 in Scotland and one in Germany," the ministry's General Directorate for Health (DGS) said in a statement.

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Blackwater/XE behind terrorist bombings in Asia and Africa?

WMR’s intelligence sources in Asia and Europe are reporting that the CIA contractor firm XE Services, formerly Blackwater, has been carrying out “false flag” terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Somalia, the Sinkiang region of China, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, in some cases with the assistance of Israeli Mossad and Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) personnel.

Fingers are being pointed at Blackwater/XE and Mossad operatives for the motorbike bomb in Tehran that killed Tehran University nuclear physicist Dr. Moussad Ali-Mohammadi.

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Krugman Without a Clue

By William L. Anderson

Even when Paul Krugman gets it right, he still gets it wrong. Now, I am not someone who is a knee-jerk critic of the guy, although I generally expect Krugman to blame the wrong people and recommend the wrong "solutions."

Thus, when I saw the title of his most recent column, "Bankers Without a Clue," I thought that this might be the day that I can read a Krugman column without cringing. Perhaps, I imagined, he might even use the "bankster" term that I have seen from so many libertarians and Austrian economists. Ah, hope!

Unfortunately, Krugman gave us his tired analysis, and in doing so, he also demonstrated that he was clueless himself about the stagflation of the 1970s. (After all, Krugman being a True Believing Keynesian believes that we should not have both inflation and rising unemployment, since he already has written elsewhere that almost any economic problem can be solved by…printing more money.)

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Florida Attorney General Threatens Lawsuit Against Health Care Mandate

Former Republican congressman and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said Tuesday that provisions to force Americans to buy health care or pay a fine are not legal and he will file a lawsuit if they become law.

In a memo sent to the House and Senate leadership, the attorney general called the mandate requiring Americans to get health care a "living tax" that unconstitutionally penalizes people for being inactive.

According to the attorney general, a citizen's choice not to buy health insurance cannot rationally be construed as economic activity subject to the Commerce Clause.

"The Commerce Clause gives no authority for Congress to transform a citizen's individual choice to be inactive in the marketplace into a compulsion to purchase apparently unwanted insurance or be penalized," he wrote.

McCollum wrote that as attorney general of Florida he is in a position to file suit.

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The Death of the Tangible (Original)

The Death of the Tangible


by Judas Iscariot


“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.” - John Steinbeck, East of Eden

By no means is Upton Sinclair someone that I look up to. He was short-sighted, stubborn, and ill-founded. But if there is one thing that he did that I respect it is that he brought a question to the forefront of American conversation: how is our food handled? Where does it come from? What perverse things happen in the process?

Sinclair was a socialist, which is something that always puzzles me. To me, no writer is a socialist or a collectivist. They are driven so whole-heartedly by the individual. In Sinclair’s case, as he wasn’t specifically touting Marx’s dictatorial History, or knee-deep in the trenches of Keynesianism, I tend to think of him as someone who saw an ill, and missed the mark.

If one were to say that corporations were a natural resultant of capitalism, then there is plenty of reason to hate capitalism. This of course is not a correct assumption. There is nothing personal, motivational, or hard-working about a corporation. A corporation requires a government to legitimize it; specifically, to prop it up. They are ugly organs reminiscent of feudal times, long refuted by the age of reason.

Capitalism explains production, but it is not a theory of production. Many of us forget that more than an economic theory, Capitalism implies a theory of absolute individualism; the benchmark of freedom. Freedom is a word that is overused by some and scoffed at by others. But freedom is choice. It is, as Mr. Steinbeck wrote, the freedom of the individual to move in any direction it chooses. Capitalism is not about work as much as it is about voluntary association.

So, Mr. Sinclair, was wrong in condemning capitalism, for what he should have been condemning was the corporation. The corporation, a government construct, brought people to the cities like iron filings to a magnet. And what has happened to cities? People work to lay eggs for the heads of these corporations, who have the gall to meet annually and discuss how efficiently their fingers set in the world’s affairs - or maybe to report to their higher-ups, the Rockerfellers and the Rothschilds, for instance, the state of their domains.

Sinclair’s Chicago shows people who have lost connection to the process. They have forgotten that their bread may grow from the Earth by their own hand, just like now we forget that we have the courage to create our own music and play it for our friends, or that skin is not Photoshopped and two-dimensional, but warm to the touch. They live in a world where they are dependent on not only the corporation to produce food properly, but, subsequently, on the character of a bureaucrat to right these wrongs, as if that bureaucrat was disinterested and dealing with wanton boys.

People are rejecting autonomy and decentralization for the prospect that ever-increasing altruists are more qualified to decide how we live our lives than ourselves. A car czar, for instance. A department of Labor, Agriculture, and Education. This is not freedom. This is control.

In essence, there is nothing tangible about a corporation. I don’t think it is a coincidence that books are moving toward the day of the Kindle, just as music has been relegated to the realm of the invisible. We don’t know that wood can be crafted rather easily into things of lasting use and meaning to us. Or that many ailments can be cured with just cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar. That someone seeking to harm our livelihood, be it ourselves or the property which spent our irreplaceable time at work to acquire, can be turned away by a conical bullet in a steady barrel.

This is not extremism. This is the reality that exists when the bubbles fail to give us the meaning we lack. This is not violence. This is not savagery. This is the beautiful movement of people who love their lives and who hold true to the respect for other people’s minds and potential. This is a reality where no one is pulling the strings. Where we don’t have to depend on the pezzonovantes for our leisure, or our bread, our sex, or our very livelihoods.

It is a reclamation of what is solid in a world that is constantly popping. It is the battle cry of the dark room and the record player. Of routers instead of particle board. Of utilitarianism over fashion. Of passion over convention. Of freedom over slavery.

The Myth that Is FDR

By Garet Garrett

When John T. Flynn has put the Roosevelt myth through his terrible wringer and thrown aside the empty sack, all that remains of it is — the myth. His book will not be challenged on grounds of fact. He has a special way with facts. He brings them together in piles like fissionable material, and then suddenly a pile explodes with atomic effect, even though there had been nothing new in the facts. Many of them you already knew and had forgotten. But the secret of a myth is no more explained by facts than the secret of life is explained by anatomy. It may be that for good or bad the man of myth is an instrument, and if that is so, he would be unable to account for himself, or, trying to give reasons, would give wrong or puerile reasons, not knowing any better.

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Comment: A major plank in the Establishment/Keynesian myth - Roosevelt. Somehow Hoover was "laissez-faire" and blew out the economy and the compassionate Roosevelt came in to save the day. All a part of a fallacious myth.

Federal health care foes plot for state opt-outs

Congress can pass a federal health care bill and President Obama can sign it, but that doesn't mean the states plan to abide by it.

Lawmakers in 30 states are pressing for constitutional amendments to exempt individuals from the requirement to purchase health care, a pivotal piece of the legislation under debate in Congress.

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Comment: This could prove to be an explosive issue in 2010 -- do individual states have the right to nullify unconstitutional legislation? Of course, a sound understanding of the Constitution implies that they absolutely do, however, it will be interesting to see how the mainstream media spins it (I'm sure charges of "racism" will be made)