Recommended daily allowance of insanity, under-reported news and uncensored opinion dismantling the propaganda matrix.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Peace Strike protest on Houses of Parliament September 9th
The banner drop was made at 1700 hours, 'Hell's Grannies' created a distraction giving the peace activists, one of which was Maria Gallastegui from Peace Strike, enough time to scale the gates opposite the main entrance to Westminster Underground station.
Included in the drop a 'Legal Warning' the first line reads. "Section 6 Criminal Law Act 1977 as amended by Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994." This empowers the peace activists to secure their right to remain where they are on the scaffolding. The first line states, " TAKE NOTICE, That we live in this property. It is our home and we intend to stay here."
This will be an interesting challenge as the building belongs to the people by rights, and the only illegal occupation is that of a non elected quango self imposed government Tony Blair did not attend his book signing in Waterstones Piccadilly.
The event at the Tate Gallery later in the day was full of disinformation with many people being told that the event had changed to the Ritz.
Citizens arrest on Mr. Blair and other war criminal is encouraged. Be ready for more PEACEFUL future events.
Small country, big struggle
By Mike Marqusee
Mike Marqusee has just returned from a visit with trade unionists and democracy activists in Swaziland.
Swaziland is a small country with a big problem. The 1.3 million inhabitants of the land-locked southern African kingdom live under the thumb of one of the world's last absolute monarchies, a venal and repressive regime whose plunder of the country is systematic and comprehensive.
Now presiding over the 37th year of the world's longest running State of Emergency, King Mswati III controls the parliament, appoints cabinet ministers, judges and senior civil servants and makes and breaks the law at will. Political parties are banned, along with most demonstrations and meetings. Shouting the wrong slogan or wearing the wrong tee shirt can get you locked up as a “terrorist”. Trades unionists and human rights activists face surveillance, house searches, arbitrary detention and torture. Strikes are illegal. Gatherings of any kind are often broken up by police assaults. The media is subject to constant harassment and intimidation. During the latest wave of repression, in May, democracy activist Sipho Jele, who had been arrested and interrogated, was allegedly “found” by police hanging from the rafters in a prison toilet.
In July, Mswati (who was educated at the expensive Sherborne school in Dorset, England) ruled out future political dialogue, insisting that state structures in Swaziland were a “closed book” and rejecting public consultation in favour of a carefully managed “Smart Partnership” exercise.
Swaziland's autocracy is based on the “Tinkhundla” system through which royally-sponsored traditional leaders dispense patronage and exercise control at local level. The system is celebrated by the government as an authentic product of traditional Swazi culture and those who question it are routinely denounced as “not Swazi enough”. But Swazis themselves reap no benefits from it.
While 70% of the population live on less than a dollar a day and 25% rely on food aid, the royal family make do on some $67,000 a day. According to US-based business magazine Forbes, Mswati's personal net worth is an estimated $200 million, making him the 15th richest monarch in the world, not far behind Queen Elizabeth II, ranked 13, whose UK domain alone generates a GDP 365 times larger than Swaziland's.
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Mike Marqusee has just returned from a visit with trade unionists and democracy activists in Swaziland.
Swaziland is a small country with a big problem. The 1.3 million inhabitants of the land-locked southern African kingdom live under the thumb of one of the world's last absolute monarchies, a venal and repressive regime whose plunder of the country is systematic and comprehensive.
Now presiding over the 37th year of the world's longest running State of Emergency, King Mswati III controls the parliament, appoints cabinet ministers, judges and senior civil servants and makes and breaks the law at will. Political parties are banned, along with most demonstrations and meetings. Shouting the wrong slogan or wearing the wrong tee shirt can get you locked up as a “terrorist”. Trades unionists and human rights activists face surveillance, house searches, arbitrary detention and torture. Strikes are illegal. Gatherings of any kind are often broken up by police assaults. The media is subject to constant harassment and intimidation. During the latest wave of repression, in May, democracy activist Sipho Jele, who had been arrested and interrogated, was allegedly “found” by police hanging from the rafters in a prison toilet.
In July, Mswati (who was educated at the expensive Sherborne school in Dorset, England) ruled out future political dialogue, insisting that state structures in Swaziland were a “closed book” and rejecting public consultation in favour of a carefully managed “Smart Partnership” exercise.
Swaziland's autocracy is based on the “Tinkhundla” system through which royally-sponsored traditional leaders dispense patronage and exercise control at local level. The system is celebrated by the government as an authentic product of traditional Swazi culture and those who question it are routinely denounced as “not Swazi enough”. But Swazis themselves reap no benefits from it.
While 70% of the population live on less than a dollar a day and 25% rely on food aid, the royal family make do on some $67,000 a day. According to US-based business magazine Forbes, Mswati's personal net worth is an estimated $200 million, making him the 15th richest monarch in the world, not far behind Queen Elizabeth II, ranked 13, whose UK domain alone generates a GDP 365 times larger than Swaziland's.
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The European Military Industrial Complex
The powerful influence of arms industry lobbyists on EU decision-making processes is nothing new. However the recent restructuring on an industry level, together with important political developments such as the European Defence Agency and Treaty of Lisbon, has moved the influence of the military industry to new levels.
Until recently, the arms industry within the EU fell mostly within the auspices of each individual nation. With the advent of technological warfare, the drive for a streamlined and technologically improved European military industry has increased.
Arms logos European military industry is in fierce competition with its US counterpart. The huge US home market guarantees sales and ensures economies of scale. Further, the trend in the US in the last two decades of mergers and acquisitions consolidated the US military industry. These emerging giants in the US and other competitive pressures forced the EU military industry to follow suit with a process of mergers.
Until this point, European governments wanted to keep their military industry national and there is still reluctance to entirely abandon national military structures. However the success of EADS, a massive arms company created by the merger of several European manufacturers in 2000, sparked a consolidation of the European aeronautic defence industry. (Neither naval nor land based weaponry have yet seen such a consolidation).
Three European arms giants have emerged: BAE Systems, EADS, and Thales and a stronger European military industry has emerged more rapidly than would have been expected.
There have also been several political initiatives to help consolidate the European military sector. One of the most important of these is OCCAR, created in 1996. OCCAR is a common procurement programme, originally for France, Germany, Ireland and the UK, but later joined by Belgium and most recently by Spain in 2005. By providing industry with joint orders, cheaper production runs should be guaranteed. It was created to smooth cooperation between the military companies in the EU and help provide European governments with cheaper European weaponry.
In 2000, the EU's largest arms producing countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK) signed a Framework Agreement on the restructuring of European military industry. The aim of the Agreement was to harmonise regulations and to facilitate cooperation between arms producing companies, with regard to both the production and export of military equipment.
Though OCCAR and the Framework Agreement are projects of only some EU member states, the fact that they have been brought within the remit of the European Defence Agency means they have been enshrined within the Treaty between all EU countries. There is concern that the arms export policies originating in the Framework Agreement countries would follow the industry's economic interests rather than political considerations.
Arms Industry Lobbying
The arms industry has exploited the changed security policies in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks to gain increased influence with EU decision-makers. Such is their foothold now within Brussels that arms industry representatives played a crucial role in shaping the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the Treaty of Lisbon. Of thirteen experts invited to contribute to the defence aspects of the draft Constitution (repeated verbatim in the Treaty), three were industry representatives. Not one civil society representative was asked to contribute. The contributions have never been made public.
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See also: World Military Spending
Until recently, the arms industry within the EU fell mostly within the auspices of each individual nation. With the advent of technological warfare, the drive for a streamlined and technologically improved European military industry has increased.
Arms logos European military industry is in fierce competition with its US counterpart. The huge US home market guarantees sales and ensures economies of scale. Further, the trend in the US in the last two decades of mergers and acquisitions consolidated the US military industry. These emerging giants in the US and other competitive pressures forced the EU military industry to follow suit with a process of mergers.
Until this point, European governments wanted to keep their military industry national and there is still reluctance to entirely abandon national military structures. However the success of EADS, a massive arms company created by the merger of several European manufacturers in 2000, sparked a consolidation of the European aeronautic defence industry. (Neither naval nor land based weaponry have yet seen such a consolidation).
Three European arms giants have emerged: BAE Systems, EADS, and Thales and a stronger European military industry has emerged more rapidly than would have been expected.
There have also been several political initiatives to help consolidate the European military sector. One of the most important of these is OCCAR, created in 1996. OCCAR is a common procurement programme, originally for France, Germany, Ireland and the UK, but later joined by Belgium and most recently by Spain in 2005. By providing industry with joint orders, cheaper production runs should be guaranteed. It was created to smooth cooperation between the military companies in the EU and help provide European governments with cheaper European weaponry.
In 2000, the EU's largest arms producing countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK) signed a Framework Agreement on the restructuring of European military industry. The aim of the Agreement was to harmonise regulations and to facilitate cooperation between arms producing companies, with regard to both the production and export of military equipment.
Though OCCAR and the Framework Agreement are projects of only some EU member states, the fact that they have been brought within the remit of the European Defence Agency means they have been enshrined within the Treaty between all EU countries. There is concern that the arms export policies originating in the Framework Agreement countries would follow the industry's economic interests rather than political considerations.
Arms Industry Lobbying
The arms industry has exploited the changed security policies in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks to gain increased influence with EU decision-makers. Such is their foothold now within Brussels that arms industry representatives played a crucial role in shaping the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the Treaty of Lisbon. Of thirteen experts invited to contribute to the defence aspects of the draft Constitution (repeated verbatim in the Treaty), three were industry representatives. Not one civil society representative was asked to contribute. The contributions have never been made public.
~ more... ~
See also: World Military Spending
One quarter of U.S. interpreters in Afghanistan flunked language exams: whistleblower lawsuit
A lot probably gets lost in translation.
More than one of every four translators embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan flunked their language proficiency exams, a whistleblower told ABC News.
Paul Funk, who worked for the contractor that supplied translators for the military, said 28% of applicants hired between November 2007 and June 2008 failed exams for the most common Afghan languages, Pashto and Dari.
They were sent overseas anyways.
[ ... ]
Funk said that when the Afghan linguists approached tribal elders to discuss the Taliban, translators missed warnings, like imminent ambushes.
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The Art of Corporate Mind Control
Television is the most powerful weapon of psychological warfare in history and yet it is a member of the family in most households. The programming that we are constantly assaulted with conditions us to a particular worldview. This fake reality changes our behavior making us less active and more compliant with society's shortcomings. Since television is controlled by a small handful of powerful corporations, viewers will never witness informing, truthful news and entertainment. As political and corporate power unite at an ever increasing rate, being informed is more important than ever. People need to seek out independent and alternative unbiased sources on the internet for their information or we will continue to be manipulated by the corporate controlled media.
Transcript
David Icke: Most of humanity is in an absolute hypnotic trance that they're put in from cradle to grave by constant repetition of a fake reality and when we wake up from this then we will not be subservient.
Jordan Maxwell: The bottom line is that the government is getting what they ordered. They do not want your children to be educated. They do not want you to think too much. That is why our country and our world has become so proliferated with entertainments, mass media, television shows, amusement parks, drugs, alcohol, and every kind of entertainment to keep the human mind entertained so that you don't get in the way of important people by doing too much thinking. You better wake up and understand that there are people who are guiding your life and you don't even know it.
Steven Jacobson: Television is the most powerful weapon of psychological warfare in history. The programming that we are constantly assaulted by throughout our lives conditions us. It programs us to a particular worldview. Now, we may consider it normal because we were born into this system of lies and deception. And because we were born into this situation and our parents were born into it and have suffered from it, we don't know any better.
Aldous Huxley: What I may call the messages of Brave New World, but it is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda.
George Carlin: But there's a reason, there's a reason. There's a reason for this. There's a reason education sucks and its the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. Its never gonna get any better, don't look for it. Be happy with what you got, because the owners of this country don't want that. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that.
Howard Beale: We know things are bad, worse than bad. They're crazy. Its like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house and slowly the world were living in is getting smaller and all we say is please at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel belted radios and I wont say anything, just leave us alone. Well I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it and stick your head out and yell, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore! You've got to say, Im a human being God damn it, my life has value!
Does the Brain Control the Mind or the Mind Control the Brain?
...But a new breed of medical scientists is challenging this linear approach to the relationship between the objective physical world and subjective mental life. Dan Siegel, a professor at UCLA medical school, argues that the mind can be shared with others, and that these inter-personal neural networks can in fact shape the brain. The brain and the mind obviously have an intimate relationship, but the mind is different: it is a collection of thoughts, patterns, perceptions, beliefs, memories and attitudes. As Siegel explains, “The mind can use the brain to perceive itself, and the mind can be used to change the brain.”
Siegel is author of the best-selling Mindsight and founder of the Mindsight Institute, which Siegel calls an action-oriented think-tank. At UCLA, he founded the Center for Culture, Brain and Development, which investigates how cultural and social relations inform brain development, how the brain organizes such experiences and knowledge, and how such developments in turn give rise to a cultural brain. Our cultural practices such as emotional bonds to family or religious devotion are themselves repetitive patterns of energy use that stimulate (from the outside) discernable neural firing patterns and synaptic connections. Our brains become used to, and even develop a preference for, certain patterns, meaning the brain can be trained to behave, and even gradually evolve, based on the activities of the mind...
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Missing, presumed dead: disappearance of Ukrainian journalist deepens media fears
What happened next on that morning in early August is a matter of speculation. The one fact everyone agrees on is that Klymentyev vanished. His family reported him missing the next day and Kharkiv police opened a murder inquiry. His friends are convinced he is dead, though so far there is no body. On 17 August a boy discovered his mobile phone and keys in a small rubber boat floating in a rural reservoir.
For journalists, Klymentyev is a chilling symbol of how press freedoms are being curtailed in Ukraine seven months after the election of Viktor Yanukovych, the country's new pro-Russian president. Yanukovych, his critics say, has set about reversing the gains of the 2004-10 Orange Revolution, in which newspapers and TV flourished. Reporters talk of a new era of fear and censorship.
Last week Kiev's district court stripped two independent opposition television stations, TVi and 5 Kanal, of their licences. TVi has fallen off the main airwaves, while 5 Kanal – which came to prominence with its coverage of the 2004 pro-democracy demonstrations – has had its audience severely reduced. The winner is Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, owner of the pro-Yanukovych Inter Media television empire – and head of Ukraine's SBU security service.
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Remote Control of Brain Activity Using Ultrasound
...To overcome the above limitations, my laboratory has engineered a novel technology which implements transcranial pulsed ultrasound to remotely and directly stimulate brain circuits without requiring surgery. Further, we have shown this ultrasonic neuromodulation approach confers a spatial resolution approximately five times greater than TMS and can exert its effects upon subcortical brain circuits deep within the brain.
A portion of our initial work has been supported by the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) Army Research Laboratory (ARL) where we have been working to develop methods for encoding sensory data onto the cortex using pulsed ultrasound.
Through a recent grant made by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award Program, our research will begin undergoing the next phases of research and development aimed towards engineering future applications using this neurotechnology for our country's warfighters. Here, we will continue exploring the influence of ultrasound on brain function and begin using transducer phased arrays to examine the influence of focused ultrasound on intact brain circuits. We will also be investigating the use of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) for use in brain stimulation. Finally, to improve upon spatial resolution, we will examine the use of acoustic metamaterials and hyperlenses to study how subdiffraction limited ultrasound influences brain wave activity patterns...
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Le Carre: 'The Russians are here'
"I was laughed at, in a way, when the Cold War ended and the wall came down," he told Today presenter Justin Webb. "'Poor old Le Carre, what will become of him? Nobody's spying anymore.'
"The reality is, the budgets have never been bigger, the recruitment has never been more wholesale."
Today's Russian threat, he says, comes from the oceans of illegally-acquired cash flooding out of the country and into banks around the world, including the UK.
"Huge quantities of black money, Russian money, have been kicking around in London for a long time," he asserts. "We chose to ignore it because Russia is, in many ways, a totally criminalized state. We have to bear that in mind. And it is a rich one."
This cash, he believes, helped bolster the UK's banking system during the recent financial meltdown - an intervention happily ignored by those in the know.
"The whole nature of big banking is about looking away," he says.
[ ... ]
"The whole anti-terror threat has been terribly useful to politicians," he says. "It has been a way of manipulating us, it has been a way of giving police excessive powers, which they then misuse, I think we've got to draw back from that."
Arguing for a restoration of civil liberties, le Carre warns against the insidious power of what some in the United States term the "deep state".
"We have so many people who are indoctrinated, who are admitted to the secrets of state, and we have the people outside the circle. ...
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"The reality is, the budgets have never been bigger, the recruitment has never been more wholesale."
Today's Russian threat, he says, comes from the oceans of illegally-acquired cash flooding out of the country and into banks around the world, including the UK.
"Huge quantities of black money, Russian money, have been kicking around in London for a long time," he asserts. "We chose to ignore it because Russia is, in many ways, a totally criminalized state. We have to bear that in mind. And it is a rich one."
This cash, he believes, helped bolster the UK's banking system during the recent financial meltdown - an intervention happily ignored by those in the know.
"The whole nature of big banking is about looking away," he says.
[ ... ]
"The whole anti-terror threat has been terribly useful to politicians," he says. "It has been a way of manipulating us, it has been a way of giving police excessive powers, which they then misuse, I think we've got to draw back from that."
Arguing for a restoration of civil liberties, le Carre warns against the insidious power of what some in the United States term the "deep state".
"We have so many people who are indoctrinated, who are admitted to the secrets of state, and we have the people outside the circle. ...
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Steve Jobs Is Watching You: Apple Seeking to Patent Spyware
It looks like Apple, Inc., is exploring a new business opportunity: spyware and what we're calling "traitorware." While users were celebrating the new jailbreaking and unlocking exemptions, Apple was quietly preparing to apply for a patent on technology that, among other things, would allow Apple to identify and punish users who take advantage of those exemptions or otherwise tinker with their devices. This patent application does nothing short of providing a roadmap for how Apple can — and presumably will — spy on its customers and control the way its customers use Apple products. As Sony-BMG learned, spying on your customers is bad for business. And the kind of spying enabled here is especially creepy — it's not just spyware, it's "traitorware," since it is designed to allow Apple to retaliate against you if you do something Apple doesn't like.
Essentially, Apple's patent provides for a device to investigate a user's identity, ostensibly to determine if and when that user is "unauthorized," or, in other words, stolen. More specifically, the technology would allow Apple to record the voice of the device's user, take a photo of the device's user's current location or even detect and record the heartbeat of the device's user. Once an unauthorized user is identified, Apple could wipe the device and remotely store the user's "sensitive data." Apple's patent application suggests it may use the technology not just to limit "unauthorized" uses of its phones but also shut down the phone if and when it has been stolen.
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Second super-fast flip of Earth's poles found
Some 16 million years ago, north became south in a matter of years. Such fast flips are impossible, according to models of the Earth's core, but this is now the second time that evidence has been found.
The magnetic poles swap every 300,000 years, a process that normally takes up to 5000 years. In 1995 an ancient lava flow with an unusual magnetic pattern was discovered in Oregon. It suggested that the field at the time was moving by 6 degrees a day - at least 10,000 times faster than usual. "Not many people believed it," says Scott Bogue of Occidental College in Los Angeles.
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