Musical Innerlube: SIRENIA - 'The Path To Decay'

Taken from the album "The 13th Floor". - Out January 23 via Nuclear Blast Records!

'Are we more paranoid? Experts think so'

If your friends are kidding you about paranoia, it turns out they might not be all that far off. Daniel Freeman, a clinical psychologist at The Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, and one of the world's leading authorities on paranoia, notes in Paranoia: The 21st Century Fear, a book new to U.S. stores this week, that an unfounded or exaggerated distrust of others, once believed only to be a mark of severe mental illness, is actually commonly experienced by ordinary people and appears to be on the rise. Estimates suggest that 1 in 4 of us, or about a quarter of the population, is routinely plagued by paranoid thoughts, and Freeman blames the media's affinity for repeated, graphic, extreme reports of threats along with unprecedented levels of city dwelling. Paranoia rates are twice as high in urban areas as in rural ones, he says.

Freeman doesn't suggest that there aren't legitimate threats in the world but that more people are struggling with assessing them accurately. When on chronic high alert, an ambiguous situation is apt to seem dangerous; a neutral intent, malignant. "Sometimes, we just get it wrong," he says. (Recall an incident earlier this month when nine Muslims were booted from an airplane after other passengers interpreted their reportedly benign remarks suspiciously.)

Freeman cites an example of the downside of overreacting in his book, cowritten with his brother, writer and editor Jason Freeman. Despite the relatively low risk, parents are often so concerned with keeping their children safely away from pedophiles that they quarantine them indoors, creating a real threat to their well being. Millions of U.S. children are overweight, which puts them at risk for heart troubles, diabetes, and other serious health problems. That far outweighs the risk of kidnap. Same with terrorism, Freeman notes. Cigarette-related illness and traffic accidents kill many multiples of Americans annually of the number of lives claimed by the9/11 attacks.

"People are very edgy right now," says Dennis Combs, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas—Tyler who also believes that paranoia is mounting. The economic slump doesn't help matters, he says, as people facing layoffs may be more apt to question the motives of coworkers. His own research has found paranoid thoughts to be prevalent among members of minority groups; they are more likely to feel that they're being monitored, say, when they're just trying to buy groceries. But he's also found that ordinary college students have paranoid thoughts. All the suspicions aren't likely good for us, Freeman says, referencing a study of 8,000 people across 40 U.S. states showing that areas with higher levels of mistrust had less social cohesion and higher death rates. Just a 10 percent boost in trust levels was associated with an 8 percent drop in death rates, he says.

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Mike Ruppert: 'Civil unrest now moves from a back to a front burner'

This is little more than hunch at the moment. The three likeliest states to have civil unrest first are Michigan, California and Ohio. These are the states hardest hit by job cuts. Ohio is of most concern to me. California is just huge and fragmented. The "fires" here would be rapidly "extinguished" by a state that has well-developed and longstanding historical plans for civil unrest going back to the 1960s. There are really probably five states in California and the fire is unlikely to spread from one "region" to another because each region has a different economic base and a different culture. Michigan is geographically off to the side of the board and already something of a "wasteland". There are no densely-packed masses of dry kindling nearby.

But Ohio is entirely different. Already devastated by auto layoffs and other massive corporate failures, Ohio's industrial areas border and are in close proximity to Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania. Lots of kindling in those states. At the same time as Ohio is devastated by DHL, auto and other layoffs, much of the nation's high-tech wind turbine industry in Ohio is also shutting down at the same time… just when we need it. The snake eats its own tail
for nutrition. It is the way money works… for now.

Civil unrest in Ohio could easily infect across state lines here, and cross another fault line that runs east and west, separating north from south; the Mason Dixon. Other earthquakes might be triggered. Eastward from Ohio are Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I wonder how much inter-agency advance planning DHS and FEMA have gone through so that they might operate fluidly across many borders, radio frequencies and jurisdictions. Those contingencies were planned for in the Patriot Act which congress didn't or couldn't read before voting on it. I described all of this in detail in my essay, "The 'F' Word" in 2001: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/nov202001.html.

There isn't even ten per cent of the military manpower required to impose national martial law in the Continental U.S. (CONUS). But my guess is that there will be an expansion of troop deployment in the region around Ohio soon. We should all be watching where troops are stationed as they (and if) they start coming home.

We all will have a clear understanding of who Barack Obama is and what he represents in short order. He, his administration, and whatever his base is are going to have to show their cards soon. Very soon. What we know is that many of the so-called energy and economic "solutions" espoused by Barack Obama during the campaign and since the election will fail abysmally, at or near the gate. What we pray for are more frequent and stronger signals that ears are open to any who might have some real answers… namely the Peak Oil/Sustainability movement.

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URGENT ALERT! Leonard Peltier's Safety Is In Jeopardy!

20 January 2009

Dear LP Supporters,

I am so OUTRAGED!  My brother Leonard was severely beaten upon his arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary.  When he went into population after his transfer, some inmates assaulted him.  The severity of his injuries is that he suffered numerous blows to his head and body, receiving a large bump on his head, possibly a concussion, and numerous bruises.  Also, one of his fingers is swollen and discolored and he has pain in his chest and ribcage.  There was blood everywhere from his injuries.

We feel that prison authorities at the prompting of the FBI orchestrated this attack and thus, we are greatly concerned about his safety.  It may be that the attackers, whom Leonard did not even know, were offered reduced sentences for carrying out this heinous assault.  Since Leonard is up for parole soon, this could be a conspiracy to discredit a model prisoner.

He was placed in solitary confinement and only given one meal, this is generally done when you won't name your attackers; incidentally being only given one meal seriously jeopardizes his health because of his diabetes.   Prison officials refuse to release any info to the family, but they need to hear from his supporters to protect his safety, as does President Obama.  His attorneys are trying to get calls into him now.

This attack on LP comes on the heels of the FBI's recent letter, prompting this attack by FBI supporters as an attempt to discredit LP as a model prisoner. Anyone who has been in the prison system knows well that if you refuse to name your attackers or file charges against them, then you lose your status as a victim and/or given points against your possible parole and labeled as a perpetrator.

It is not uncommon, in fact is quite common for the government to use Indian against Indian and they still operate under the old adage “it takes an Indian to catch an Indian”. In 1978, they made an attempt to assassinate him through another Indian man who was also at Marion prison with LP. But Standing Deer chose to reveal the plot to him instead of taking his life in exchange FOR A CHANCE AT FREEDOM. When Standing Deer was released in 2001, he joined the former Leonard Peltier Defense Committee as a board member. He also began to speak on Leonard's behalf until his murder six years ago today. Prior to his murder, Standing Deer confided with close friends and associates that the same man who visited him in Marion to assassinate Peltier, had came to Houston, TX and told him that he had better stay away from Peltier and anything to do with him.

We are aware that currently, the FBI is actively seeking support for his continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier and also also seeking support from Native People.  So please be aware, and keep Leonard in your prayers. The FBI is apparently afraid of the impact we are having. If they will set him up to blemish his record just before a parole hearing, what will they do when it looks like his freedom will become a reality? We need to make sure that nothing happens to him again!

Please write the President, send it priority or registered mail.  Email to Change.gov or email President Obama.  Call your congressional representatives and write letters, not email, to them. Do what you can to get the word out to insure that LP is receiving adequate medical attention for his injuries.

I am asking you, supporters of Leonard and advocates of justice at this time to help.  I don't know what else to do. Please Help!

Thank you.

 
Betty Ann Peltier-Solano
Executive Coordinator
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

Also call and request Leonard be treated with dignity and respect.
Canaan Federal Prison: 570-488-8000.

~ Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee ~

Will public education be militarized?

From Andy Kroll's The Duncan Doctrine on TomDispatch.com:

On December 16th, a friendship forged nearly two decades ago on the hardwood of the basketball court culminated in a press conference at the Dodge Renaissance Academy, an elementary school located on the west side of Chicago. In a glowing introduction to the media, President-elect Barack Obama named Arne Duncan, the chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools system (CPS), as his nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education. "When it comes to school reform," the President-elect said, "Arne is the most hands-on of hands-on practitioners. For Arne, school reform isn't just a theory in a book -- it's the cause of his life. And the results aren't just about test scores or statistics, but about whether our children are developing the skills they need to compete with any worker in the world for any job."

Though the announcement came amidst a deluge of other Obama nominations -- he had unveiled key members of his energy and environment teams the day before and would add his picks for the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior the next day -- Duncan's selection was eagerly anticipated, and garnered mostly favorable reactions in education circles and in the media. He was described as the compromise candidate between powerful teachers' unions and the advocates of charter schools and merit pay. He was also regularly hailed as a "reformer," fearless when it came to challenging the educational status quo and more than willing to shake up hidebound, moribund public school systems.

Yet a closer investigation of Duncan's record in Chicago casts doubt on that label. As he packs up for Washington, Duncan leaves behind a Windy City legacy that's hardly cause for optimism, emphasizing as it does a business-minded, market-driven model for education. If he is a "reformer," his style of management is distinctly top-down, corporate, and privatizing. It views teachers as expendable, unions as unnecessary, and students as customers.

Disturbing as well is the prominence of Duncan's belief in offering a key role in public education to the military. Chicago's school system is currently the most militarized in the country, boasting five military academies, nearly three dozen smaller Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps programs within existing high schools, and numerous middle school Junior ROTC programs. More troubling yet, the military academies he's started are nearly all located in low-income, minority neighborhoods. This merging of military training and education naturally raises concerns about whether such academies will be not just education centers, but recruitment centers as well.

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