i am back. my son is 1 and a half and he is the sweetest little creature i have ever dreamt about.
with sweetness of motherhood there come worries too. and anger as well. anger upon corrupted and greedy people who use kids as a tool for huge potential and actual profits. The most essential for this little angels pharmaceutical and food industries – are the worst ones.
My son got otitis and pediatrician gave him antibiotics Hiconcil.- Just by accident i went briefly through declaration and found that contains Aspartame. What the hell is wrong with pediatricians that prescribe it to kids under 3 years. And what the hell is wrong with industry that in spite their knowledge about damaging effect of Aspartame still produce it.
I try to avoid Aspartame in all food products and artificial vitamines but what to do with medicines? and the same story is forced immunizations. You are treated as a criminal and have to pay penalties if you don’t vaccinate you kids. They must be kidding, aren’t they.
Must see documentary Sweet misery- A poisoned world ( “Excellent documentary showing how dangerous artificial sweetner Aspartame is. From its history, to its effects this video is enough to shock anyone into really looking at there food labels next time they shop. Aspartame is a toxic food that came into the world as an investment By Donald Rumsfeld, while ignoring the deadly effects the tests showed. Take a good look at this video, it could save lives. ” and book Sweet poison about Artificial sweetener Aspartame, which despite so much harmful effects on health it is still in use in food industry. (The FDA Commissioner’s original team of scientific experts was against approval of aspartame because the brain tumor data was so “worrisome.” ).
The only think we can do is not to use it. Interesting enough, the players are again the same. Donald Rumsfeld has been the CEO of the company G.D. Searle (see bellow) and he lobbied for FDA approval. G.D. Searle has been acquired by Monsanto, well known about its genetically modified food. Is this the way how to decrease the world population? Scarry!
In 1977, Donald Rumsfeld (a former member of the U.S. Congress and the Chief of Staff in the Gerald Ford Administration) was hired as President and CEO of G.D. Searle. Attorney James Turner, Esq. has alleged that G.D. Searle hired Rumsfeld to facilitate the aspartame approval difficulties that they were experiencing.
Rumsfeld’s first action was to hire John Robson as Executive Vice President. Robson was a former lawyer with Sidley and Austin (Searle’sLaw Firm) and had also served as chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board (then connected with the Department of Transportation). Rumsfeld also brought on Robert Shapiro as General Counsel. Shapiro had been Robson’s Special Assistant at the Department of Transportation. Rumsfeld’s next task was to hire William Greener, Jr., as Chief Spokesman. Greener was a former spokesman in the Gerald Ford White House.
At the time that Rumsfeld became President and CEO he was on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Tribune. Shortly after Rumsfeld became CEO of Searle he wrote an effusively positive article about the NutraSweet Company.
On January 10, 1977, it was recommended to the U.S. Attorney that a grand jury be set up to investigate G.D. Searle for violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, U.S.C. 331(e), and the False Reports to the Government Act, 18 U.S.C. 1001. G.D. Searle and Company and three of its responsible officers were investigated for willful and knowing failure to make reports to the Food and Drug Administration and for hiding pertinent facts and making false statements in reports of the animal studies that were conducted to establish the safety of the drug Aldactone and the food additive Aspartame.
There were two studies where the violations committed by G.D. Searle appeared to be especially grievous. The two studies investigated were the previously mentioned 52-week toxicity study on infant monkeys performed by Dr. Waisman (G.D. Searle withheld important information from the FDA) and a 46-week toxicity study of hamsters (G.D. Searle had taken blood from healthy animals at the 26th week and claimed that the tests had actually been performed at the 38th week). Apparently many of the animals from this study were dead by the 38th week.
On January 26, 1977, G.D. Searle’s law firm, Sidley & Austin, requested a meeting with the U.S. Attorney prior to a grand jury convening. A representative of Sidley & Austin who was present at that meeting was Newton Minow (also on the Board of Directors at the Chicago Tribune at that time).
On April 13, 1977, a memo from the U.S. Justice Department urged U.S. Attorney Samuel Skinner to proceed quickly with the grand jury investigations of G.D. Searle. The memo clearly shows that the Statute of limitations on prosecution was going to expire soon (October 10, 1977 for the Waisman study and December 8, 1977 for the other study).
On July 1, 1977, U.S. Attorney Samuel Skinner left his U.S. Attorney position to work for the G.D. Searle law firm of Sidley & Austin. Thomas Sullivan became Samuel Skinner’s successor. Assistant U.S. Attorney William Conlon convened a grand jury, but he allowed the Statute of Limitations to run out on the aspartame study charges.
Just over a year later, Conlon also accepted a job with G.D. Searle’s law firm, Sidley & Austin.
Robert McConnell was the Director of G.D. Searle’s Department of Pathology and Toxicology, the department that oversaw most of the aspartame research. Mr. McConnell was specifically named in the initial recommendation for investigation. According to McConnell’s attorney, his client was given a $15,000 bonus and it was requested he take a 3-year sabbatical (he received $60,000 for each year). He was deemed a “political liability.”
On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan became the 40th President of the United States, G.D. Searle reapplied for the approval of aspartame. G.D. Searlesubmitted new studies along with their application. Reagan was expected to replace Jere Goyan, the FDA Commissioner. G.D. Searle President & CEO, Donald Rumsfeld’s connections to the Republican Party were also thought to be connected to Searle’s decision to reapply for aspartame’s approval at that time.
According to a former G.D. Searle salesperson, Donald Rumsfeld told his sales force that, if necessary, “he would call in all his markers and that no matter what, he would see to it that aspartame would be approved that year.”
Meanwhile, there were FDA scientists who were very concerned about specific problems linking aspartame with brain tumors, brain lesions, and general brain chemistry. Another concerned neuroscientist, Dr. John Olney studied aspartame extensively and he expressed his concern about the serious negative health effects aspartame consumption had on the human body.
The concerns of these top scientists were of no consequence to Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld made the decision to solve this problem politically – not scientifically.
On October 15, 1982, G.D. Searle petitioned the FDA for approval of aspartame use in soft drinks and children’s vitamins.
On October 1, 1982 an amendment was attached to the Orphan Drug Act. This act encourages the development of drugs for rare diseases. The amendment extended the patent on one product — aspartame — by 5 years, 10 months and 17 days. The amendment did not mention aspartame or G.D. Searle specifically and there was no debate or discussion on this amendment.
This amendment was proposed by Senator Howell Heflin, brought up for vote by Senator Robert Byrd, and pushed through by Representatives Henry Waxman and Orrin Hatch. G.D. Searle requested Senator Heflin sponsor the amendment. Heflin reportedly received $9,000 in campaign donations from G.D. Searle company executives shortly after this amendment was approved. Senator Byrd received a $1,000 campaign contribution from the CEO of G.D. Searle (Rumsfeld) before the amendment was proposed. Representative Waxman received a $1,500 campaign contribution from the soft drink political action committee. Senator Hatch also received $2,500 from the soft drink political action committee prior to his re-election and $1,000 each from Daniel Searle, Wesley Dixon (Daniel Searle’s brother-in-law), and William Searle. Senator Hatch has blocked hearings looking into the safety of aspartame many times.
In 1985, G.D. Searle was sold to the chemical company, Monsanto. Monsanto then created the NutraSweet Company as a separate subsidiary from G.D. Searle.
In 1992, NutraSweet signed agreements with the Coca-Cola and PepsiCo stipulating that The NutraSweet Company was their preferred supplier of aspartame. The patent for aspartame expired on December 14, 1992. This opened up the market to other companies.
In light of all of this information, it is not at all surprising that most health-conscious people now believe avoiding NutraSweet is a prudent practice. At some future point, if a scientific consensus finally concludes that aspartame puts most consumers at risk, it will be much too late. The best thing is to eat safely now.
Because aspartame metabolizes into a poison and other dangerous chemicals (despite the claims of the manufacturer to the contrary), it is believed that it can trigger or worsen the following conditions:
The song of Fred Loesser couldn’t say it better. The old rhetoric about cold war has came back. And it is more transparent than ever. And its roots as well. Reminds me on 2006 Ramsfeld’s saying: “The solution for this is ….. an attack.” Seems that people in America are not afraid of Iraq and Afganistan terrorist anymore. They are under control more or less according to neocons. Big oil deals have been done there. New treat is needed cos human brain becomes adopted very soon. Either too good or bad stuff. And what is better than an old enemy still as archetype in westerns’ mind: Russia. Who is just too close to their interests. To BTC pipe line. To goals of the Project for New American Century. Why now, just in front of American elections?
I’ve been amazed while reading it during my holidays. It’s all about defence and zillions of invented reasons why is needed to increase US military budget. People from other planet would read it like New Century = New war. They (PNAC) put the target for defence budget from 3,4% of GDP to 3,8% of US GDP. Officially is 3,7% of GDP now. Adding Black budget is probably more than 3,8%. Goal is achieved. But they have to maintain it with new neocon president. Democrats might decrease it as they are accused in those papers. It’s amazing that those people rule and might rule further. As nothing in New century is important – only american leading rule on the world and higher military budget.
McCain can be only war president as some commentators say. New cold war can tremendously increase military spending. And how can you call Defense shield in Poland than challenging the Russia. When Russia did it in 1962 on Cuba US went insane cos they came to close to them. And Poland is closer than Cuba. I am not pro-Russian. I lived in Communist regime and know what it was looked like. Won’t go back. We celebrated when international community accepted our will to independance. As people from Kosovo were. Why are they different rules for Ossetia? Because of BTC pipe? Because of American dominant role on the world?
It’s morally questionable that McCain and Geogian president have(had) the same consultant. Randy Scheunemann. Its important to see who this guy is to understand the past and the future of McCain policy. The guy who was director of the Project for new American century. Ex-adviser of Ramsfeld. And the guy who was executive director of the The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq . And some other guys from PNAC (see bellow) are consultants for Baltic republics, etc… Since almost all top members of Project for new american Century are current McCain advisers it just couldn’t be different as it is. (See bellow their political background)
MCCain said “we are all Georgians now”. If Mikheil Saakashvili had really attacked its own citizens, than his words are a bad news for America.
Video: Truth about Ossetia from 12 years old girl, whu run from Georgia gunfire
Must see video: MCCain & Scheunemann & Georgia & American foreign policy
Scheunemannhasbeen criticized for his close association with Ahmad Chalabi during the George W. Bush administration’s campaign to generate public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In mid-July 2008, The Sunday Times linked ScheunemanntoStephen Payne, a lobbyist covertly filmed as he offered to arrange meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and others, in exchange for donations to the George W. Bush presidential library. Payne said Scheunemannhadbeen “working with me on my payroll for five of the last eight years”.
Until March of 2008, Scheunemann lobbied for Republic of Georgia as a registered foreign agent. In August 2008, Barak Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan supposed that Scheunemann’s past lobbying may have been a reason of McCain openly taking Georgia’s side in 2008 South Ossetia war.
Scheunemann’s resume as a War Party apparatchik is lengthy. He signed the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) letter to President Clinton urging war on Iraq, four years before 9-11. He signed the PNACultimatumto Bush, nine days after 9-11, threatening him with political reprisal if he did not go to war against Iraq. He was executive director of the “Committee for the Liberation of Iraq,” a propaganda front for Ahmad Chalabi and his pack of liars who deceived us into war
Established in the spring of 1997, the Project for the New American Century is a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership. The Project is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project (501c3); the New Citizenship Project’s chairman is William Kristol and its president is Gary Schmitt.
While the foreign affairs advisor to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Scheunemann was also a registered foreign agent (lobbyist) for the Republic of Georgia[5] [6]
On April 17, 2008, McCain spoke on the phone with Georgia President Mikheil SaakashviliaboutRussian efforts to gain leverage over two of Georgia’s troubled provinces. That same day, McCain issued a public statement condemning Russia and expressing strong support for the Georgian position. Also on that same day, Georgia signed a new, $200,000 lobbying contract with Scheunemann’s firm, Orion Strategies. Scheunemann remained with Orion Strategies until May 15, when the McCain campaign imposed a tough new anti-lobbyist policy and he was required to separate himself from the company.[7]
In mid-July 2008, The Sunday Timeslinked Scheunemannto Stephen Payne, a lobbyist covertly filmed as he offered to arrange meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and others, in exchange for donations to the George W. Bush Presidential Library. Payne said Scheunemannhadbeen “working with me on my payroll for five of the last eight years.” [8]
Payne’s clients have included JPMorgan Chase,[9] Morgan Stanley,[6] United Space Alliance,[10] SAP Software,[10] Nextel Communications,[6] Continental Airlines,[11] YukosOil,[6] Boeing,[6] Lockheed Martin,[6] and Nuclear Solutions, Inc. [12] He has served as Honorary Consul General for the Republic of Latvia for the Texas region (with headquarters in Houston) since 1999,[8][13] and has served as an adviser to Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga on political and economic issues.[5] He has also served on the board of directors of the U.S.-Baltic Foundation, which promotes free markets in the Baltic States.[14] He has also served on the board of the National Defense University Foundation.[8] In a promotional brochure for Worldwide Strategic Partners, he claims to have arranged an official meeting between the Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and U.S. president George W. Bush in April 2006, something the Azerbaijani president had been attempting for three years.[11] He also assisted in having the Uzbek politician Muhammad Salih’s name removed from the U.S.’s terrorist watchlist.[11]In addition, he engaged in negotiations with Pervez Musharrafwith a group called Team Eagle (also known as Team Barakat).[10][15] He has also lobbied on behalf of the governments of Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates,[10] and performed consulting in Iraq, which he has visited twice.[10]
The lobbyist Randy Scheunemannhas collaborated withPayne’s firms since 2002,[2]and Payne has also partnered in his various business ventures with Frank Carlucci, Michael S. Han, Ying Wang, and W. Dieter Zander.[7]
A long-time proponent of NATO expansion, Jackson was instrumental in securing US Senate ratification of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary as members of NATO and organizing the second “Vilnius Round” of NATO expansion which brought the Baltic States, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria into both NATO and the European Union. Since 2002, he has been active in the Balkans and post-Soviet democracies advocating democratic reform and EU accession.
McCain for President 2008, Foreign Policy advisory team
2000 Republican National Convention: Chair of Platform Subcommittee for Foreign Policy, presidential campaign (George W. Bush).
He is a foreign policy advisor to John McCain, the presumed Republican Party nominee for President of the United States in the upcoming 2008 election.[5][6]Kagan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century(PNAC) and was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998, “PNAC Letter” sent to US President Bill Clinton, promoting regime change in Iraq.[7] Robert’s brother Frederick and father Donaldarealso affiliated with PNAC.
However, Kristol has not always fallen in line behind the Bush administration, and has on occasion criticized George W. Bush for not being conservative enough. In 2004, he wrote an op-ed strongly criticizing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.[8] He was also the first of many conservatives to publicly oppose Bush’s second U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers. He said of Miers: “I’m disappointed, depressed, and demoralized. […] It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president.”
He has also been a vocal supporter of the Israeli attack on Lebanon, stating that the war is “our war too,” referring to the United States. He continues to back the Iraq war, and favors imposing sanctions on Iran.[9]
During the early 1970s Rumsfeld became Mr. Carlucci’s protégé as Mr. Carlucci showed him the ropes. Carlucci was Undersecretary of Health, Education and Welfare when Caspar Weinbergerwas secretary during the Nixon administration. Carlucci became Ambassador to Portugal, and served in this position from 1974 until 1977. Carlucci was Deputy Director of the CIA from 1978-1981, under CIA Director Stansfield Turner. Carlucci was deputy defense secretary from 1981 until 1983 [1], national security advisor from 1986 until 1987, and defense secretary in 1987, following the resignation of Weinberger, his nomination by President Ronald Reagan and his confirmation in the Senate by a vote of 91 to 1. He was reportedly less hard-line in policies toward the Soviet Union than Weinberger.
On January 5, 2006, he participated in a meeting at the White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State to discuss United States foreign policy with Bush administration officials.
Carlucci served as chairman of the Carlyle Group from 1992-2003, and chairman emeritus until 2005. He also has business interests in the following companies: General Dynamics, Westinghouse, Ashland Oil, Neurogen, CB Commercial Real Estate, Nortel, BDM International, Quaker Oats, and Kaman. Carlucci is Chairman of Envion USA, and former director of Wackenhut. He is a senior member of the Frontier Group, a private equity investment firm founded by Sanford McDonnelland David Robb. Carlucci is an Advisory board member of G2 Satellite Solutions and the Chairman Emeritus of Nortel Networks
He is affiliated with the Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, a neo-conservative thinktank.[citation needed]He formerly sat on the Board of Directors of the Middle East Policy Council.[citation needed] He is Chairman Emeritus of the US-Taiwan Business Council.[citation needed]Carlucci is a member of the Board of Trustees of the RAND Corporationand founding co-chair of the Advisory Board for RAND’s Center for Middle East Public Policy.
American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America’s role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century.
We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.
As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world’s preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?
We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are living off the capital — both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements — built up by past administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations. As a consequence, we are jeopardizing the nation’s ability to meet present threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie ahead.
We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration’s success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global responsibilities.
Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.
Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:
we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future; we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values; we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad; we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
Such a Reaganitepolicy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.
Elliott Abrams Gary Bauer William J. Bennett Jeb Bush
Dick Cheney Eliot A. Cohen Midge Decter Paula Dobriansky
See bellow two must see documentaries which give insight into the roots of the current problems. Nothing just happens; every event has it own cycle with some visible icebergs on a surface. Money masters documentary is a bit old but never so accurate than today. It gives clear geneses of economical problems and its effects on people who are “slaves” in the whole story.
The power of corporate media shows how this optical illusion for ordinary people is done. The technology for mass deception.
Although this two documentaries are must for financial and media experts they are much more important to be seen by all people to understand why what we see is not what we get.
“The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole…Their secret is that they have annexed from governments, monarchies, and republics the power to create the world’s money…” THE MONEY MASTERS is a 3 1/2 hour non-fiction, historical documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the world today. The modern political power structure has its roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money. The development of fractional reserve banking practices in the 17th century brought to a cunning sophistication the secret techniques initially used by goldsmiths fraudulently to accumulate wealth. With the formation of the privately-owned Bank of England in 1694, the yoke of economic slavery to a privately-owned “central” bank was first forced upon the backs of an entire nation, not removed but only made heavier with the passing of the three centuries to our day. Nation after nation, including America, has fallen prey to this cabal of international central bankers
He disapproved of American involvement in the war and tried to use his political contacts in Washington D.C. to prevent it. He spoke on Italian radio and gave a series of talks on cultural matters. Pound believed that economics was the core issue at hand. Specifically, his talks were largely about usury and the notion that representative democracy has been usurped by bankers’ infiltration of governments through the existence of central banks, which made governments pay interest to private banks for the use of their own money. He maintained that the central bank’s ability to create money out of thin air allowed banking interests to buy up American and British media outlets to sway opinion in favor of the war and the banks. Pound was not the first prominent American to make this assertion; for example New York City Mayor John Hylan had publicly said the same thing back in 1922 when he said “these international bankers control the majority of the magazines and newspapers in this country.” Pound believed that economic freedom was a prerequisite for a free country. Inevitably, he touched on political matters, and incorporated antisemitism into his denunciations of the war.
Pound believed that the bankers in charge of the Federal Reserve and their associates in the Bank of England were responsible for getting the United States into both World Wars, in an effort to drive up government debt beyond sustainable levels (the national debt indeed rose astronomically because of the wars). The book, Secrets Of The Federal Reserve, charges that bankers hide behind the screen of the central banks and pull political strings to drive countries into the war, creating immense profits for themselves as the principal beneficiaries of wartime debt. Pound advocated an abandonment of the current system of money being created by private bankers. He favored government issued currency with no interest to pay, preventing the need for an income tax and national debt, much like the system used by the Pennsylvania Colony from 1723 to 1764. Pound argued that his views on money aligned with those of Thomas Jefferson, as well as with Benjamin Franklin’s Colonial Scrip.
Orwell Rolls in His Graveis a 2004 documentary film written and directed by Robert Kane Pappas. It examines the current and past relationships between the media, the US government and corporations, analyzing the possible consequences of the concentration of media ownership. Making references to George Orwell’s novel 1984, the film argues that reality has met and in some ways exceeded Orwell’s expectations about a society dominated by thought control, which is made possible by the media. According to the film, the mass media no longer report news, but manage them, deciding what makes the headlines and what is conveniently ignored, thus ultimately defining the framework upon which most other issues are discussed by the society.
Was on Massive Attack’s concert today. And was massively attacked. Great concert not only because of their music (i like very much from their beginnings) and visual effects but because their concert had a message. Clear message. As there were a lot of meaningful words rolling on a big screen behind about war, all articles for impeachment of J.W. Bush, prisoners without a trial, quotes about freedom and democracy (No man is above the law and no man below it) the whole message can be summed up: “Fear is not a natural state of civilized people.”(Aung San Suv Kyi)” People have to be aware what is going on, have to think, have to be critical toward democracy preachers otherwise other will think instead of them. Fear paralyses, fear change brain’s gray matter, puts you into inferior position,…
Not talking about normal human response on adrenalin rush; i am talking about damaging effect of constant, invisible, omnipotently present fear without a real bases, which we are hearing about through media every day. Either terrorism or global warming or damaging diseases or god… They might attack you at the moment you expect the least, so be rather afraid. Very afraid. Constant fear makes you run instead of fight. (see 2. The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear of Adam Curtis)
There is a lot of them who are more than willing to comfort you but for some return. Like exchange of true freedom for fake freedom. Like putting your worries into their hands to take care of them. As quote from Massive Attack’s big screen says: “Freedom is never free.”
Like this guys who have the power to rise the awareness among masses accompanied with great music. It’s a food for emotions and mind.
Watched lately documentary Secret rulers of the world and if the half of what they’re saying is true, than this world is scary place for a living. But if people don’t know they take everything as granted.
Reminded me on very good Paul Auster ‘s book In The Century of last Thing. A world, narrowed to pure survival, trapped into corrupted system which imprisoned people. It’s a good portrait of devastation of either outher or inner person’s world. Once you are within the system, the possibility to escape is limited almost to zero. The only thought to keep you alive is that there , outside this system is another world, better one, the one you still keep in your memories. Or the one your desperate hope has built.
In In the Country of Last Things Paul Auster offers a haunting picture of a devastated world – futuristic world – but one which chillingly shadows our own. – Faber and Faber.
And the movie with the same title is in postproduction phase now.
I’m a little curious of you in crowded scenes
And how serene your friends and fiends
We flew and strolled as two eliminated gently
Why don’t you close your eyes and reinvent me
[Daddy G]
You know you’ve got that heart made of stone
You should have let me know
You could have let me know
[3d]
We’ll go ’till morning comes
And traffic grows
And windows hum
[Daddy G]
Speding all week with your friends
Give me evenings and weekends
Evenings and weekends
[3d]
I could be yours
We can unwind
All these have flaws
All these have flaws
You’d agree it’s a typical high
You fly as you watch your name go by
And once the name goes by
Not thicker than water nor thicker than mud
And the eight k thuds it does
Sunset so thickly
Let’s make it quiet and quickly
Don’t frown
It taste’s better on the way back down
I could be yours
We can unwind
All these have flaws
All these have flaws
All these have flaws
Will lead to mine
We can unwind
All these have flaws
All these have flaws
Will lead to mine
Will see to
All these have flaws
All these have flaws
Will see to
All these have flaws
Will lead to mine
We can unwind all our flaws
We can unwind all our flaws
Dollar crises, food crises, oil crises, nuclear threat… Paradise for neocons to push their agenda of New American century. Just from reading few articles this week, it’s so obvious what is going on. The history has taught us that many big crises were provoked and caused by those who wanted to profit from them.
Bush and Brown issue Iran warning. “Action will start today in new phase of sanctions on oil and gas. We will take any necessary action so that Iran is aware of the choice it needs to make,” Brown said.Bush said he has not ruled out the use of force to end Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, but added that he preferred to resolve the dispute diplomatically. “…
Was the same 1979 when Iran wanted to nationalised oil. They brought Homeini and flamed revolution,.. add kept their presence there.
Behind: control of middle east and oil production.
.
Video: WE’RE GONNA BOMB IRAN, & THERES NOTHING YOU CAN DO
.
Food crises,
mostly inflated by speculations, is great opportunity to force the world to use genetically modified products (see article US wants biotech to help solve global food crisis). Even not reported i am sure that Bush with current visit in Europe again tried to push Europe into Monsanto arms. How can GM food help, since is known that brings lower yield instead of higher, increased use of herbicide instead less of them, it’s dangerous for health and destroys biodiversity ?! Strong connection between White House and Monsanto are clear. Monsato is owner of 80% of GM seeds. And they have patent on every GM seed. Licence fee of food! How perverted. Indian farmers make suicide cos can’t cope wit it. As European i am strongly against any invasion of Monsanto in Europe. But than…how can i know?
Behind: control of world’s food production.
.
Video: The Genetic Conspiracy (1/3) – about Monsanto
Dollar crises
causes range of problems around the world. FED is the one who is very much responsible for that. And how really perverted. They want to solve the problem to give FED even more power worldwide (see article bellowNY Fed chief urges global bank framework ).
Behind: control of world’s money circulation.
.
Video: FEDERAL RESERVE (Zeitgeist) —how history repeats itself with same players
.
Oil Crises
Market Manipulation and the Causes of Outrageous Energy Prices. According to a number of oil industry executives and market analysts, around a third of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds, and much of it on electronic futures exchanges free from U.S. oversight.“Excessive speculation on energy trading facilities is the fuel that is driving this runaway train in crude oil prices,”said Gerry Ramm, Senior Executive, Inland Oil Company of Ephrata, WA.
OPEC’s Second-Largest Producer Now Pegs Petroleum To Euros And Yen
TEHRAN, Iran, April 30, 2008. Although OPEC has traditionally tied its price of oil to U.S. dollars, Iran has announced it has shifted sales of its oil to euros and yen.
(AP) Iran, OPEC’s second-largest producer, has completely stopped conducting oil transactions in U.S. dollars, a top Oil Ministry official said Wednesday, a concerted attempt to reduce reliance on Washington at a time of tension over Tehran’s nuclear program and suspected involvement in Iraq.
Iran has dramatically reduced dependence on the dollar over the past year in the face of increasing U.S. pressure on its financial system and the fall in the value of the American currency.
Oil is priced in U.S. dollars on the world market, and the currency’s depreciation has concerned producers because it has contributed to rising crude prices and eroded the value of their dollar reserves.
“The dollar has totally been removed from Iran’s oil transactions,” Oil Ministry official Hojjatollah Ghanimifard told state-run television Wednesday. “We have agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the depreciating dollar a “worthless piece of paper” at a rare summit last year in Saudi Arabia attended by state leaders from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Jun 13, 2008; A senior US official on Friday urged countries to remove barriers to the use of biotechnology and other innovations that would increase food production at a time of crisis.
“We must address the policies and trade barriers that increase food prices by preventing access to food and to the best technologies available to produce food,” Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said.
“In the long term, we believe sustainable food security will come from advances in science and technology and the creation of an efficient global market for both agriculture products and food production technologies,” he said.
“We therefore are strongly encouraging countries to remove barriers to the use of innovative plant and animal production technologies, including biotechnology,” Negroponte said.
“Biotechnology tools can help speed the development of crops with higher yields, higher nutrition value, better resistance to pests and diseases, and stronger food system resilience in the face of climate change,” he said.
“Are there negative food andclimate change implications associated with increased demand for biofuels?” he asked.
“We think this has had minor impact, but are dedicating substantial resources for research for cellulosic biofuel technology,” he said.
“We are also working hard to conclude a successful Doha agreement that will reduce and eliminate tariffs and other barriers as well as market-distorting subsidies for agriculture goods,” he said.
“Over 40 developing countries unwisely have put trade-restrictive policy measures into place,” he said, adding that export restrictions should be lifted.
“They (the export restrictions) have taken food off the global market, driven prices higher, and isolated farmers from the one silver lining of the rise in food prices — higher incomes for agriculture producers,” he said.
Negroponte was speaking at a ceremony to name former US senators Robert Dole and George McGovern the winners of the 250,000 dollar World Food Prize for their role in “encouraging a global commitment to school feeding.”
June 8 2008; Banks and investment banks whose health is crucial to the global financial system should operate under a unified regulatory framework with “appropriate requirements for capital and liquidity”, according to Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Writing in Monday’s Financial Times, Mr Geithner, a key US policymaker throughout the credit crisis and one of the main architects of the rescue of Bear Stearns, says that the US Federal Reserve should play a “central role” in the new regulatory framework, working closely with supervisors in the US and round the world.
“At present the Fed has broad responsibility for financial stability not matched by direct authority and the consequences of the actions we have taken in this crisis make it more important that we close that gap,” Mr Geithner says, in an excerpt of a speech to be delivered today at the Economic Club of New York.
The credit crisis has heightened pressure on US policymakers to consider sweeping changes to a regulatory system for financial institutions which has commercial banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup regulated by the Fed and investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers more loosely regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Mr Geithner called the system “a confusing mix of diffused accountability, regulatory competition and a complex web of rules that create perverse incentives and leave huge opportunities for arbitrage and evasion”.
However, legislation to overhaul US financial regulation is unlikely to start advancing through Congress until next year when the new administration takes office.
In his speech, Mr Geithner will also say the Fed is examining whether to make “permanent” some of the new liquidity facilities put in place during the credit crisis, and called for central banks to establish a “standing network of currency swaps, collateral policies and account arrangements” to bolster liquidity during a future crisis.
Meanwhile, Malcolm Knight, the general manager of the Bank of International Settlements, the Basel-based central banking group, told the FT that the financial system now faces a growing risk of exchange-rate volatility as investors and central banks grapple with the impact of rising commodity prices and other inflationary pressures.
“It is not clear if the rest of the world is going to continue to fund the US current account deficit at current levels of exchange rates,” he said. “The pattern of the exchange rates is subject to considerable uncertainty now.”
The comments are likely to be closely watched by investors and policymakers, since they come at a time of renewed market focus on the outlook for the dollar relative to the euro and other currencies. Last week, Ben Bernanke, Fed chairman, broke with the US central bank’s traditional silence on currency matters to make clear that it does not want any further dollar weakness.
While the dollar rallied on Mr Bernanke’s remarks, it retreated later in the week after European Central bank comments suggested an interest rate rise and as the price of crude oil soared, heightening inflation fears.
“There is a perception that after a long period of quiescent inflation, things are changing,” Mr Knight said. “This is quite visible in terms of commodity prices in energy markets but also in terms of what is happening with other commodities too.”
By Aline van Duyn and Michael Mackenzie in New York
Published: June 9 2008 23:20 | Last updated: June 9 2008 23:20
Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, has appeared to dismiss the market perception that the US Treasury calls the shots for the dollar, saying responsibility is a “delicate balance” between the Treasury and the Fed.
Referring to his time as a Treasury official, he said the balance of responsibility for the dollar was “60:40”, with the Treasury taking the lead but the central bank clearly playing an important role.
The dollar strengthened on Monday after Mr Geithner said the Fed was paying “very close attention” to its value. “No government or central bank can be indifferent to changes in the value of its currency,” he said in a question-and-answer session at the Economic Club of New York.
Hank Paulson, US Treasury secretary, also told CNBC on Monday that he would not rule out intervention to stabilise the dollar. The currency rallied after setting a six-week low on Monday and was up 1 per cent at $1.5622 against the euro in late trade.
Last week Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, broke a taboo on Fed officials commenting on the dollar when he drew links between a weaker currency and higher import costs and consumer price inflation.
The Fed has cut benchmark overnight interest rates sharply to 2 per cent since September. Now markets expect a rate increase later this year to address inflationary pressures.
Mr Geithner has been a key US policymaker throughout the financial crisis and one of the main architects of the rescue of Bear Stearns. The bank was bought by JPMorgan, which Mr Geithner said was the only way to avoid a default.
“Our first and most immediate priority remains to help the economy and the financial system get through this crisis,” he said. After the system had stabilised, the regulatory system had to have an overhaul.
“The severity and complexity of this crisis makes a compelling case for a comprehensive reassessment of how to use regulation to strike an appropriate balance between efficiency and stability,” he said.
The establishment of a central clearing house for credit derivatives was an important goal of a meeting held on Monday afternoon at the New York Fed with 17 big firms, Mr Geithner said.
Changes in the derivative market’s infrastructure, expected over the next six months, “will help improve the system’s ability to manage the consequences of failure by a major institution”, he said.
The dealers and Fed will outline a number of changes in the way over-the-counter derivatives trades are processed, including a central clearing house, reduced outstanding contracts, and greater automation of trading and settlement.
The movie, The Experiment (Experiment, Das, 2001), shocked me a lot when i firstly saw it. I’ve heard as psychology student before about Stanford Prison Experiment, where Philip Zimbardo randomly assigned Stanford undergraduates to act as prison guards or prisoners—an extreme kind of power relation. The prison guards quickly descended into the purest forms of power abuse, psychologically torturing their peers, the prisoners. Movie is well done story about this experiment.
Social system determines our behaviour in a big way. Every position in social system has internally defined code of behaviour toward others and toward self as well. Was writing lately how our brain is great organ but so vulnerable and it generalise and simplifies so fast. Before we even know we are caught (see post: Brain makes decision before we even know it). We behave as we think that is required to behave on that position/role. Code of behaviour specifically role requires could be obtained from parents, peers, media.
Why most of the people tend to submise in front of person on position of power? Is it conditional response? Why there is so many stupid bosses who manage smart employees? What kind of aura does bring position? Subordinate or boss has clear meaning of category and responses to it in our mind. We’ve been learned about this from early childhood on. You have to respect the president, you have to respect boss. Why? Is he/she worth of respect? Of following? No, he/she symply deserve respect because is a president, boss, …Pure tautology. Political language is full of tautologies as well.
What is their drive? How they’ve come there? What is their psychological structure? How would they behave if they would be put back, quite low on social system hierarchy?
Does position corrupt or corrupted people seek for position? Is it possible that lack of empathy and ego-centrism, lack of mature consciousness, enviousness, competitiveness and grandiosness of this people show that our civilization is ruled by nuts with substantial Narcissistic personality’s disorder? They are builders of social system and its rules and roles. Is that why the whole civilisation shift itself into narcissism? (see narcisstic personality disorder traits). The last video, guy hit by car, left on the street, is typical example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQjdaEUcTAE
Video about Bush Family Fortune or “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”(Lord Acton)
Why is it said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely? What is it about the psychology of power that leads people to behave differently — and too often, badly?
Those are some of the questions intriguing a group of social scientists, many of them at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. In the past few years, their research has zeroed in on what an intoxicating elixir power can be.
And one thing has become clear: The phrase “drunk with power” is often a dead-on description. These new studies show that power acts to lower inhibitions, much the same as alcohol does.
“It explains why powerful people act with great daring and sometimes behave rather like gorillas,” said psychologist Cameron Anderson, assistant professor at UC Berkeley who has studied power dynamics.
Some evidence also suggests a physiological component: that powerful people experience an adrenaline rush, not unlike that of someone in an emergency who is suddenly able to lift an automobile. Research on monkeys indicates that their levels of serotonin change when they move into the dominant alpha position.
“Disinhibition is the very root of power,” said Stanford Professor Deborah Gruenfeld, a social psychologist who focuses on the study of power. “For most people, what we think of as ‘power plays’ aren’t calculated and Machiavellian — they happen at the subconscious level. Many of those internal regulators that hold most of us back from bold or bad behavior diminish or disappear. When people feel powerful, they stop trying to ‘control themselves.’ “
So when movie star Mel Gibson told the police officer who pulled him over that he “owned” Malibu and that Jews were the source of all the wars in the history of the world, it’s hard to know whether to attribute his irrational hubris to the effects of power or drunkenness, or both.
Research documents the following characteristics of people with power: They tend to be more oblivious to what others think, more likely to pursue the satisfaction of their own appetites, poorer judges of other people’s reactions, more likely to hold stereotypes, overly optimistic and more likely to take risks.
LBJ biographer Robert Caro observed that power doesn’t corrupt; it reveals. Research by UC Berkeley psychology Professor Serena Chen suggests that people who are naturally selfish grow even more selfish if they attain power, while people who are naturally selfless and giving become more so with power.
“I enjoy teaching classes that get students to think more positively about power,” said Roderick Kramer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford who has studied the biographies of hundreds of powerful people. He notes the flip side of power — that the lowering of inhibitions frees the powerful to shake up organizations, fearlessly challenge the status quo, do the right thing regardless of unpopularity, and follow a more daring vision. Could preacher Martin Luther King Jr. have so profoundly inspired the civil rights movement, could New Jersey homemaker Martha Stewart have become a marketing maven, could a former Austrian bodybuilder have become the governor of California without coasting on the inhibition-lowering fumes of power along the way?
This orientation is exponentially enhanced by the fact that others react differently, more deferentially, to powerful people. Henry Kissinger discerned that power is “the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
The result, as Kramer notes, is that powerful people are likely to find that every mirror held up to them says, in effect, you are the fairest of them all.
Journalist Bob Woodward tells an instructive story about President Bush in his new book “State of Denial.” Gen. Jay Garner, the outgoing chief of post-war planning in Iraq, had determined that the United States was making three big, tragic mistakes, including disbanding the Iraqi army. He met with Bush intending to lay it on the line, and instead ended up telling the intellectually incurious president that he is positively beloved in Iraq, while Bush jokes about how perhaps his next assignment will be the invasion of Iran. Garner says he would prefer Cuba — better rum and cigars, prettier women.
“Of course with all the stories, jocularity, buddy-buddy talk, bluster and confidence in the Oval Office, Garner had left out the headline,” Woodward writes. “He had not mentioned the problems he saw, or even hinted at them. He did not tell Bush about the three tragic mistakes. Once again, the aura of the presidency had shut out the most important news — the bad news. It was only one example of a visitor to the Oval Office not telling the president the whole story or the truth … The whole atmosphere too often resembled a royal court … exaggerated good news, and a good time had by all.”
The point, Kramer would argue, is not just that power reveals but also that it changes people. Such transformation explains why so many powerful people, imbued with talent, luck and leadership skills, tumble in flames like Icarus. The only way to truly harness power is first to understand what it does to you — in other words, the consequences of lowered inhibitions.
One of the simplest and yet most fascinating experiments to test the thesis is the “cookie crumbles” experiment. Researchers placed college students in groups of three and gave them an artificial assignment — collaboration on a short policy paper about a social issue. They then randomly assigned one of the students to evaluate the other two for points that would affect their ability to win a cash bonus. Having set up this artificial power hierarchy, researchers then casually brought to working trios plates containing five cookies.
They found that not only did the disinhibited “powerful” students eat more than their share of the cookies, they were more likely to chew with their mouths open and to scatter crumbs over the table.
Gruenfeld offers a similar example from her career in journalism when she occasionally met with Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner. She recalls that he routinely would swig vodka from a bottle and eat raw onions — without ever offering to share — “and it never even occurred to the rest of us, because it was understood that he had the power and we did not.”
Studies show that while people with less status tend to stand or sit more primly in social and professional situations, powerful people actually stretch out and take up more physical space.
And they take liberties in other ways as well, indulging their childish impulses. Some exercise sexual prerogatives over those less powerful, with the involvement of former Rep. Mark Foley with congressional pages being but the latest example. Some rack up a preposterous number of possessions: Among the bribes former San Diego Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham took was a yacht he christened the Duke-stir, while former Tyco Chief Executive Officer Dennis Kozlowski charged home furnishings to his company, including a $2,000 trash can and a $15,000 umbrella stand.
Other power seekers relish the psychological satisfaction suggested by novelist Amy Tan’s definition of power: “holding someone else’s fear in your hand and showing it to them.” The abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and other atrocities demonstrate a power effect documented three decades ago in Stanford psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo’s simulated jail scenario: Students placed in authority grew increasingly repressive and abusive over their “subjects.”
One study of the kings of England reported that those rulers with the greatest power were far more likely to commit crimes — from theft to murder — than ordinary citizens. A similar impulse may have propelled decisionmakers at Hewlett-Packard to try to plug information leaks by spying on board members and on journalists covering the company.
Another symptom of power is reduced awareness of the way you are perceived by others. Again, research shows that powerful people are less able to accurately read the verbal and facial cues of those around them, and thus more likely to misjudge how they are coming off. Instead of focusing outward, they tend to see others as merely orbiting around them.
One illustrative experiment asked subjects to draw a capital E on their foreheads with a washable marker. The hypothesis was that powerful people, because they care less about how they are perceived, would be less likely to write the E as if someone else would be reading it — and sure enough, the powerful tended to draw E’s in a way that was proper from their perspective but backward to onlookers.
This symptom of power can be ominous: As leaders grow more oblivious to the perceptions of others, they can become dangerously isolated and start to see people merely as means to their own ends. The parables of such isolation abound in history: Movie audiences can watch the downfalls of two very different examples in the French queen Marie Antoinette and Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.
Another axiom of the powerful is that they take risks more than others. Such risk-taking is often richly rewarded, but at some point overconfidence can be disastrous.
When Anderson at UC and co-author Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University undertook a series of studies about the powerful, they discovered that not only were people in power more optimistic about their odds of success, but they underestimated the dangers even in areas over which they had no power whatsoever. In experiments, people made to feel powerful were more likely to minimize their chances of being affected by an accident, more likely to gamble on a lower blackjack hand, more likely to reveal vulnerable information in a job interview, even more likely to engage in sex without a condom, than were people with less power.
“The bottom line is that people in power act in more cavalier ways,” Anderson said. “They really do believe that they’re not going to get caught, and they start to see themselves as above the law. And we know how that turns out …”
So what is required to remain uncorrupted — to handle power with grace?
The experts say that to remain grounded, it takes a deliberate effort, a sense of humor about yourself and a willingness to become more, not less, reflective. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama says he gains more insights into the needs of constituents by flying in coach. High-flying investor Warren Buffet still lives in Omaha in a house that cost $31,000, and continues to play bridge with his same cadre of friends. Presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were masters at a self-deprecating wit that served them well.
“Nearly all men can stand adversity,” said Abraham Lincoln, “but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Can you find the Hidden Tiger on picture? If not, click on the picture. It’s so obvious when you’re told. You can’t not see it aymore. The post bellow is all about it.
“ScienceDaily – Feb. 19, 2008— Scientists at UCL (University College London) have found the link between what we expect to see, and what our brain tells us we actually saw. The study reveals that the context surrounding what we see is all important —sometimes overriding the evidence gathered by our eyes and even causing us to imagine things which aren’t really there.”
“By Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. MacknikIt’s a fact of neuroscience that everything we experience is actually a figment of our imagination. Although our sensations feel accurate and truthful, they do not necessarily reproduce the physical reality of the outside world. Of course, many experiences in daily life reflect the physical stimuli that enter the brain. But the same neural machinery that interprets actual sensory inputs is also responsible for our dreams, delusions and failings of memory. In other words, the real and the imagined share a physical source in the brain. So take a lesson from Socrates: “All I know is that I know nothing.””
Bellow video September 11 clues is a good example to test the theory. Some people claim that attack by planes on WTC never happened. And zillions of videos and pictures repeated over and over again where we saw that the planes were there…hit WTC. What is true? Shall we believe to Bush (see video below)…repeat over and over again …you got to catapult the propaganda ?!?! If bellow movie would be repeated so many times as official ones what would people believe than? Did people see or they’ve been told what to see.
I don’t wanna judge. Both could be real or no-one of them. But i can doubt …either on this video, official one or on both on them… That is the privilege of the observer … Worked on commercial TV, I’ve learned one thing: Frequency sell (either talking about news or commercials). Brains functions are result of evolution in order to successfully adapt the environment. Many times brain simplifies, generalize, categorize …among zillions of stimulus. The stimulus (either true or not–brain actually doesn’t care) which is the most dominant, become anchor for the whole category. PR or advertising guys know this wery well.
A rabbit or a duck? (A plane or a missile?)
And funny video how propaganda is done by President of United States:
Republicans, Lakoff says, understand how “brains and minds work”. If voters are fthinkers and not thinkers, you need to appeal to their emotions. One way to do so is to hitch a ride on a narrative that is already neurally well honed. Some narratives – for example, “rags to riches” – are affective neural superhighways for Americans.
I’ve been posted lately about Century of fear and how fear or Shock therapy affects us…here we have lately scientific results about effects on our brain… As psychologist by education and marketing specialist by a profession this things are so challenging for me…make me question all the time what is behind… what is real, what is the role of media, how an average human brain react on all this stimulus and define reality… see two must see movies bellow: Charlie Rose – “UNCOVERED” / FEAR & STRESS ON THE BRAIN / SI SWIMSUIT and Uncovered: The Whole Truth About The Iraq War.
It’s not realy so innocent what going on with our …human mind… how much politics or this neocons games effect our brains….memories, hormons, endorphines…will post next how real and imagined is close and what we see is what we get …
This suggests that really bad experiences may have lasting effects on the brain, even in healthy people,” said Barbara Ganzel, the study’s lead researcher and postdoctoral fellow at Cornell’s College of Human Ecology.
ScienceDaily -Jun. 4, 2008 — Healthy adults who were close to the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, have less gray matter in key emotion centers of their brains compared with people who were more than 200 miles away, finds a new Cornell study.
The study — one of the first to look at the effects of trauma on the brains of healthy adults — is published in the April issue of Neurolmage. It follows a Cornell study by the same authors that found people living near the World Trade Center on 9/11 have brains that are more reactive to such emotional stimuli as photographs of fearful faces. Combined, the two studies provide an emerging picture of what happens in the brains of healthy people who experience a traumatic event.
The smaller volume of gray matter — composed largely of cells and capillary blood vessels — that Ganzel found were in areas that process emotion and may be, Ganzel suggests, the brain’s normal response to trauma. The subjects in the study did not suffer from any mental or physical health disorders. Gray matter, a major component of the nervous system, is composed of the neuron cell bodies that process information in the brain.
About half of Americans experience a trauma in their lifetime, and scientists know a lot about the effects of trauma on the brains of people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but not about people without clinical disorders. And most people, Ganzel said, who experience a trauma don’t get PTSD.
Key brain areas that are smaller are also more responsive to threat, said Ganzel, suggesting that these changes may be a helpful response to living in an uncertain environment.
“We have known for a long time that trauma exposure can lead to subsequent vulnerability to mental health disorders years after the trauma,” Ganzel added. “This research gives us clues about the biology underlying that vulnerability.”
The researchers used two types of magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 18 people who were within 1.5 miles of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and compared them to scans of 18 people who lived at least 200 miles away at the time. One type showed the gray matter volume, and the other showed the brain’s response to emotional stimuli (pictures of fearful and calm faces). Those who were close to the disaster on Sept. 11 showed more emotional reactivity in the amygdala, a brain area that detects the presence of threatening information.
Combining the brain data revealed that those who were near the World Trade Center had smaller, more reactive amygdalas, and this, in turn, was related to how anxious they were years later. Several other brain regions associated with emotion processing were also smaller in those who were close to the disaster.
The researchers also found that study subjects who had experienced other types of trauma (violent crimes, sudden death of a loved one) showed a similar reduction in gray matter and similar response to emotional faces and anxiety.
“This suggests that the differences we see in the brain and behavior of people who were near the Sept. 11 disaster are not specific to that one event,” Ganzel said. “And it turns out there is a very similar pattern of gray matter volume loss with normal aging, which raises the question of what role trauma plays in the aging brain.”
Co-authors include Elise Temple of Dartmouth College, Cornell graduate student Pilyoung Kim, and Gary Glover of Stanford University.
Adapted from materials provided by Cornell University. Original article written by Sheri Hall.
Magnetic resonance imaging of the brains of healthy adults more than three years after Sept. 11, 2001, shows areas that have less gray matter volume in those who were near ground zero on 9/11, compared with those who were much farther away. This is three views of the brain areas that have lower gray matter volume in the 9/11-exposed group. Notably, all of these areas (which show up brighter in this image) are associated with the processing of emotion. (Credit: Image courtesy of Cornell University)
ScienceDaily (May 8, 2007) — According to a new brain study, even people who seemed resilient but were close to the World Trade Center when the twin towers toppled on Sept. 11, 2001, have brains that are more reactive to emotional stimuli than those who were more than 200 miles away
That is the finding of a new Cornell study that excluded people who did not have such mental disorders as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression. One of the first studies to look at the effects of trauma on the brains of healthy people, it is published in the May issue of the journal Emotion.
“These people appear to be doing okay, but they may, indeed, be having more sensitive responses to upsetting stimuli,” said Elise Temple, a co-author and assistant professor of human development at Cornell.
More than half the population experiences trauma, which makes people more likely to develop PTSD, depression, anxiety and physical illness later in life, according to other studies. Also, trauma has been found to make the brain’s emotional processing centers — particularly the amygdalae, the parts of the brain that judge emotional intensity and make emotional memories — more sensitive in cases of PTSD.
The findings suggest that events that trigger shock, fear and horror that are within a normal range — may cause similar changes in the brain that traumas do. Victims may experience lingering symptoms (bad dreams, jumpiness, thinking about the incident and avoiding the site of the trauma), but they are not severe. However, the kinds of changes that these traumas cause in the brain, the researchers suspect, create vulnerability to developing future mental disorders.
Specifically, the Cornell researchers found that three years after Sept. 11, 2001, the amygdalae were most sensitive in those who were close to the World Trade Center. These individuals tended to still experience lingering symptoms that were not severe enough to be diagnosed as a mental disorder. Those with lingering symptoms showed significantly more sensitive emotional reactions in the brain when stimulated by photographs of fearful faces.
“Our study suggests that there may be long-term neural correlates of trauma exposure, even in people who have looked resilient,” said lead author Barbara Ganzel, Cornell M.S. ’99, Ph.D. ’02, a postdoctoral researcher in human development at Cornell. “Up until now, there has been very little evidence of that.”
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to see how people’s brains responded to photographs of fearful versus calm faces, the scans of 11 people who were within 1.5 miles of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, were compared with those who were living more than 200 miles away at the time; none of the subjects had psychiatric disorders.
“We know that looking at fearful faces in normal adults tends to activate the amygdalae relative to looking at neutral faces,” said Ganzel. “So we were looking to see if people who have had a very bad experience would have more response to this relatively mild everyday stimulus.”
Indeed, the amygdalae of those who were close to the twin towers were significantly more activated than that of others, even when other factors were controlled for in the analysis.
“People who had experienced traumas that left them with more lingering symptoms were the ones who had higher activity in their fear centers,” said Temple. “We think that the World Trade Center experience was traumatic enough that it left them with hyperactive amygdalae.”
Other co-authors include B.J. Casey, director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at the Weill Cornell Medical College; Henning Voss, a physicist at the CitiGroup Biomedical Imaging Center in New York City, where the fMRI scanning took place; and Gary Glover of Stanford University, who developed the fMRI techniques used.
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
It’s just amazing how history repeats itself and how the agenda of leading elite is the same. Election are near and people should be conditioned as Pavlov’s dog. Not afraid enough…we gonna increase electroshock slightly. All current events confirm even more the facts presented in Adam Curtis documentary : The Power of Nightmares -The Rise of the politics of Fear. And its amazing to read how the same vocabulary is used now for Iran as was before for Iraq (See below)
RUMSFELD: That’s what I was just going to say. This President’s pretty much a victim of success. We haven’t had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it’s not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing’s in Europe, there’s a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack. And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it’s a shame we don’t have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats…the lethality, the carnage, that can be imposed on our society is so real and so present and so serious that you’d think we’d be able to understand it, but as a society, the longer you get away from 9/11, the less…the less…
Iran’s nuclear programme has made big strides in recent months and the country is on course to pass an important threshold for nuclear weapons capability next year, scientists and analysts say.
Ever since Iran started enriching uranium in defiance of United Nations resolutions, western diplomats have highlighted the technological obstacles facing the country, arguing that they provided time to deal with the dispute over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Hayden warned, however, that progress in Iraq is being undermined by increasing interference by Iran, which he accused of supplying weapons, training and financial assistance to anti-U.S. insurgents. While declining to endorse any particular strategy for dealing with Iran, he described the threat in stark terms.
“It is the policy of the Iranian government, approved at the highest levels of that government, to facilitate the killing of American and other coalition forces in Iraq. Period,” he said.
The US Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) says a new al-Qaeda video has urged the use of nuclear and chemical weapons against the West.
“FBI had sent an alert to US law enforcement agencies about the video. “We got information the tape was coming,” said Kolko. “We sent out an alert to law enforcement to let them know the tape was coming.” The latest video, purportedly released by al-Qaeda, has not been authenticated. “
As of early this evening, ABC News and the Drudge Report are running a headline claiming that “al Qaeda operatives will post a new video on the Internet in the next 24 hours, calling for what one source said is ‘jihadists to use biological, chemical and nuclear weapons to attack the West.’” The ABC News report quotes FBI spokesman Richard Kolko as acknowledging that “there have been several reports that al Qaeda will release a new message calling for the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against civilians.”
For the record: there is no indication whatsoever that Al-Qaida’s As-Sahab Media Foundation is preparing to release anything in the next 24 hours. There has been no notification posted on the usual channels, there are no glitzy advertisements, and there is no credible electronic chatter, period. Rather, the intel community appears to have (once again) fallen victim to poorly researched open source news reporting. In recent days, several fringe media organizations have published stories about a video recording posted by anonymous Al-Qaida miscreants on extremist Internet chat forums.
Hayden warned, however, that progress in Iraq is being undermined by increasing interference by Iran, which he accused of supplying weapons, training and financial assistance to anti-U.S. insurgents. While declining to endorse any particular strategy for dealing with Iran, he described the threat in stark terms.
“It is the policy of the Iranian government, approved at the highest levels of that government, to facilitate the killing of American and other coalition forces in Iraq. Period,” he said.
CNN’s Paula Newton reports of a possible terror threat to the Euro 2008 Championship in Switzerland and Austria.
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And here you can see the easons:
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Before attack on Iraq:
“Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq,” Clarke said to Stahl. “And we all said … no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, ‘Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.
“Initially, I thought when he said, ‘There aren’t enough targets in– in Afghanistan,’ I thought he was joking.
“I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we’ve looked at this issue for years. For years we’ve looked and there’s just no connection.”
Clarke says he and CIA Director George Tenet told that to Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.
“The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, ‘I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’ Now he never said, ‘Make it up.’ But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.
“I said, ‘Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.’
“He came back at me and said, “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection.’ And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report.”
Three weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime by force, but also overturning the regimes in Iran, Syria, and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively by former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith
in his recently published account of Iraq War decisions.Feith’s retelling further indicates that this aggressive U.S. aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country’s top military leaders.
Feith’s book, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, released in April, provides excerpts of a paper that Rumsfeld sent to President George W. Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, but rather on the aim of establishing “new regimes” in a series of states by “aiding local peoples to rid themselves of terrorists and to free themselves of regimes that support terrorism.”
Quoting that document, Feith deletes the names of all of the states to be targeted except Afghanistan, inserting the phrase “some other states” in brackets. In a related Pentagon “campaign plan” document, the Taliban and Iraq are listed as “state regimes” against which “plans and operations” might be mounted, yet the names of four other states are blacked out “for security reasons.”
In his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars, Gen. Wesley Clark, who commanded the NATO bombing campaign in the Kosovo War, recalled being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that states that Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia.
“In January 1998, PNAC published an open letter to President Clinton arguing that “containment” of Iraq “has been steadily eroding,” jeopardizing the region and, potentially, beyond. “Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate.” PNAC followed up a few months later with an open letter to Senate leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich(R-GA), which argued that the “only way to protect the United States and its allies from the threat of weapons of mass destruction [is] to put in place policies that would lead to the removal of Saddam and his regime from power.” Signatories to these letters included many of those who signed PNAC’s statement of principles, as well as future realist-inclined Bush administration officials Richard Armitage and Robert Zoellick. Also in support of this effort, PNAC set up a meeting between Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Perle, and Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, to argue the case for intervention (Dolan and Cohen, “The War about the War.”). Earlier, in February 1998, Wolfowitz had testified in front of the House International Relations Committee that regime change in Iraq was the “only way to rescue the region and the world from the threat” posed by Hussein. Revealing another aspect of neoconservative alliance-building in the years leading up to the Bush election, Wolfowitz added that the United States should recognize “a provisional government of free Iraq,” and that the best place to look for such a government was “with the current organization and principles of the Iraqi National Congress” (quoted in Halper and Clarke, pp. 101-102). Thus, write Halper and Clarke, “in only a few years since the Soviet collapse, neoconservatism had refocused itself as an interventionist lobby intent above all else on waging a second Gulf war” (p. 102).
The agenda items outlined in the statement reemerged in the wake of 9/11 in Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy, the seminal statement of the so-called Bush Doctrine. As described by leading international relations scholar Robert Jervis, the Bush Doctrine is composed of “a strong belief in the importance of a state’s domestic regime in determining its foreign policy and the related judgment that this is an opportune time to transform international politics; the perception of great threats that can be defeated only by new and vigorous policies, most notably preventive war; a willingness to act unilaterally when necessary; and, as both a cause and a summary of these beliefs, an overriding sense that peace and stability require the United States to assert its primacy in world politics” (quoted in Chris Dolan and David Cohen, “The War about the War: Iraq and the Politics of National Security Advising in the G.W. Bush Administration’s First Term,” March 2006). “
“In February 1998, Feith and many other high-profile neoconservatives and foreign policy hawks signed a letter to President Bill Clinton calling for a “comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime.” Among the signatories to the letter, which was produced by the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, were several people who would later be tagged to serve in the first administration of George W. Bush, including Feith, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, Peter Rodman, John Bolton, and Dov Zakheim.
A Clean Break” also recommended “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq” and working closely with “Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll back” regional threats and using “Israeli proxy forces” based in Lebanon for “striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon.” If that should “prove insufficient, [Israel should strike] at select targets in Syria proper.” Further, “Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, even rolling back Syria.” This would create a “natural axis” between Israel, Jordan, a Hashemite Iraq, and Turkey that “would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula.” This “could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which could threaten Syria’s territorial integrity.”
“The 2000 election of George W. Bushenabled PNAC to advance its agenda for the “New American Century.” Many PNAC principals moved into the Pentagon, vice president’s office, and State Department. It was not, however, until after 9/11 that the PNAC agenda was fast-forwarded.
On September 20, 2001, PNAC sent an open letter to Bush that commended his newly declared war on terrorism and urged him not only to target Osama bin Laden but also other supposed “perpetrators,” including Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah. The letter made one of the first arguments for regime change in Iraq as part of the war on terror. According to the PNAC letter, “It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.”
“Main areas of current conservative dispute include immigration policy, stem cell research, levels of troop commitments in Iraq, democratization policy, Israel, and U.S. relations with China, North Korea, and Iran. Although the neocon camp and its allies, including Cheney’s foreign policy team, are all hardliners with respect to Iran, there are public differences about which groups should receive U.S. assistance. While the leading neocon figures on Iran policy, such as Michael Rubin and Kenneth Timmerman, oppose funding the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian resistance group with militants in Iraq, other players in the Iran policy debate, such as Raymond Tanter and the Iran Policy Committee, are MEK boosters.”
The films compare the rise of the American Neo-Conservative movement and the radical Islamistmovement, making comparisons on their origins and noting strong similarities between the two. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is in fact a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies.
Precaution as a new name of the game…act upon what might happen (what is already told due political and media agenda) and not upon what is real ….
The common denominator: fear.. either of terrorism or global warming…just to keep people in constant fear of inevitable… politicians have to invent a problem to cure it and to defend people from it…if people are constantly occupied with fear of endless treat they sure can not think critical of something else. Even thought that there are no reasonable facts behind. They invent them, they promote them and they become a universal truth. How sadly.
No clear connection between Al Qaeda and 9/11 or to Iraq; no clear connection between CO2 and global warming or sea rise and global warming…but yet…it’s universal truth; its a big hype…kids are more afraid according to research of global worming than terrorism…but where are real facts behind?
if you doubt about terrorism or global warming, you are heretic or as they say ..it’s same as you deny holocaust …
I don’t know how much its true or not on both topics, cos i don’t know for sure who finances one or other media but if doubting is almost a sin, we are back in dark middle age and inquisition… the reasonable doubt is a base of any further human development…
Scientific models or some partial information, promoted as a truth, and nothing but the truth makes me pretty nervous and sceptic.
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And just today emerged: Army Radio had quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush, who visited Israel last week, had said in a closed meeting here that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for.
Ideologist behind Neoconservatives: Leo Strauss – unique America, who is destined to fight the devil in the world, the only good force in the world. Strauss thought that myths are necessary to give people meaning and purpose of life and throught this keep stable society.
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PULP (The Fear)
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When Franklin D. Roosevelt said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, he meant it in a philosophical sense. But physicians know that the fight-or-flight response that protects the body from harm can sometimes backfire. “If you are terrorised by a God-awful stress, it can take you out,” says Richard Verrier of Deaconess Hospital in Boston. “I don’t think you would find a cardiologist who thinks it’s impossible to die of fright.”
Watched excellent BBC documentary The Trap:What happened to our dream of freedom of Adam Curtis (author of Happiness machines i was writing about last time). There are three parts and in first part he questions what is freedom all about, what is normality and how mathematical models modeled people and society. Is it true that we are selfish, isolated and suspicious human creatures, constantly monitor and strategies each other, to maximize our own benefit? Measurable predictable androids? For every measurement we need to set a reference. Who is the one who set the reference upon which people should be measured? Is it orchestrated from behind or maybe history by accident takes its mysterious way. Or maybe is mix of both. Did nature equip us with beautiful mirror neurons to understand others in order make the best strategy for maximizing our own result and not for empathy as a base for real humanity !?
Curtis starts with Game theory of John Nash (Beautiful Mind) and how his theory was implemented as a tool in predicting Soviet reaction during the cold war (Nash’s paranoia resonated just well with paranoia of Cold War). And as every idea it found mysterious ways of implementation, far beyond cold war tool. Even faking results to prove its correctness in various situations by those who used it to justify either believes or actions (psychiatry, Vietnam’s war,…)
He continues with psychiatry which defines normality from Freud on. Dark age of psychiatry, colored by electroshocks, followed by anti psychiatric movement (Laing),use of game theory in family dynamics (love is just a strategy to maximize own benefit or dominance over partner). Shame of psychiatric diagnoses due to Rosenhan_experiment ( 8 healthy people were set to mental hospitals. During psychiatric assessment they claimed to be hearing voices that were often unclear, but noticeably said the words “empty,” “hollow” and “thud.” No other psychiatric symptoms were claimed, and apart from giving false names and employment details, further biographical details were truthfully reported. If admitted, the pseudo-patients were asked to “act normally,” report that they felt fine and no longer heard behaved completely normally. 7 of them were diagnosed with schizophrenia, 1 with bipolar disorder. They were all given powerful drugs. They haven’t been allowed to leave the hospital. This was disaster for psychiatric society what lead to rational and quantified questioners to avoid subjective judgment. They set up a list of measurable characteristic (symptoms) on which people answered yes or no, either they have those characteristic or not. Questionnaires have been distributed to ordinary people. Evaluating the results they found that 50% of people have some types of mental disorders. Normal sadness for example became depression.
Psychiatrist started with screening process due to latent mental illness. They’ve spread a check list among people, so people used new definitions of disorders to compare their behaviour with “normal behaviour”. No elite needed to monitor people anymore, people started to monitor themselves by list of “normality”. And if not “normal”, pharmaceutical companies were more than willing to offer them magical Prozac. To be “normal” and constantly happy. And easier manageable.
Its amazing what kind of results some big ideas of liberalization produced (Sartre, Fanon– liberalisation of itself through violence; Che Guara, Arafat…, suport of dictators to liberalize communistic countries, trainings of contra-revolutionaries, fake evidences, …)
So who we are behind what they told us scientists, politicians, religions, behind all this overwhelming social construction?…How is to feel normally behind “normally as they told and suggested us … Is freedom to heavy burden for current level of human existence or is freedom just part of broader cycle and context and not the universal state itself?
“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.” (N. Tesla)
Current world’s crises is mostly spinning around following issues: high oil prices, food shortage, environmental issues, earthquakes on financial markets, huge difference between developed and underdeveloped countries…They are very much connected but where are the roots? Would it be possible to have different world as we have it now?
It’s hypothetical, but less greed at the beginning of 20th century would tremendously change the part of our civilisation. All needed tools were there but in the name of personal power and prestige they were cut for world citizens. The sins and the sinners, how ironically, are the same as 100 years ago.
It was Nikola Tesla, who invented alternating curent electric power and electrified the world. But he invented so much more. He was one of greatest scientist of our millennium. My father gave me his biography at my early age. It was him why i studied electronics in high school. Briliance of his mind, ideas beyond our time, mysticism, x-rays, photographing thoughts, resonanting planeth Earth, vedic philosophy, friendship with Mark Twain…
He was from ex-Yugoslavia, where i lived so I knew him as national hero, but he was much less known worldwide. I’ve read about him a lot, watched movies, but every time he inspires me the same and i am amazed with his vision and work. I recommend every one to dive into his tremendous work and ideas. For me he is The most enigmatic and the most brilliant mind of past century.
I’ve read lately another book of him; Tesla: Man out of time by Margareth Cheney. Very good portrait of Tesla as scientist and person but more than that. It’s overview of industrial revolution, centres of power and newborn elite. Its a pity to read how such a great mind depended so much of funds of J.P. Morgan and elite which still rule the world. And how the same elite blocked inventions which would dramatically change the world and eliminate factors which dictate current world’s crises.
The sins:
– With free wireless electricity(employing Eart’s own resonance) divide between developed and underdeveloped countries would be much smaller; but which banker would invest money to give electricity to people for free – Morgan withdrew his investment
When the great truth accidentally revealed and experimentally confirmed is fully recognized, that this planet, with all its appalling immensity, is to electric currents virtually no more than a small metal ball and that by this fact many possibilities, each baffling imagination and of incalculable consequence, are rendered absolutely sure of accomplishment; when the first plant is inaugurated and it is shown that a telegraphic message, almost as secret and non-interferable as a thought, can be transmitted to any terrestrial distance, the sound of the human voice, with all its intonations and inflections, faithfully and instantly reproduced at any other point of the globe, the energy of a waterfall made available for supplying light, heat or motive power, anywhere — on sea, or land, or high in the air — humanity will be like an ant heap stirred up with a stick: See the excitement coming!
“The Transmission of Electric Energy Without Wires” in Electrical World and Engineer (5 March 1904)
– No oil crises due to environmentally clean electric car–> no environmental issues, no wars in the name of oil, no need for bio-fuel so smaller food shortage
With the discovery of electricity, everybody expected that all cars would be electric and run on rechargeable batteries. Tesla had gone one better and actually produced a working automobile that ran on electricity taken from the surrounding ether like an antenna picks up radio waves. This would revolutionize travel just like his AC induction motor had revolutionized the industrial world.
Morgan, Rockefeller and Ford had to sabotage his idea at all costs….No air polluting gasoline engine meant no oil monopoly for Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Co. No oil monopoly meant no excuse for Rockefeller to own the U.S. government, and no excuse to be involved in foreign countries . . .
Bulbous nosed baboon J.P. Morgan (1837-1913), was the chief enemy of Tesla’s AC system; his wireless transmission system and his electric car.
J. D. Rockefeller (1838-1937) was the founder of the Standard Oil Co. His killing of the electric car allowed Standard Oil to amass a vast fortune which is still pouring into Rockefeller controlled companies to this very day.
Henry Ford (1863-1947) is credited with mass producing the noisy air polluting gasoline engine. By 1932, Ford controlled over 1/3 of gasoline engine production worldwide. He was very familiar with electricity because he worked for George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison. Hitler admired Ford so much that he kept Ford’s picture in his office. Many of the trucks used by the Nazis during WWII were built by the Ford German and French subsidiaries.
That’s verified in the Congressional Record for 1917, which reported that “…the J.P. Morgan [banking] interests…. and their subsidiary organizations got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the US…. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. …an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information….”[9]
Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1913, beating incumbent William Howard Taft, who had vowed to veto legislation establishing a central bank. To divide the Republican vote and elect the relatively unknown Wilson, J.P. Morgan and Co. poured money into the candidacy of Teddy Roosevelt and his Progressive Party.
The Council on Foreign Relations was incorporated as the American branch in New York on July 29, 1921. Founding members included Colonel House, and “…such potentates of international banking as J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Paul Warburg, Otto Kahn, and Jacob Schiff…the same clique which had engineered the establishment of the Federal Reserve System,” according to Gary Allen in the October 1972 issue of “AMERICAN OPINION.”
The founding president of the CFR was John W. Davis, J.P. Morgan’s personal attorney, while the vice-president was Paul Cravath, also representing the Morgan interests. Professor Carroll Quigley characterized the CFRas “…a front group for J.P. Morgan and Company in association with the very small American Round Table Group.” Over time Morgan influence was lost to the Rockefellers, who found that one world government fit their philosophy of business well. As John D. Rockefeller, Sr. had said: “Competition is a sin,” and global monopoly fit their needs as they grew internationally.
Reading Clive Hamilton’s book “Growth Fetish”. The thesis of the book is that the policies of unfettered capitalism pursued by the west for the last 50 years has largely failed, since the underlying purpose of the creation of wealth is happiness, and Hamilton contends that people in general are no happier now than 50 years ago, despite the huge increase in personal wealth. In fact, he suggests that the reverse is true. He states that the pursuit of growth has become a fetish, in that it is seen as a universal magic cure for all of society’s ills. His view on consumerism can be sumed up into:
“People buy things they don’t want, with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t like”
So what is this magical word or state of mind called Happines? What Freud said about and what is his contribution to establish “Happiness machines” (see excelent BBC video below: The Century of Self: Happiness machines)
“Where wisdom (to phronein) is, there happiness (eudaimonías) will crown.” (Antigona).
“For Lacan, Aristotelian “happiness” and the modern “bourgeois dream” share a common failing. Both deny the tragic dimension of existence—and the tragic heroism required to live boldly and authentically or, like Antigone, with “splendor.” In Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Lacan connects “happiness” as such with the hap encounter that is tuché: “Certainly Freud leaves no doubt, any more than Aristotle, that what man is seeking, his goal, is happiness. It’s odd that in almost all languages happiness offers itself in terms of a meeting–tuché. Except in English and even there it’s very close. . . . ‘Happiness’ is after all ‘happen’; it is an encounter. . . . “
So lets see how well was used Freud idea (by his nephew Edward Louis Bernays) to put people in extatic state of constant pursuit of happiness.
Opening paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Our level of happiness throughout life is strongly influenced by the genes with which we were born, say experts. An Edinburgh University study of identical and non-identical twins suggests genes may control half the personality traits keeping us happy.
“Following a course of treatment there is usually an impairment of memory, varying from a slight tendency to forget names to a severe confusional state. The memory defect diminishes gradually over several months. Electroconvulsive therapy, like insulin shock, declined in use after the tranquilizing drugs were introduced.” (E. Britannica)
“Only paranoid survive” (Andrew. S. Grove)
Not taking it as psychopathology, but reasonable doubt is needed. I am back to news. Can’t avoid them even if i would like to. (Next step could be isolation, i guess.) And they make me sad. More food crises, Iran trains Al-Qaeda-intervention needed, South Korean workers died in air trike in Syria!!! working on nuclear plant. O, yes, i do believe…
And some more evidence from independent media how official media is orchestrated and how crises are tool for achieving goals…no matter if there is solid ground for crisis or not. Difference between normal crisis and invented one is that natural is developing gradually while invented one appears out of the blue. (It’s nomal brain acctivity to be shocked while something unpredictable appears all of the sudden). And it’s always named as a crises of century. And people have to be aware and participate into solving it. And all big media call people on duty.
How perverted. Crises, invented by elite and in purpose to keep them alive, is put into the responsibility of good citizen behaviour. And, yea, good citizen is the one, who listens the government guidelines. When nation is in crises, all anarchy and liberalism is act against humanity.
How better to stop the high growth of Chinese economy, which is evident treat to American economy , than with Tibetan riots and high rise prices. Internal affairs and hungry people slow down economical growth for sure. 33 countries, defined by UN, are facing hunger problem right now. They’ve been advised to liberalise the market by UN, WTO or IMT. Liberalisation in dictionary of neoconservatives. Even more perverted.
After all this liberalisation, 3rd countries have 11$ billion minus in food export balance, while they had 6$ billions plus in 1960s. Liberalization of the market in exchange for big loans and to wide open export for American farmers, heavily subsidised by US government. 3rd countries in vicious circle. Less food, more import, high interest rate on loans…By just moving needle in price of food or interest rate, those countries are on verge to survive. What is happening just now. And media are just great tool of bandmasters (see article bellow).
Living in post- communistic country i know how shock theory has been applied in economical terms (Jeffery Sachs), as psychologist i saw the effect on people applied on. In both cases, i am against. It’s manipulation on most primal level of human being. I exclude severe psychopathology cos i don’t know enough about results of treatments there.
The Shock Doctrine by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein
“Clarke and her senior aide, Brent T. Krueger, eventually signed up more than 75 retired military officers who penned newspaper op/ed columns and appeared on television and radio news shows as military analysts. The Pentagon held weekly meetings with the military analysts, which continued as of April 20, 2008, when the New York Timesran Barstow’s story. The program proved so successful that it was expanded to issues besides the Iraq War. “Other branches of the administration also began to make use of the analysts. Mr. Gonzales, then the attorney general, met with them soon after news leaked that the government was wiretapping terrorism suspects in the United States without warrants, Pentagon records show. When David H. Petraeus was appointed the commanding general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the analysts.”
“The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America’s attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure. There are long-term reasons for food prices to rise, but the unprecedented spike in grain prices during the past year stems from the weakness of the American dollar. Washington’s economic misery now threatens to become a geopolitical catastrophe.”
…”As the chart makes clear, the ascent of the cost of rice to $24 from $10 per hundredweight over the past year tracks the declining value of the American dollar. The link between the declining parity of the US unit and the rising price of commodities, including oil as well as rice and other wares, is indisputable. China has bid aggressively for rice all year, and last week banned rice exports, along with Vietnam and several other producers.
For developing countries whose currencies track the American dollar and whose purchasing power declines along with the American unit, this is a catastrophe, as World Bank president Robert Zoellick warned the Group of Seven industrial nations in Washington last week. Food security suddenly has become the top item on the strategic agenda.
Never before in history has hunger become a global threat in a period of plentiful harvests. Global rice production will hit a record of 423 million tons in the 2007-2008 crop year, enough to satisfy global demand. The trouble is that only 7% of the world’s rice supply is exported, because local demand is met by local production. Any significant increase in rice stockpiles cuts deeply into available supply for export, leading to a spike in prices. Because such a small proportion of the global rice supply trades, the monetary shock from the weak dollar was sufficient to more than double its price.
It is not only rice, of course, that the cash-rich countries of the world are buying as a store of value; the price of wheat, soy and other grains has risen almost as fast. This might deal the death-blow to America’s hapless efforts to stabilize the Middle East, where a higher proportion of impoverished people eat off state subsidies than in any other part of the world. Egypt has been the anchor for American diplomacy in the Arab world since the Jimmy Carter administration (1977 to 1981), and is most susceptible to hunger. Food prices have risen by 145% in Lebanon and by 20% in Syria this year. Iraqis depend on food subsidies financed by American aid.
Reduced to essentials, America’s foreign policy sought two unattainable objectives: to stabilize the Middle East and destabilize China. That is an exaggeration, of course, for Washington hoped not to sow instability, but only to put China in its place over the Tibetan affair.”
a. A violent collision or impact; a heavy blow. See Synonyms at collision.
b. The effect of such a collision or blow.
2.
a. Something that jars the mind or emotions as if with a violent unexpected blow.
b. The disturbance of function, equilibrium, or mental faculties caused by such a blow; violent agitation.
3. A severe offense to one’s sense of propriety or decency; an outrage.
4. A potentially fatal physiological reaction to a variety of conditions, including illness, injury, hemorrhage, and dehydration, usually characterized by marked loss of blood pressure, diminished blood circulation, and inadequate blood flow to the tissues.
5. The sensation and muscular spasm caused by an electric current passing through the body or a body part.
6. A sudden economic disturbance, such as a rise in the price of a commodity.
7. A shock absorber.
v.shocked, shock·ing, shocks
v.tr.
1. To strike with great surprise and emotional disturbance.
2. To strike with disgust; offend.
3. To induce a state of physical shock in (a person).
4. To subject (an animal or person) to an electric shock.
v.intr.
To come into contact violently, as in battle; collide
There are multiple causes of shock and symptoms depending on which type of shock you are dealing with. Causes of Psychological Shock
Receiving disturbing news such as the death of loved one
Being involved in a traumatic event such as a car accident, or being the victim of crime
Psychological shock can disrupt your life, leaving you engrossed and preoccupied with the event or news that caused the shock. The individual may also have difficulty coping with day to day functioning such as personal relationships and work.
If the psychological shock symptoms do not improve and continue to persist, leaving the individual unable to return to normal life, post-traumatic stress disorder may have developed.
The individual with psychological shock symptoms may be affected in the following ways:
Intrusion – the individual fixates on the event and news by playing it over and over again in his or her mind
Avoidance – the individual withdraws from normal activities and may resort to alcohol and drugs to numb the pain
Increased arousal – the individual feels ill-tempered and angry
Food crises, Financial crises, global warming, falling $, high oil prices – what is the lowest common denominator?
“Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire Couldn’t conquer the blue sky “
Nice sentence from “Always take the weather with you” of Crowded house. But is it conquered now? Watching CNN last night i just couldn’t avoid food crisis news; haven’t been able to avoid them while buying newspapers (Newsweek , 2008, the yaar of global food crises , Global food crisis looms as climate change and fuel shortages bite , …. ) I can’t avoid global warming news, although some scientist say that the Global Cooling comes back in a big way. Can’t avoid news about financial crises, high oil prices, falling $, coming recession,… than in commercial breaks: buy now, be greener, cars with lower CO2, secure your investments, eat healthy food,… Like one and the same continuing program without noticing that there are commercials.. Is it there causal relationship? Is it bad policy as they say? Or is it everything so very well engineered?
When media over expose some news i become sceptical. Very very sceptical and doubtful. Working in media i know pretty well how media ownership is spread and from where the money comes from. And for a big news spreading around you need very good bandmaster. And a lot of money.
We all know that we live in media constructed reality. So what is the reality behind media construction? Is the Bilderberg group and bank elite answer to that? If we going back to past recessions and believe that past recessions were very well engineered (as it well presented in Zeitgeist movie or End Game- Blueprint for global enslavement) why should be different now. Its about making crises, solved them then and gain control over poor hungry and penniless people. I hardly believe that everything has come together so quickly and coincidentally. We know how big power FED has. And WTO, and IMF and UN. All the same policy.
Maybe many of this could be speculation, but knowing that media aren’t teling us the truth, we have to be skeptical and try to find the truth behind. To understand the cause not just the results. Just too many coincidences that someone would not recognize clear and horror pattern of lowest common denominator – power-play and control.
The story of chemtrails or Goodbye blue sky
Some says that chemtrails could be solution to global warming. Most of them deny program for using them for cooling the earth (but patent has been approved, see bellow). Must see movie Aerosol Crimes for everyone who is interested on this topic. Some other think that they are another weapon to control the weather in order to control nations (isolated drought in North Korea and isolated cloudy weather over Belgrade during air strike). According to some, long-term drought is the result of spraying chemtrails . Temperature drops for 7C and humidity for 30%. In addition to that health problems are reported.
Food shortage is the most evident result of drought, isn’t it. And hungry and penniless people are to weak to fight for their rights and think no further than to their stomach. Kissinger said that there are two tools to control people or whole nations: weapon and food. Genetically modified is another scary story (see video bellow).
The Welsbach Patent
United States Patent
5,003,186
Chang , et al.
March 26, 1991
Stratospheric Welsbach seeding for reduction of global warming AbstractA method is described for reducing atmospheric or global warming resulting from the presence of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, i.e., from the greenhouse effect. Such gases are relatively transparent to sunshine, but absorb strongly the long-wavelength infrared radiation released by the earth. The method incudes the step of seeding the layer of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere with particles of materials characterized by wavelength-dependent emissivity. Such materials include Welsbach materials and the oxides of metals which have high emissivity (and thus low reflectivities) in the visible and 8-12 micron infrared wavelength regions.
Inventors:
Chang; David B.(Tustin, CA), Shih; I-Fu(Los Alamitos, CA)
“I learned about U.S. Patent #: 5,003,186, titled `Stratospheric Welsbach Seeding for Reduction of Global Warming,” better known by chemtrail researchers as “The Welsbach Patent.”
The patent describes putting metallic particles like aluminum and barium into jet fuel. Then, exhaust from the jet engine seeds the stratosphere. In turn, those small metallic particles serve a dual purpose by: 1) reflecting incoming light back into space and 2.) helping convert the warmth below into infra-red waves, allowing them to escape from the earth’s atmosphere.
“It turned out that it seemed to work and so that’s why we had applied for a patent,” said patent co-inventor David Chang. Chang confirmed that the U.S. military did fund that research while he worked at Hughes Aircraft, an aerospace giant at the time. It would later downsize considerably and evolve into Direct-TV, which required some of the very same kinds of research and development.
In fact, Chang described several other military-funded projects where jet engine exhaust dispersed metallic particles into the atmosphere. “For instance, we were using it to develop targets for laser range finders,” continued Chang.
I then learned about that U.S. Air Force document titled, “Owning the Weather in 2025.” it details weather modification for war-fighting and describes putting carbon dust into jetfuel for dispersal as the quote, ‘most convenient, safe and cost effective method,” just as the Welsbach Patent explained. That method is described on page 15 of the Air Force report, originally written in 1996 as a study paper.
In September of 2002, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell even told a United Nations World Summit in South Africa quote, “we are committed to a billion-dollar program to develop and deploy advanced technologies to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions.” Powell never fully elaborated.
And few may remember that the U.S. military used covert weather modification in the past. During the Vietnam War a top secret mission called ?Operation Popeye,? seeded clouds over the Ho Chi Minh Trail to create floods and wash out the enemy’s supply routes. Reporter Jack Anderson is credited with breaking that story back in 1971.
“Every object has a unique natural frequency of vibration.”
“A periodic force occurring at the same frequency as the natural frequency of vibration of an object may cause the object to vibrate. This is called mechanical resonance.”…
“The force and the object being affected must come into physical contact for mechanical resonance to occur….
“…The lowest frequency which will produce a standing wave pattern in a one dimensional medium is called the fundamental frequency.”
“Higher resonant frequencies also produce standing wave patterns. The first overtone of a string fixed at both ends has a nodal point in the centre of the medium, as well as at either end. It has twice the frequency of the fundamental frequency.”
“Multiples of the fundamental frequency are also called harmonics. The fundamental frequency is the first harmonic, the second harmonic corresponds to the first overtone,the third harmonic is the second overtone, and so on….”
..”Two sound sources vibrating at slightly different frequencies (roughly 5 to 10 Hz) produce a series of beats.”
“What is heard is a sound whose frequency is apparently the average of the two frequencies
(f1 + f2) /2which rises and falls in intensity at a frequency equal to the beat frequency “
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