Pax Christi bishop calls for end of US-led war in Afghanistan

The American bishop who serves as president of Pax Christi USA has called for the end of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala of Los Angeles told a gathering of about 70 Pax Christi members and supporters Sept. 16 that the military path chosen by the United States has led to greater violence and less security for Afghan people.

"Despite all the claims by U.S. officials and the media, the situation in Afghanistan after nearly nine years of U.S.-led liberation is horrendous," Bishop Zavala said.

He cited recent reports by the U.S. government, U.N. agencies and humanitarian organizations that pointed to rising violence, increased rates of civilian casualties and slowed development in Afghanistan since the surge at the end of 2009.

The bishop's comments came hours after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' upbeat assessment that the Obama administration's surge strategy that saw an additional 30,000 American troops sent to the Central Asia nation to root out Taliban insurgents seemed to be working.

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Basel III: The Global Banks at The Edge of The Precipice. Trillions of "Toxic Waste" in the Global Banking System

By Matthias Chang, Global Research

The Global Too Big To Fail Banks are so precarious that literally anything can trigger a collapse in the coming months.

I have read recent commentaries on Basel III posted to various renowned websites and financial publication, but they missed (or deliberately misled) the underlying message of the proposals, the implementation of which will be delayed till 2017 and some till 2019.

Basel III is pure spin and its timing was to assuage the deep-seated fears that there are no solutions in sight to save the fiat money system and fractional reserve banking.

THE PROBLEM

The major global banks are all under-capitalised and this was all too apparent when Lehman Bros. collapsed. Banks were borrowing so much and so recklessly to play at the global casino that when the bets went sour, they were staring at a black-hole in the $trillions. In fact the banks are all insolvent.

The problem was compounded when the central bankers (all are corrupt without exception) and regulators turned a blind eye to how bankers defined what constituted “capital” so as to circumvent the need to maintain the capital ratio.


THE BASEL III SOLUTION

At its 12 September 2010 meeting, the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision, the oversight body of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, announced a substantial strengthening of existing capital requirements and fully endorsed the agreements it reached on 26 July 2010.
 
These capital reforms, together with the introduction of a global liquidity standard, deliver on the core of the global financial reform agenda and will be presented to the Seoul G20 Leaders summit in November.

The Committee's package of reforms will increase the minimum common equity requirement from 2% to 4.5%.
 
In addition, banks will be required to hold a capital conservation buffer of 2.5% to withstand future periods of stress bringing the total common equity requirements to 7%.
 
This reinforces the stronger definition of capital agreed by Governors and Heads of Supervision in July and the higher capital requirements for trading, derivative and securitisation activities to be introduced at the end of 2011.

Increased capital requirements

Under the agreements reached, the minimum requirement for common equity, the highest form of loss absorbing capital, will be raised from the current 2% level, before the application of regulatory adjustments, to 4.5% after the application of stricter adjustments.
 
This will be phased in by 1 January 2015.
 
The Tier 1 capital requirement, which includes common equity and other qualifying financial instruments based on stricter criteria, will increase from 4% to 6% over the same period.

The Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision also agreed that the capital conservation buffer above the regulatory minimum requirement be calibrated at 2.5% and be met with common equity, after the application of deductions.
 
The purpose of the conservation buffer is to ensure that banks maintain a buffer of capital that can be used to absorb losses during periods of financial and economic stress.

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Mass Mind Control: Psycho-Civilized,Society

From Toward a Psycho-Civilized Society by David G. Guyatt:

... It was not until the middle or late 1970's that the American public became aware of a series of hitherto secret programs that had been conducted over the preceding two decades by the military and intelligence community. (3) Primarily focusing on narco-hypnosis, these extensive covert programs bore the project titles MKULTRA, MKDELTA, MKNAOMI, MKSEARCH (MK being understood to stand for Mind Kontrol), BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE and CHATTER. The principal aim of these and associated programs was the development of a reliable "programmable" assassin. Secondary aims were the development of a method of citizen control. (4)

Particularly relevant was Dr. Jose Delgado's secret work directed towards the creation of a "psycho-civilized" society by use of a "stimoceiver." (5) Delgado's work was seminal, and his experiments on humans and animals demonstrated that electronic stimulation can excite extreme emotions including rage, lust and fatigue. In his paper "Intracerebral Radio Stimulation and recording in Completely Free Patients," Delgado observed that: "Radio Stimulation on different points in the amygdala and hippocampus in the four patients produced a variety of effects, including pleasant sensations, elation, deep thoughtful concentration, odd feelings, super relaxation (an essential precursor for deep hypnosis), colored visions, and other responses."

With regard to the "colored visions" citation, it is reasonable to conclude he was referring to hallucinations -- an effect that a number of so-called "victims" allude to. (7) As far back as 1969, Delgado predicted the day would soon arrive when a computer would be able to establish two-way radio communication with the brain -- an event that first occurred in 1974. Lawrence Pinneo, a neurophysiologist and electronic engineer working for Stanford Research Institute (a leading military contractor), "developed a computer system capable of reading a person's mind. It correlated brain waves on an electroencephalograph with specific commands. Twenty years ago the computer responded with a dot on a TV screen. Nowadays it could be the input to a stimulator (ESB) in advanced stages using radio frequencies." (8)

In any event, narco-hypnosis was found, it is claimed, to be less than reliable, although some writers and observers dispute this. (9) Additional studies, conducted by Dr. Ewen Cameron and funded by the CIA, were directed towards erasing memory and imposing new personalities on unwilling patients. Cameron discovered that electroshock treatment caused amnesia. He set about a program that he called "de-patterning" which had the effect of erasing the memory of selected patients. Further work revealed that subjects could be transformed into a virtual blank machine (Tabula Rasa) and then be re-programmed with a technique which he termed "psychic driving." Such was the bitter public outrage, once his work was revealed (as a result of FOIA searches), that Cameron was forced to retire in disgrace.

Also of interest is Dr. John C. Lilly (10), who was asked by the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health to brief the CIA, FBI, NSA and military intelligence services on his work using electrodes to stimulate, directly, the pleasure and pain centers of the brain. Lilly said that he refused the request. However, as stated in his book, he continued to do "useful" work for the national security apparatus. In terms of timing this is interesting, for these events took place in 1953. Scientist Eldon Byrd, who worked for the Naval Surface Weapons Office, was commissioned in 1981 to develop electromagnetic devices for purposes including riot control, clandestine operations and hostage removal. (11)

From 1965 through to 1970, Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA), with up to 70-80% funding provided by the military, set in motion operation PANDORA to study the health and psychological effects of low intensity microwaves with regard to the so-called "Moscow signal." This project appears to have been quite extensive and included (under U.S. Navy funding) studies demonstrating how to induce heart seizures, create leaks in the blood/brain barrier and production of auditory hallucinations. Despite attempts to render the Pandora program invisible to scrutiny, FOIA filings revealed memoranda of Richard Cesaro, Director of DARPA, which confirmed that the program's initial goal was to "discover whether a carefully controlled microwave signal could control the mind." Cesaro urged that these studies be made "for potential weapons applications." ...

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Impunity in Print: How Argentine Newspapers Benefited from the Dictatorship

Since Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship, the nation's media laws and market have favored big corporations over independent media groups, leading to biased reporting. However, the wind has changed in the South American nation with the government taking on a number of initiatives to target corporate media in an attempt to democratize media ownership and access. Argentina's government has moved to seize the nation's only newsprint producer, Papel Prensa. The intervention into Papel Prensa is the latest in a two year old battle between the left-leaning government and the media corporation Clarín.

The clash between the government and Clarín has opened deep wounds left over from the bloody military junta which disappeared some 30,000 people. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner opened an investigation into the nation's largest newspapers Clarín and La Nación to determine whether the newspapers should be charged with crimes against humanity. Specifically, the investigation will determine whether the news groups conspired with the military government to appropriate the newsprint company which is jointly held by Clarín, La Nación and the government.

The investigation was unveiled during a televised news conference in which President Fernandez de Kirchner broke 33 years of silence regarding Papel Prensa's dark past and lack of government intervention. The investigation into Clarín's purchase of a majority stake in Papel Prensa has revealed torture, arrests and other illegal actions to acquire the billion dollar company.

[ ... ]

According to Papaleo's testimony in the investigation, the Graiver family sold the company in a secret meeting. Papeleo, Graiver's brother and his mother were separated during the meeting and told to sign without consulting with one another. “The only person who I spoke to was a man from Clarín. He told me to sign the deal to protect my daughter's life,” said Papeleo in a television interview. “I signed without knowledge of how much I was selling the company for. We didn't know what we signed, and we never got a copy of what we were signing.”

During the following year, Lidia Papaleo and her family were kidnapped in March of 1977. The former share holder of Papel Prensa was tortured during her detention.

The family's lawyer and right hand man of David Graiver, Jorge Rubinstein was kidnapped and tortured to death. The Human Rights Secretariat has opened charges against Dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, Former Navy Chief Emilio Massera, the former Economic Minister Jose Alfredo Martinez de Hoz and the former Industrial Secretary Raymundo Podesta who will face accusations of illegal detention, extortion, torture and murder in the case.

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How to Stop Living and Start Worrying - Simon Critchley's philosophical antidote to the self-help manual

...How to Stop Living and Start Worrying begins with a biographical sketch of Simon Critchley's early life and career. He relates his fascination with the radicalism of the 1970s punk music scene, and acknowledges his debt to the Penguin Modern Classics series (Orwell, Huxley, Sartre). His introduction to philosophy is cast in social and economic terms, where the work of Lois Althusser, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida were inseparable from the demands of political activism. Critchley's interest in philosophy is also characterized by unexpected events, from traumatic physical injuries to the death of his father. Philosophy is valued as an everyday practice that we can all pursue, enabling reflections on the world and ourselves.

But the interviews provide an interesting counterpoint to the traditional self-help manual. Casting out the assumption that we are free and autonomous individuals, Critchley and Cedeström discuss human experience in terms of finitude and contingency. Finitude defines individuals according to a limit, whether it is death, or the limit of perception; while contingency acknowledges that we are culturally-constructed by social forces.

If there is a feel-good pep-talk element, it takes the form of acknowledging one's impotence and incapability, the contradictions and discrepancies that structure our identities, and our experience of the world. In a world where the self 'can never achieve mastery or authenticity', philosophy forms part of a continual process of emancipation from dominant social norms and values - a talking cure for existence that goes on as long as we do. For Critchley, philosophy accepts that we are 'ontologically defective', or, as Nietzsche puts it, Human, All Too Human...

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