One of the world's greatest problems is the impossibilty of any person searching for the truth on any subject when they believe they already have it

"One of the world's greatest problems is the impossibilty of any person searching for the truth on any subject when they believe they already have it." -- Dave Wilbur

"It's not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true." --Henry Kissinger

"Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false." - Bertrand Russell

"When shall it be said in any country of the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am friend of its happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and government ." - Thomas Paine

Hacking for the FBI: How an Informant Sold Out Anonymous

After the feds flipped the hacker known as Sabu, did he cross the line between informing and entrapment? [READ MORE] 

Moyers/Winship: Corporate Greed Is Poisoning America — Literally

As long as there are insufficient checks and balances on big business and its powerful lobbies, we are at their mercy.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/ Elnur

May 20, 2013  |  

From BillMoyers.com:
At the end of a week that reminds us to be ever vigilant about the dangers of government overreaching its authority, whether by the long arm of the IRS or the Justice Department, we should pause to think about another threat—the threat of too much private power obnoxiously intruding into public life.
Think of inadequate inspections of food and the food-related infections which kill 3,000 Americans each year and make 48 million sick. A  new study from Johns Hopkins shows elevated levels of arsenic—known to increase a person’s risk of cancer—in chicken meat. According to the university’s Center for a Livable Future, “Arsenic-based drugs have been used for decades to make poultry grow faster and improve the pigmentation of the meat. The drugs are also approved to treat and prevent parasites in poultry… Currently in the U.S., there is no federal law prohibiting the sale or use of arsenic-based drugs in poultry feed.”
And here’s a story in The Washington Post about toxic, bacteria-killing chemicals used in poultry plants to clean more chickens more quickly to meet increased demand and make more money. According to Amanda Hitt, director of the Government Accountability Project’s Food Integrity Campaign, “They are mixing chemicals together in these plants, and it’s making people sick. Does it work better at killing off pathogens? Yes, but it also can send someone into respiratory arrest.”
So far, the government has done next to nothing. No research into the possible side effects, no comprehensive record-keeping on illnesses. “Instead,” the Post reports, “they review data provided by chemical manufacturers.” What’s more, the Department of Agriculture is about to allow the production lines to move even faster, by as much as 25 percent, which means more chemicals, more exposure, more sickness.
Think of that and think of the 85,000 industrial chemicals available today – only a handful have been tested for safety. Ian Urbina  writes in The New York Times, “Hazardous chemicals have become so ubiquitous that scientists now talk about babies being born pre-polluted, sometimes with hundred s of synthetic chemicals showing up in their blood.”
Think, too, of that horrific explosion of ammonium nitrate in the Texas fertilizer plant. Fifteen people were killed and their little town devastated. The magazine Mother Jones  noted, “Inspections are virtually non-existent; regulatory agencies don’t talk to each other; and there’s no such thing as a buffer zone when it comes to constructing plants and storage facilities in populated areas.” For years, the Fertilizer Institute, described as “the nation’s leading lobbying organization of the chemical and agricultural industries,” resisted regulation and legislators went along. People can lose their lives when federal or state government winks at bad corporate practices — 4,500 workplace deaths annually at a cost to America of nearly half a trillion dollars.
As Salon’s columnist and author  David Sirota observes, “If all this data was about a terrorist threat, the reaction would be swift — negligent federal agencies would be roundly criticized and the specific state’s lax attitude toward security would be lambasted. Yet, after the fertilizer plant explosion, there has been no proactive reaction at all, other than Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry boasting about his state’s ‘comfort with the amount of oversight’ that already exists.”
Finally, consider this story  from ProPublica’s investigative reporter Abrahm Lustgarten about a uranium company that wanted a mining project in Texas that threatened to pollute drinking water. The EPA resisted — until the company hired as its lobbyist the Democratic fundraiser and fixer Heather Podesta, a favorite of the White House. Her firm was paid $400,000, she pulled the strings, and presto, the EPA changed its mind and said yes, go ahead and do your dirty work. In fact, ProPublica found that “the agency has used a little-known provision in the federal Safe Drinking Water Act to issue more than 1,500 exemptions allowing energy and mining companies to pollute aquifers, including many in the driest parts of the country.”


why we are here........

Zeitgeist 2012: Year In Review

Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself — if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself — it is very difficult to take care of another person.

Thich Nhat Hanh

The Hobbit is a lot better once you realize it's a war movie

The Hobbit has officially joined the ranks of franchises like Star Wars that are so eagerly anticipated that they suffocate under the weight of audience expectations. More »

With its power declining, Washington was not able any longer to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organization. Congress showed its spite over its impotence by hooking the normalizing of trade with Russia to what is called the “Magnitsky rule.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20634768

Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian attorney who represented a British investment firm accused of tax evasion and fraud in Russia. Apparently, the UK firm supplied information to media alleging government misconduct and participation in corruption inside state-owned Russian companies.

Magnitsky represented the accused UK firm. He claimed that the firm had not committed fraud but had been a victim of fraud. In turn, Magnitsky was arrested. He developed serious illnesses in prison for which he apparently received inadequate medical care.

Whether he died of untreated illnesses, we cannot know. But the US Congress, acting on the unsubstantiated allegation that Magnitsky was tortured and murdered, attached to the trade normalization bill a provision that requires the US government to release a list of Russian government officials believed or imagined to have been involved with the violation of Magnitsky’s human rights and to freeze the assets of these members of the Russian government and to deny them visas to travel to the US. Considering Washington’s belief that its law is the universal law of humankind, Washington probably intends for every country to enforce its edict or to be sanctioned in turn.

The Russian government finds the “Magnitsky rule” amusing. Here is the Russian government accused, without any evidence, of ONE torture and death, while Washington has such a large number of torture deaths from Abu Ghraib to Gitmo to the secret CIA torture centers to endless drone attacks on kids‘ soccer games, weddings, funerals, medical clinics, schools, farm houses and aid workers. The evidence is completely clear that Washington has tortured a number of individuals to death and into false confessions and blown to pieces thousands of innocents known as “collateral damage.” No one but Washington and its servants denies this. But one alleged Russian offense against human rights brings forth an act of the US Congress, all in a huff about the violation of a Russian lawyer’s human rights.

A number of rulers in human history have been this arrogant. But has a democracy ever been? Athens perhaps, but Sparta taught Athens a lesson.

What do the members of Congress think is the response of the rest of the world to Washington’s utter hypocrisy? How can Washington pass a law punishing Russian government officials for allegedly doing once what we know for an absolute fact Washington does every day?

The holier-than-thou presence that Washington presents to the world is so phony and shopworn that Washington is becoming not only despised but a laughing stock. Peoples cease to fear the “superpower” when they laugh at its folly, hypocrisy and utter stupidity.

Certainly, the Russians are not afraid. The Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, responded to the Washington morons as follows: “It is inadmissible when one country tries to dictate its will to another.” The Magnitsky rule will bring forth a “symmetrical and asymmetrical reaction from Russia.” The Russian Duma seems intent that this be the case. http://rt.com/politics/prepares-russias-reply-magnitsky-705/print/

Washington is like the drunk in a bar who picks a fight with a bruiser. Washington is full of itself, but Russia and China are not going to put up with a financially busted and militarily overstretched popinjay. The evil in Washington is driving us into nuclear war and into the destruction of life on earth.

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This article was reproduced with written permission from Joseph Cotto. This article first appeared: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/conscience-realist/2012/dec/5/paul-craig-roberts-ron-paul-citizens-united-fiscal/
FLORIDA, December 5, 2012 — Most pundits talk a good game about economics and politics. Few, however, are prepared to deliver anything beyond a superficial analysis of our time’s most controversial issues.
At times it seems like peer pressure and the groupthink it breeds are more important than life’s inescapable realities.
Thankfully, Paul Craig Roberts seems immune to this syndrome. As an assistant Treasury secretary under Ronald Reagan, he played a key role in formulating the Gipper’s now-legendary fiscal policy. As a journalist, he made no scruples about reporting the facts as he saw them. Now, as a columnist, he shares his opinions about America’s turbulent sociopolitical climate.
Agree or disagree with Roberts, and for me it depends on the day, one would have tremendous difficulty doubting that his ideas are genuine, and arrived at on an independent basis.
So, can America escape the clutches of the Great Recession and reclaim its economic vitality? What has the impact of free trade really been on our country? Did the Ron Paul movement bring any particularly important issues to the forefront?
Allow Dr. Roberts to explain about all of this and much, much more.
***************************
Joseph F. Cotto: America remains firmly caught in the Great Recession’s clutches. How do you think that our country can reclaim its economic vitality?
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: The US cannot reclaim its economic vitality, which US corporations have sent abroad to India, China, and elsewhere, unless it can retrieve the offshored middle class jobs. The only way in which the US can retrieve its middle class jobs is to tax US corporations according to the geographical location at which value is added to their product.
If corporations produce domestically with US labor, they would have a low tax rate. If corporations produce abroad they would have a high tax rate.
The tax rate can be calculated to more than offset the lower cost of foreign labor and, thus, cancel the excess profits that corporations make from substituting low cost foreign labor for US labor.
Cotto: Prominent economists and politicians often say that free trade will only benefit America in the long run. What are your opinions about this idea?
Dr. Roberts: Ralph E. Gomory and William J. Baumol have proven conclusively in their 2000 MIT Press book, Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests, that David Ricardo’s free trade theory was incorrect from the beginning. Therefore, the free trade issue is moot and a red herring.
Jobs offshoring is not free trade. Even if free trade theory was correct, jobs offshoring is pursuit of absolute advantage, the opposite of comparative advantage, which is the basis for the free trade argument. The economists who continue to advocate free trade and continue to confuse jobs offshoring with free trade are simply incompetent and professionally ignorant.
Cotto: Everyone is talking about the Fiscal Cliff. What do you expect to happen if both parties fail to find common ground on a budget proposal?
Dr. Roberts: The “fiscal cliff” is likely to be like the debt ceilings and the budget resolutions; just another can kicked down the road. The Congress will pass extension after extension. The Republicans will use the fiscal cliff to try to cut the social safety net, and the Democrats will use it to try to raise taxes.
If the parties succeed, a weak and faltering economy will get a double-barrel dose of austerity and be driven further into the ground.
Cotto: Over the last several years, mass movements such as Occupy and the Tea Party have made an impact on the political process. Each is largely a result of the recession and popular anger at government malfeasance. From your standpoint, are Occupy and the Tea Party as different from one another as pundits tend to claim?
Dr. Roberts: Occupy and the Tea Party both are expressions of frustration over the fact that the US government represents only a handful of powerful private interests who purchase the government which then does the bidding of the private interests.
Cotto: Due to the Citizens United ruling, millions of Americans have become are nervous about the influence money plays in politics. Are these concerns legitimate?
Dr. Roberts: The concerns about corporate money ruling politics are legitimate.This was the case even before the Republican Supreme Court made its Citizens United ruling legalizing the purchase of the US government by private interests.
Cotto: During complicated times like these, a robust national security policy is essential. While America can continue to build stronger relationships with proven allies, more should be done to prevent domestic terrorism as well. What are your opinions on this most challenging matter?
Dr. Roberts: There is no domestic terrorism. Moreover, the “war on terror” is a hoax. The hoax is increasingly perceived abroad, and, consequently, America’s relationships with allies are beginning to unravel. Today all Washington can do is to use money to purchase the governments that it needs as allies.
Cotto: Illegal immigration is a political lightning rod. Some believe that America needs legislations like the DREAM Act. Others say that the federal government should deport all illegal aliens. What would you say is the most effective manner of dealing with such a contentious matter?
Dr. Roberts: It is too late to do anything about immigration. The immigrants comprise too large a percentage of the population and many are now integrated into society. Washington has no better chance of expelling immigrants than Rome had of expelling Germans.
Cotto: Multiculturalism is spreading across the Western world at high speed. This has led not only to language barriers, but substantial ethnic, religious, and racial tensions. How should our country’s leaders be approaching this volatile subject?
Dr. Roberts: Empires become multicultural entities. In the US multiculturalism is protected by civil rights law and political correctness. The US has a black president, a black attorney general, a black UN ambassador and, apparently, soon another black Secretary of State. I am not complaining, just acknowledging the reality of multiculturalism. When the US government demonizes and profiles Arabs and Muslims, it might be breaking its own laws and also making other ethnicities and religions nervous.
Cotto: Across the political spectrum, libertarianism has become very popular. Specifically in the Republican Party, followers of Ron Paul are posing a serious challenge to the establishment. What do you feel the Ron Paul movement brought to the conversation?
Dr. Roberts: Ron Paul tried to bring defense of the US Constitution to the conversation, only to find that neither Republicans nor Democrats had any interest whatsoever in defending the US Constitution.
Cotto: We all have turning points in our lives. At what point did the path diverge, leading you to become one of America’s most well known economists and political commentators?
Dr. Roberts: It is not my path that has diverged. Rather, it is the path of the US government which has become less truthful, less accountable, more immoral, more evil, and more oppressive.

la beaute est dans la rue

3MIN News November 6, 2012: Solar Shutdown = Collapsing Atmosphere

Ground view of HAARP

Aerial view of HAARP taken 1998

Background of the HAARP Project

Prepared by Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., GNSH
Military interest in space became intense during and after World War II because of the introduction of rocket science, the companion to nuclear technology. The early versions include the buzz bomb and guided missiles. They were thought of as potential carriers of both nuclear and conventional bombs.
Rocket technology and nuclear weapon technology developed simultaneously between 1945 and 1963. During this time of intensive atmospheric nuclear testing, explosions at various levels above and below the surface of the earth were attempted. Some of the now familiar descriptions of the earth's protective atmosphere, such as the existence of the Van Allen belts, were based on information gained through stratospheric and ionospheric experimentation(read more)



Angels don't play this HAARP : advances in Tesla technology / Nick Begich and Jeane Manning.

The Oatmeal

Tesla The Geo Dynamo !! 

Review:Jesse Ventura:HAARP Conspiracy Theory -- High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program