Tuesday, May 31, 2011

A Day in the Afterlife - Philip K. Dick Documentary

Philip.K. Dick documentary on BBC's "Arena" originally broadcast on 9th April 1994.

Elvis Costello Interviewee
Philip K. Dick (archive footage)
Thomas M. Disch
Terry Gilliam
Himself - Interviewee
Kim Stanley Robinson
Himself - Interviewee

Spanish court indicts 20 Salvadoran military officials

Spain's National Court issued an arrest warrant Monday for 20 Salvadoran military officials in connection with the slayings of six priests, their housekeeper and her daughter more than two decades ago.

The event, known as the "Jesuit Massacre," became one of the most notorious episodes of El Salvador's bloody 12-year civil war, which pitted leftist guerrillas against the U.S.-backed conservative government.

In an indictment issued Monday, Judge Eloy Velasco Nunez accused the officials -- including El Salvador's former defense minister -- of murder, terrorism and crimes against humanity. He said a trial in El Salvador was flawed and failed to bring the perpetrators to justice.

"That judicial process was a defective and widely criticized process that ended with two forced convictions and acquittals even of confessed killers," Velasco wrote.

Two military officers were convicted of murder in 1991, but were pardoned in 1993 under an amnesty law approved by El Salvador's National Assembly.

The eight victims of the November 1989 killings "were one of at least 75,000 unarmed civilians who died in this war, which was much more violent than the better known conflicts in Chile and Argentina," Velasco wrote. "It is estimated that 85% of the deaths can be attributed to the army and security forces."

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Monday, May 30, 2011

Massive Athens Protest

Ongoing protest opposite parliament in Athens, Greece enters sixth day.




The media are reporting a turnout of 20, 000-50,000 anti-austerity protestors. This is false, the number of those present was too huge to estimate. And they are protesting against much more than austerity measures. It is now conceivable that a revolution has begun. It is time.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Police Attack Peaceful Protestors in Barcelona

Cops attack peaceful anti-austerity protestors in Placa de Catalunya, Barcelona on May 27th, 2011.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Global financial crisis - On the Edge with Max Keiser - 05-20-2011

In this edition of On the Edge, Max Keiser interviews Dr, Paul Craig Roberts from Georgia who is an American economist, columnist for Creators Syndicate, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in Reagan Administration and an editor of the Wall Street Journal.(Press TV Global News)

The CIA Mind Control Doctors: From Harvard to Guantanamo

By Colin A. Ross, Psychiatrist, Author, The CIA Doctors, Military Mind Control and Project Bluebird

My book, The CIA Doctors, is based on 15,000 pages of documents I received from the CIA through the Freedom of Information Act and dozens of papers published in medical journals. These papers report the results of research funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Department of the Army, the Office of Naval Research and the CIA. From 1950 to 1972, the CIA funded TOP SECRET research at many leading universities including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Stanford. There was a series of CIA mind control programs including BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MKSEARCH and MKNAOMI.


MKULTRA and related programs had several over-lapping purposes. One was to purchase mind control drugs from suppliers. Another was to form relationships with researchers who might later be used as consultants at the TOP SECRET level. The core purpose of these programs was to learn how to enhance interrogations, erase and insert memories, and create and run Manchurian Candidates. All of this is described clearly and explicitly in the declassified CIA documents, which provide a glimpse into the tip of the iceberg of CIA and military mind control.

The CIA mind control experiments were interwoven with radiation, chemical and biological weapons experiments conducted on children, comatose patients, pregnant women, the general population and other unwitting groups who had no idea they were subjects in secret experiments. Radiation, bacteria and funguses were released over urban areas. A large cloud of radiation was released over Spokane during OPERATION GREEN RUN; plutonium was injected into a comatose patient in Boston by Dr. William Sweet, a member of the Harvard brain electrode team; plutonium was placed in the cereal of mentally handicapped children at the Fernald School in New England; 751 pregnant women were injected with plutonium at Vanderbilt University; the bacteria serratia maracens was released into the air in San Francisco, resulting in a series of infections and plutonium was injected into an amputee at the University of Rochester. All these experiments were conducted without any informed consent or meaningful follow-up. Hallucinogens, marijuana, amphetamines and other drugs were administered to imprisoned narcotic addicts in Lexington, Kentucky, terminal cancer patients at Georgetown University Hospital, hospitalized sex offenders at Ionia State Hospital in Michigan and johns picked by prostitutes hired by the CIA in San Francisco and New York.

Terence Mckenna - Schizophrenic or Shamanic?

Terence Mckenna giving his view on how we define the mentally ill because we haven't got any place in our society to put these strange perceptions of reality that some people experience and how we should not fear these states but be confident and turn them into some sort of planetary worldview. The video speaks for itself.

Priest Sex-Abuse Case Hits Church of Pope's Adviser

The latest sex-abuse case to rock the Catholic Church is unfolding in the archdiocese of an influential Italian Cardinal who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests.


Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday, May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. "I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues," he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse.


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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

China warns US against war with Pakistan

China has officially put the United States on notice that Washington’s planned attack on Pakistan will be interpreted as an act of aggression against Beijing. This blunt warning represents the first known strategic ultimatum received by the United States in half a century, going back to Soviet warnings during the Berlin crisis of 1958-1961, and indicates the grave danger of general war growing out of the US-Pakistan confrontation.

Responding to reports that China has asked the US to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty in the aftermath of the Bin Laden operation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu used a May 19 press briefing to state Beijing’s categorical demand that the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan must be respected.” According to Pakistani diplomatic sources cited by the Times of India, China has “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China.” This ultimatum was reportedly delivered at the May 9 China-US strategic dialogue and economic talks in Washington, where the Chinese delegation was led by Vice Prime Minister Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo.1 Chinese warnings are implicitly backed up by that nation’s nuclear missiles, including an estimated 66 ICBMs, some capable of striking the United States, plus 118 intermediate-range missiles, 36 submarine-launched missiles, and numerous shorter-range systems.

Support from China is seen by regional observers as critically important for Pakistan, which is otherwise caught in a pincers between the US and India: “If US and Indian pressure continues, Pakistan can say ‘China is behind us. Don’t think we are isolated, we have a potential superpower with us,’” Talat Masood, a political analyst and retired Pakistani general, told AFP.2

The Chinese ultimatum came during the visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani in Beijing, during which the host government announced the transfer of 50 state-of-the-art JF-17 fighter jets to Pakistan, immediately and without cost.3 Before his departure, Gilani had stressed the importance of the Pakistan-China alliance, proclaiming: “We are proud to have China as our best and most trusted friend. And China will always find Pakistan standing beside it at all times….When we speak of this friendship as being taller than the Himalayas and deeper than the oceans it truly captures the essence of our relationship.”4 These remarks were greeted by whining from US spokesmen, including Idaho Republican Senator Risch.

The simmering strategic crisis between the United States and Pakistan exploded with full force on May 1, with the unilateral and unauthorized US commando raid alleged to have killed the phantomatic Osama bin Laden in a compound at Abottabad, a flagrant violation of Pakistan’s national sovereignty. The timing of this military stunt designed to inflame tensions between the two countries had nothing to do with any alleged Global War on Terror, and everything to do with the late March visit to Pakistan of Prince Bandar, the Saudi Arabian National Security Council chief. This visit had resulted in a de facto alliance between Islamabad and Riyadh, with Pakistan promising troops to put down any US-backed color revolution in the kingdom, while extending nuclear protection to the Saudis, thus making them less vulnerable to US extortion threats to abandon the oil-rich monarchy to the tender mercies of Tehran. A joint move by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to break out of the US empire, whatever one may think of these regimes, would represent a fatal blow for the fading US empire in South Asia.

As for the US claims concerning the supposed Bin Laden raid of May 1, they are a mass of hopeless contradictions which changes from day to day. An analysis of this story is best left to literary critics and writers of theatrical reviews. The only solid and uncontestable fact which emerges is that Pakistan is the leading US target — thus intensifying the anti-Pakistan US policy which has been in place since Obama’s infamous December 2009 West Point speech.

Bilderberg-Meeting 2011: Swiss National Councillors letter to the Government

As posted on We Are Change:

We thank Swiss National Counsellor Dominique Baettig, for having chosen us to broadcast his letter to the Swiss Government to impeach the anti-democratic 9 – 12.06.2011 Bilderberg Meeting in Sankt-Moritz.

Reminder. His last letters contributed to the No Show of “Bush Jr” in Geneva !

Original letter in French ENGLISH TRANSLATION : © www.WeAreChange.ch

We took the liberty to add few (XYZ) info for a better understanding in English.


Dominique Baettig
National Counsellor
Voignous 152800
DELEMONT

Mrs. Federal Counsellor
Simonetta Sommaruga
DFJP
(Federal Department of Justice & Police)
3000 BERN

Delémont, May 1rst, 2011

Concerns : St-Moritz in June 2011, a discreet Meeting with high risks

Mrs. Federal Counsellor,

I wish to draw your attention to a Meeting held in June 2011 – according to usually well informed sources – of the discreet, but influential Bilderberg Group in a Hotel in Sankt-Moritz.

This Group unites a kind of European and global elite of Bankers, Industrialists, Diplomats, US and European NATO Brass, crowned heads, Media groups, their Moguls and Editors, as well as Heads of States, whether retired or not, which coordinates, exchanges, organizes and structures, out of all democratic control, the major guidelines towards economic globalization.

Considering that the notions of sovereignty and independence are obsolete, if not hindrances to an open Market, this discreet Group develops an ultra-liberal, Free Trade society model, with a (unique) world currency and the IMF as Treasurer.

On the industrial level, it contributes to promote technological and agro-alimentary excesses, which contradict with alimentary sovereignty (GMOs : Genetically Modified Organisms, bio fuels, intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides, hydroponics), and an ever growing emancipation from natural and bodily contingencies (assisted procreation, nanotechnologies, genetic manipulations, technological industrial medicine, sex changes, blurring of the limits between living creatures and technologies to induce dependencies).

The definitions of illness criteria by Experts related to (their) Pharmaceutical companies (“Pandemics” such as the A(H1N1) and of mental depressions and high cholesterol levels), lead to the massive commercialization of vaccines and drugs, by the same people who produce them and define the spectrum of their application.

Playing with globalized fears, they enhance them with (their) Media using (see Naomi Klein) “Shock Strategies”, with startling effects generating feelings of helplessness.

Independence, Private Property and the Private Sphere are reduced by the usage of electronic virtual money and by the development of the control of (all) individuals in a biometric (global) Gulag (under the pretext of the fight against terrorism or the hunt against Tax evasion). Higher debts of the Countries are encouraged or minimized and they become the debtors of supranational Private Banks.

Military and Police tasks are privatized and military actions to dismantle independent States are planned and coordinated (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, tomorrow Iran and Syria).

The worst being the fact that they prepare the programmed end of traditional Democracy, with a power shift from all States to the benefit of non elected governance entities (UN and UE Experts, CEOs, Media and Pharmaceutical Moguls, etc.), discreetly working in (and for occult) networks.

I especially “fear” after consulting the (Bilderberg) Participants’ Lists of the last years, the undesirable presence (in Switzerland) of “personalities” (H. Kissinger, D. Cheney, G. W. Bush, Daniel Pearl), implicated in wars, war crimes, extraordinary restitutions (sic!), torture and who are under investigation by the Courts in Den Hague, etc. Are your services informed of the Participants’ identities ?

As NATO is actually engaged in war actions (Libya, Afghanistan, targeted assassinations), the participation of NATO Brass, their deciding Experts and NATO Members’ Heads of States does represent a major risk of a terrorist action in Sankt-Moritz and, therefore, a serious danger for its inhabitants and neighbours. Not mentioning the discredit and image loss for a sovereign and democratic Nation, which stands for an armed and integral Neutrality in the Homeland of the International Red Cross (Conventions) and Human Rights (both in Geneva).

What are the security costs of this Private Meeting (Cantonal Police, fedpol : Federal Police) for the Tax Payers ? Who is the (real) Organizer ?

Then does the participation of Swiss Citizens not represent a major risk of loss of credibility and legitimacy of our Neutrality and national Sovereignty ? Does the implication of Politicians, Businessmen and Media Group owners sharing (globalist) motivations contrary to our Sovereignty not represent Crimes against the State (Art.266.1, Art.266 bis, Art 267.1), plus undermine the independence of the (Swiss) Confederation with diplomatic Treason ?

Mrs. Federal Counsellor, I do know that a State respecting its own Laws (criminal and Constitution), Neutrality and Independence are important values for you and that you will know how to prevent a serious damage to the image of our Country, by taking all adequate steps and indispensable legal measures.

I impatiently wait for your answers and reflexions.

Be assured of my distinguished consideration and best democratic greetings.

Dominique Baettig National Counsellor Delémont

Copy : Mr. Beyeler State Prosecutor of the (Swiss) Confederation

Third Reportback from a Santa Cruz Anarchist in Athens

Athens has been especially tense for the last ten days. Social and political conflict is escalating. Ten days ago at the general strike, riot police beat an anarchist demonstrator into a coma and hospitalized dozens more. When repressive governments feel that they are losing control, when they fear the spread of an idea, they resort to brutal repression. One only needs to look to Syria right now to see this at its extreme. As the ruling class clings to power in times of crisis, intimidation becomes the weapon of choice to assert dominance. After the unprovoked attack by the police on the tail end of the general strike demonstration, protesters responded to the police onslaught with a barrage of rocks, powerful fireworks, and molotov cocktails. Running street battles flared throughout downtown Athens, migrating towards the friendly streets of Exarchia. Dumpsters again burned in the streets to block the movement of riot police. Dozens of young anarchists carried out hit and run attacks on riot police from the Polytechnic University, a place police are forbidden to enter. Hundreds more occupied Exarchia square and the streets surrounding it. Firefighters arrived when police could clear an area long enough for them to extinguish the burning dumpsters and barricades. The march started at 11 am, and the street fighting didn't end that night until 8 pm.

That night an assembly was called to figure out an appropriate response. The plan was to have it at the usual venue for anarchist assemblies, the Architectural campus of the Polytechnic. Unfortunately the school was surrounded by riot cops, and the meeting had to be moved to the nearby Economics campus. Despite the change, about a hundred people showed up. One person introduced the topic and demonstrators discussed it for the next three hours. The meeting had neither a facilitator nor a formal process. When one person was finished talking, someone else on the other side of the room would pick up and offer up their opinion. The meeting was full of people who were constantly rubbing their eyes and sneezing as the smell of tear gas saturated into peoples clothes wafted out. By midnight, they had decided that the next morning at 8:00 AM they would occupy the campus that was closest to downtown. There was going to be a demonstration against the police later that day, and holding that space was key to having a base to fight from.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Benazir Bhutto sought US security but was denied: WikiLeaks

Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury reports for India Today:

WikiLeaks has revealed that the US embassy in Islamabad had refused to provide security to former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto months before her assassination in December 2008 despite her personal requests to US Congressmen.

It is no secret that Bhutto faced threat from extremist forces including the Taliban. In fact her very return to Pakistan on Oct 18, 2007 was marked by bloodshed when a suicide attack on her motorcade at Karachi killed 140 people mostly her supporters and PPP activists.
Bhutto survived that attack but it was obvious that she was the target.

Subsequently the PPP president did not trust the state apparatus as she thought that it was hand in glove with the Taliban.

EU 'cyber snoops' sue Sweden for fighting Big Brother

Sweden government is picking a fight with the EU over plans to monitor and store all telecom and internet traffic, when every call, every text, even every email will be watched if the EU has its way.

Checking back in February, 2011...

Secret Swedish Spy Law, US connection exposed by WikiLeaks cables
As Sweden battles for the extradition of Julian Assange, Wikileaks cables on the country's close cooperation with the U.S. are provoking a public backlash. The text revealed Washington's push to influence Swedish wiretapping laws so communication passing through the Scandinavian country can be intercepted.

Armageddon-Proof: Arks & bunkers back in demand

After the Fukushima crisis, there have been calls to test nuclear power plants against earthquakes and floods. Recent disasters across the world have raised safety concerns and Russian inventors could soon be cashing in on those fears.

Protests in Spain

As reported by PRI:
Thousands of demonstrators are continuing their protest in Spain against the country's economic crisis. With nearly five million people jobless, Spain has the highest unemployment rate in Europe. Gerry Hadden has more.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

George W. Bush racks up $15 million in speaking fees

How much would you pay to get President George W. Bush to speak at your event?

Almost immediately after leaving office, Bush withdrew from the broader bully pulpit that other former presidents, such as Jimmy Carter, have used to weigh in on matters of public import. But he also joined the storied ranks of former politicians who are now making money on the speaking circuit-- and it's paying off.

Bush spokesman David Sherzer tells iWatch News that Bush has earned at least $15 million for nearly 140 paid speeches since he left office in Jan. 2009. That's an average of about $110,000 per speech. (iWatch News reports that his average fee is pegged between $100,000 and $150,000.)

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Of Politicians And Cricketers

From To All Cricket Lovers - An After Dinner Speech Made by Kadir:

Sri Lanka Foreign Minister Late Lakshman Kadirgamar`s (A Tamil national assassinated by Tamil Tigers)

His after dinner speech OFF THE CUFF, in the UK, with Sri Lankan Cricketers being present.
This was at the World Cup of 2003 in England.)

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`Captain Atapattu and members of the Sri Lankan team, Members of the Sri Lankan community, Friends of Sri Lanka, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Some historians say, I think uncharitably, that cricket is really a diabolical political strategy, disguised as a game, in fact a substitute for War, invented by the ingenious British to confuse the natives by encouraging them to fight each other instead of their imperial rulers.

The world is divided into two camps - those who revel in the intricacies of cricket and those who are totally baffled by it, who cannot figure out why a group of energetic young men should spend days, often in the hot sun or bitter cold, chasing a ball across an open field, hitting it from time to time with a stick - all to the rapturous applause of thousands, now millions, of ecstatic spectators across the world. The game has developed a mystical language of its own that further bewilders those who are already befuddled by its complexities.

In the course of my travels I have a hard time explaining to the non-cricketing world - in America, China, Europe and Russia - that a `googly` is not an Indian sweetmeat that a `square cut` is not a choice selection of prime beef that a `cover drive` is not a secluded part of the garden that a `bouncer` is not a muscular janitor at a night club, that a `yorker` is not some exotic cocktail mixed in Yorkshire or that a `leg-break` is not a sinister manoeuvre designed to cripple your opponent`s limbs below the waist.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me see whether politics and cricket have anything in common. Both are games. Politicians and cricketers are superficially similar, and yet very different. Both groups are wooed by the cruel public who embrace them today and reject them tomorrow.

Cricketers work hard politicians only pretend to do so. Cricketers are disciplined discipline is a word unknown to most politicians in any language. Cricketers risk their own limbs in the heat of honourable play, politicians encourage others to risk their limbs in pursuit of fruitless causes while they remain secure in the safety of their pavilions. Cricketers deserve the rewards they get the people get the politicians they deserve. Cricketers retire young politicians go on for ever. Cricketers unite the country politicians divide it. Cricketers accept the umpire`s verdict even if they disagree with it politicians who disagree with an umpire usually get him transferred. Cricketers stick to their team through victory and defeat, politicians in a losing team cross over and join the winning team. Clearly, cricketers are the better breed.

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"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away" - Philip K.Dick

From How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later by Philip K. Dick, 1978:

I mailed the slip of paper to the White House, mentioning that the Chinese restaurant was located within a mile of Nixon's original house, and I said, "I think a mistake has been made; by accident I got Mr. Nixon's fortune. Does he have mine?" The White House did not answer.

Well, as I said earlier, an author of a work supposed fiction might write the truth and not know it. To quote Xenophanes, another pre-Socratic: "Even if a man should chance to speak the most complete truth, yet he himself does not know it; all things are wrapped inappearances" (Fragment 34). And Heraclitus added to this: "The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself" (Fragment 54). W. S. Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan, put it: "Things are seldom what they seem; skim milk masquerades as cream." The point of all that is that we cannot trust our senses and probably not even our a priori reasoning. As to our senses, I understand that people who have been blind from birth and are suddenly given sight are amazed to discover that objects appear to get smaller and smaller as they get farther away. Logically, there is no reason for this. We, of course, have come to accept this, because we are use to it. We see objects get smaller, but we know that in actuality they remain the same size. So even the common everyday pragmatic person utilizes a certain amount of sophisticated discounting of what his eyes and ears tell him.

Little of what Heraclitus wrote has survived, and what we do have is obscure, but Fragment 54 is lucid and important: "Latent structure is master of obvious structure." This means that Heraclitus believed that a veil lay over the true landscape. He also may have suspected that time was somehow not what it seemed, because in Fragment 52 he said: "Time is a child at play, playing draughts; a child's is the kingdom." This is indeed cryptic. But he also said, in Fragment 18: "If one does not expect it, one will not find out the unexpected; it is not to be tracked down and no path leads us to it." Edward Hussey, in his scholarly book The Pre-Socratics, says:

If Heraclitus is to be so insistent on the lack of understanding shown by most men, it would seem only reasonable that he should offer further instructions for penetrating to the truth. The talk of riddle-guessing suggests that some kind of revelation, beyond human control, is necessary... The true wisdom, as has been seen, is closely associated with God, which suggests further that in advancing wisdom a man becomes like, or a part of, God.

This quote is not from a religious book or a book on theology; it is an analysis of the earliest philosophers by a Lecturer in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Hussey makes it clear that to these early philosophers there was no distinction between philosophy and religion. The first great quantum leap in Greek theology was by Xenophanes of Colophon, born in the mid-sixth century B.C. Xenophanes, without resorting to any authority except that of his own mind, says:

One god there is, in no way like mortal creatures either in bodily form or in the thought of his mind. The whole of him sees, the whole of him thinks, the whole of him hears. He stays always motionless in the same place; it is not fitting that he should move about now this way, now that.

This is a subtle and advanced concept of God, evidently without precedent among the Greek thinkers. "The arguments of Parmenides seemed to show that all reality must indeed be a mind," Hussey writes, "or an object of thought in a mind." Regarding Heraclitus specifically, he says, "In Heraclitus it is difficult to tell how far the designs in God's mind are distinguished from the execution in the world, or indeed how far God's mind is distinguished from the world." The further leap by Anaxagoras has always fascinated me. "Anaxagoras had been driven to a theory of the microstructure of matter which made it, to some extent, mysterious to human reason." Anaxagoras believed that everything was determined by Mind. These were not childish thinkers, nor primitives. They debated serious issues and studied one another's views with deft insight. It was not until the time of Aristotle that their views got reduced to what we can neatly—but wrongly—classify as crude. The summation of much pre-Socratic theology and philosophy can be stated as follows: Thekosmos is not as it appears to be, and what it probably is, at its deepest level, is exactly that which the human being is at his deepest level—call it mind or soul, it is something unitary which lives and thinks, and only appears to be plural and material. Much of this view reaches us through the Logos doctrine regarding Christ. The Logos was both that which thought, and the thing which it thought: thinker and thought together. The universe, then, is thinker and thought, and since we are part of it, we as humans are, in the final analysis, thoughts of and thinkers of those thoughts.

Thus if God thinks about Rome circa A.D. 50, then Rome circa A.D. 50 is. The universe is not a windup clock and God the hand that winds it. The universe is not a battery-powered watch and God the battery. Spinoza believed that the universe is the body of God extensive in space. But long before Spinoza—two thousand years before him—Xenophanes had said, "Effortlessly, he wields all things by the thought of his mind" (Fragment 25).

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9/11 WTC Employee Discusses pre 9/11 Power downs

Gary Corbett , World Trade Centre employee discusses the power down at the WTC the weekend before 9/11.

'Team Frankenstein' launch bid to build a human brain within decade

Henry Markram, a neuroscientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, has assembled a team of nine top European scientists for the research effort.

‘This is one of the three grand challenges for humanity. We need to understand earth, space and the brain. We need to understand what makes us human.’ Markram told Germany's Spiegel magazine.

The scientists and researchers working with the Human Brain Project believe that if they secure the funding, they will be able to replicate mankind's most vital organ in 12 years.

The applications for it if successful are enormous; drug companies for instance would be able to dramatically shorten testing times by bypassing humans to test new medicaments on the computer model.

Supercomputers at the JĂĽlich Research Center near Cologne are earmarked to play a vital role in the research which Makram says will involve ‘a tsunami of data.’

JĂĽlich neuroscientist Katrin Amunts has begun work on a detailed atlas of the brain which involved slicing one into 8,000 parts which were then digitalized with a scanner.

Makram added: ‘It is not impossible to build a human brain. We can do it in just over 10 years.

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Sun's Nemesis Pelted Earth with Comets, Study Suggests

By Leslie Mullen, Astrobiology Magazine

A dark object may be lurking near our solar system, occasionally kicking comets in our direction.?

Nicknamed "Nemesis" or "The Death Star," this undetected object could be a red or brown dwarf star, or an even darker presence several times the mass of Jupiter.

Why do scientists think something could be hidden beyond the edge of our solar system? Originally, Nemesis was suggested as a way to explain a cycle of mass extinctions on Earth.

[ ... ]

The Footprint of Nemesis

A recently-discovered dwarf planet, named Sedna, has an extra-long and usual elliptical orbit around the Sun. Sedna is one of the most distant objects yet observed, with an orbit ranging between 76 and 975 AU (where 1 AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun). Sedna's orbit is estimated to last between 10.5 to 12 thousand years. Sedna's discoverer, Mike Brown of Caltech, noted in a Discover magazine article that Sedna's location doesn't make sense.

"Sedna shouldn't be there," said Brown. "There's no way to put Sedna where it is. It never comes close enough to be affected by the Sun, but it never goes far enough away from the Sun to be affected by other stars."?

Perhaps a massive unseen object is responsible for Sedna's mystifying orbit, its gravitational influence keeping Sedna fixed in that far-distant portion of space.?

"My surveys have always looked for objects closer and thus moving faster," Brown said to Astrobiology Magazine. "I would have easily overlooked something so distant and slow moving as Nemesis."??

John Matese, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, suspects Nemesis exists for another reason. The comets in the inner solar system seem to mostly come from the same region of the Oort Cloud, and Matese thinks the gravitational influence of a solar companion is disrupting that part of the cloud, scattering comets in its wake. His calculations suggest Nemesis is between 3 to 5 times the mass of Jupiter, rather than the 13 Jupiter masses or greater that some scientists think is a necessary quality of a brown dwarf. Even at this smaller mass, however, many astronomers would still classify it as a low mass star rather than a planet, since the circumstances of birth for stars and planets differ.

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Secret Service interrogates 13-year-old over Facebook post

"My 13-year-old son, who's a minor, who's supposed to be safe and secure in his classroom at school, is being interrogated without my knowledge or consent by the Secret Service," Robertson told Q13 Fox News reporter Dana Rebik. She only got wind of the interrogation because a school security guard tipped her off and arrived a half-hour after the agent had already begun questioning her son. Tacoma police were also present.

The school said they began without her because she didn't take their call seriously, which Robertson called a "blatant lie."

By the end of the interview, which occurred May 13, the agent told the boy he was free to go and wasn't in trouble.

Friday, May 20, 2011

2.3 million people behind bars - How to stop wasting lives and money

From Beyond Prisons - Summer 2011 issue of Yes! Magazine:
The United States locks up more people than any other country, but that hasn't made us safer. The drug war jails thousands of nonviolent addicts. Taxpayers and poor communities lose as states slash social programs to pay for prisons. There's a better way—compassion, not punishment; restoration, not isolation. It's less costly, more humane—and it works.

War's necessary! US defense contractors 'raking in the dough'

America may be being dragged down by record debt and unemployment filtering throughout the economy - but there's one industry that's bucking the trend. It's a boom time for arms manufacturers right now, and they're branding themselves as saviours of the job market. RT's Kaelyn Forde reports on how Americans have little choice but to go gunning for work.

Smile! Air Force Wants to Track You Forever With a Single Camera Click

By Noah Shachtman, Wired

Don’t bother with the iris scanner or the fingerprinting machine. Leave the satellite-enabled locators and tell-tale scents back on the base, military manhunters. If an Air Force plan works out as planned, all you’ll need to track your prey is a single camera, snapping a few seconds of footage from far, far away.

Huntsville, Alabama’s Photon-X, Inc. recently received an Air Force contract to develop such a camera. With one snap, the company claims, its sensor can build a three-dimensional image of a person’s face: the cornerstone of a distinctive “bio-signature” that can be used to track that person anywhere. With a few frames more, the device can capture that face’s unique facial muscle motions, and turn those movements into a “behaviormetric” profile that’s even more accurate.

Former Israeli soldiers break the silence on military violations

Harriet Sherwood reports for the Guardian:

Transgressions by the Israeli army in the occupied Palestinian territories will be disclosed by a group of former soldiers in an internet campaign aimed at raising public awareness of military violations.

Video testimonies by around two dozen ex-soldiers - some of whom are identifying themselves for the first time - will be posted on YouTube. The campaign by Breaking the Silence, an organisation of former soldiers committed to speaking out on military practices, launches with English subtitles on Monday.

Some of the former soldiers describe the "neighbour procedure", a term for the use of Palestinian civilians, often children, as human shields to protect soldiers from suspected booby traps or attacks by militants. The procedure was ruled illegal by Israel's high court in 2005.

Others speak of routine harassment of civilians at checkpoints, arbitrary intimidation and collective punishment.

Idan Barir, who served in the artillery corps, describes in his testimony how an officer forced Palestinian civilians to crawl in a "race" towards a checkpoint near Jenin in the West Bank during the 2000 olive harvest. Only the first three out of "teams" of eight were allowed to pass.

Another, Itamar Schwarz, says Palestinian homes were routinely ransacked in search operations. He describes the day of the World Cup final in 2002, when soldiers confined a Palestinian woman and child in the kitchen of their home for two hours while the unit watched the game in the middle of an operation.

German insurer Munich Re held orgy for salesmen

By Stephen Evans, BBC News

One of the biggest insurance companies in the world held a party for salesmen where they were rewarded with the services of prostitutes.

Munich Re is the world's biggest re-insurer - in other words, the company acts as an insurance company for other insurance companies.

One of its divisions, Ergo, told the BBC that the party had taken place to reward salesmen in 2007.

A spokesman said the people who organised it had since left.

The gathering was held at a thermal baths in the Hungarian capital Budapest as a reward to particularly successful salesmen.

Fukushima Worker Internal Radiation Level Hits 30,000 CPM As Radiation Poisoning Cover Up Continues

An investigative report from the Daily Yomuri reveals that TEPCO is going to great lengths to cover up the amount of nuclear radiation that workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant are being exposed to.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse


There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.

In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell

Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: 'Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. this traveler was on the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of the YMCA will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain.





Some musical odes to idleness:

Deep Purple with Lazy

and Bruno Mars' The Lazy Song

Economic Distress and Suicide: Japan and U.S.


I learned from my Japanese colleagues last year that suicide rates in Japan increased significantly around 1998--a increase that has continued now for the last 12 years. Figure 1 here. Suicide rates increased to a larger percent in males (47%) compared to females (23%) in this period. My Japanese colleagues reported that psychological autopsy information suggested unemployment and divorce as common factors felt to be contributing to this increased rate of suicide.

Epidemiological work has now supported a link between regional unemployment in Japan and increased rates of suicides.

Japan has experience a prolonged economic malaise since 1998. Several sources have suggested the U.S. and Japanese economic cycles may be similar with the U.S. trailing the pattern in Japan by 10 to 15 years. Unemployment began increasing in Japan in 1998 and jumped dramatically in the U.S. beginning in 2008. The housing bubble in Japan peaked in 1996 and in the U.S. peaked in 2008. The possibility that the U.S. is entering a prolonged economic downturn similar to Japan raises the question of the mental health and suicide rate response. Is the U.S. vulnerable to an increased rate of suicides similar to that found in Japan? If so, what would a similar response look like and could mental health clinicians and public health officials do anything to reduce of minimize this type of risk.


Musical Innerlube: Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers - A Night in Tunisia


A Night in Tunisia (1960)

Written by:
Dizzy Gillespie
Frank Paparelli

Personnel:
Art Blakey — drums
Lee Morgan — trumpet
Wayne Shorter — tenor saxophone
Bobby Timmons — piano
Jymie Merritt — bass

Happiness has a dark side

It seems like everyone wants to be happier and the pursuit of happiness is one of the foundations of American life. But even happiness can have a dark side, according to the authors of a new review article published inPerspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. They say that happiness shouldn't be thought of as a universally good thing, and outline four ways in which this is the case. Indeed, not all types and degrees of happiness are equally good, and even pursuing happiness can make people feel worse.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Psychological Operations Field Manual No.33-1

"Propaganda Techniques" is based upon "Appendix I: PSYOP Techniques" from "Psychological Operations Field Manual No.33-1" published by Headquarters; Department of the Army, in Washington DC, on 31 August 1979
(from http://www.zoehouse.com/is/sco/proptech.html)
Knowledge of propaganda techniques is necessary to improve one's own propaganda and to uncover enemy PSYOP stratagems. Techniques, however, are not substitutes for the procedures in PSYOP planning, development, or dissemination.
Techniques may be categorized as:
Characteristics of the content self-evident. additional information is required to recognize the characteristics of this type of propaganda. "Name calling" and the use of slogans are techniques of this nature.
Additional information required to be recognized. Additional information is required by the target or analyst for the use of this technique to be recognized. "Lying" is an example of this technique. The audience or analyst must have additional information in order to know whether a lie is being told.
Evident only after extended output. "Change of pace" is an example of this technique. Neither the audience nor the analyst can know that a change of pace has taken place until various amounts of propaganda have been brought into focus.
Nature of the arguments used. An argument is a reason, or a series of reasons, offered as to why the audience should behave, believe, or think in a certain manner. An argument is expressed or implied.
Inferred intent of the originator. This technique refers to the effect the propagandist wishes to achieve on the target audience. "Divisive" and "unifying" propaganda fall within this technique. It might also be classified on the basis of the effect it has on an audience.


SELF-EVIDENT TECHNIQUE

Appeal to Authority. Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position idea, argument, or course of action.

Assertion. Assertions are positive statements presented as fact. They imply that what is stated is self-evident and needs no further proof. Assertions may or may not be true.

Bandwagon and Inevitable Victory. Bandwagon-and-inevitable-victory appeals attempt to persuade the target audience to take a course of action "everyone else is taking." "Join the crowd." This technique reinforces people's natural desire to be on the winning side. This technique is used to convince the audience that a program is an expression of an irresistible mass movement and that it is in their interest to join. "Inevitable victory" invites those not already on the bandwagon to join those already on the road to certain victory. Those already, or partially, on the bandwagon are reassured that staying aboard is the best course of action.

Obtain Disapproval. This technique is used to get the audience to disapprove an action or idea by suggesting the idea is popular with groups hated, feared, or held in contempt by the target audience. Thus, if a group which supports a policy is led to believe that undesirable, subversive, or contemptible people also support it, the members of the group might decide to change their position.

Glittering Generalities. Glittering generalities are intensely emotionally appealing words so closely associated with highly valued concepts and beliefs that they carry conviction without supporting information or reason. They appeal to such emotions as love of country, home; desire for peace, freedom, glory, honor, etc. They ask for approval without examination of the reason. Though the words and phrases are vague and suggest different things to different people, their connotation is always favorable: "The concepts and programs of the propagandist are always good, desirable, virtuous."
Generalities may gain or lose effectiveness with changes in conditions. They must, therefore, be responsive to current conditions. Phrases which called up pleasant associations at one time may evoke unpleasant or unfavorable connotations at another, particularly if their frame of reference has been altered.