Real Estate 4 Ransom is a documentary about global property speculation and its impact on the economy.
Real Estate 4 Ransom considers the changing motivations behind property investment and challenges the notion that the Global Financial Crisis was caused by bank lending alone.
Shot over 5 years, the film focuses an economics lens on many of the big picture issues world politics are grappling to deal with. The 40 min documentary looks at whether genuine freedom has been delivered by the democratic system.
We investigate the inefficiencies of the economic system and the impact this has on potential homeowners and small businesses.
The documentary argues that with a simpler tax system, entrepreneurs have a better chance to succeed and the average Australian has a better chance of owning their own home.
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Administrative Note: The Corpwhorational Criminality of Lehman continues with the largest Five major banks in the United States today. It is also part of what this Real Estate 4 Ransom is about also. The people who are "land speculating" in the market have no downside with low property taxes, and a long time before government comes and takes land away for non-payment of taxes. Also the Land Speculators buy "derivatives/credit default swaps" therfore face NO possible DOWNSIDE. The five biggest U.S. banks are: JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Citigroup. The non-reported "derivatives/credit default swaps" are INSURANCE and are NOT reported and tracked as other "insurance" policies are regulated in Crapititalism. Such that I recently switched Car Insurance to Farmers from Progressive because the latter had been 'cheating me-imho' for years and Farmers gave me a policy for cheaper amount on a YEARLY basis that was only about $100 more WITH Collision than Progressive charged every six months without Collision. BOTH companies are REQUIRED to have themselves "Capitalized" in order to issue insurance policies. So that means NEITHER can issue policies UNLESS they have ACTUAL CASH CAPITAL in RESERVE to cover an accident if I get into one. Banks are NOT required to do this and as the aftermath of the "BIG BANK BAILOUT by BUSHIE JR" required after Lehman showed, this was disastrous for the ENTIRE GLOBAL economy. Has the Obama, or ANY GOVERNMENT, REQUIRED these mega banks to actually Have that CASH CAPITAL required when issuing these "derivatives/credit default swaps"? or to even TRACK THEM??? NOPE. We are in as much danger of a global collapse because the Bankster Gangsters got a "Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free" Bailout with Bonuses and Excessive PROFITS and pay LESS TAX RATES THAN ANY MIDDLE AMERICAN or CITIZEN of the planet. PERIOD. Despite that, what they did, and CONTINUE to due are illegal. FLAT FACT BRUTL TRUTHS. IF USA won't do a "PERP-WALK" of the Bankster Gangsters and no other COUNTRY will either...what are WE to do?
On September 15, 2008, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following the massive exodus of most of its clients, drastic losses in its stock, and devaluation of its assets by credit rating agencies.
The filing marked the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
The following day, the British bank Barclays announced its agreement to purchase, subject to regulatory approval, Lehman’s North American investment-banking and trading divisions along with its New York headquarters building.
On September 20, 2008, a revised version of that agreement was approved by Judge James Peck.
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Administrative Note: The Corpwhorational Criminality of Lehman continues with the largest Five major banks in the United States today. The five biggest U.S. banks are: JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Citigroup. The non-reported "derivatives/credit default swaps" are INSURANCE and are NOT reported and tracked as other "insurance" policies are regulated in Crapititalism. Such that I recently switched Car Insurance to Farmers from Progressive because the latter had been 'cheating me-imho' for years and Farmers gave me a policy for cheaper amount on a YEARLY basis that was only about $100 more WITH Collision than Progressive charged every six months without Collision. BOTH companies are REQUIRED to have themselves "Capitalized" in order to issue insurance policies. So that means NEITHER can issue policies UNLESS they have ACTUAL CASH CAPITAL in RESERVE to cover an accident if I get into one. Banks are NOT required to do this and as the aftermath of the "BIG BANK BAILOUT by BUSHIE JR" required after Lehman showed, this was disastrous for the ENTIRE GLOBAL economy. Has the Obama, or ANY GOVERNMENT, REQUIRED these mega banks to actually Have that CASH CAPITAL required when issuing these "derivatives/credit default swaps"? or to even TRACK THEM??? NOPE. We are in as much danger of a global collapse because the Bankster Gangsters got a "Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free" Bailout with Bonuses and Excessive PROFITS and pay LESS TAX RATES THAN ANY MIDDLE AMERICAN or CITIZEN of the planet. PERIOD. Despite that, what they did, and CONTINUE to due are illegal. FLAT FACT BRUTL TRUTHS. IF USA won't do a "PERP-WALK" of the Bankster Gangsters and no other COUNTRY will either...what are WE to do?
Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi saw the writing on the wall and came out in defense of medical cannabis patients and dispensaries under assault by the federal government this week. San Francisco dispensaries served her a petition with thousands of signatures May 2. Subsequently, Speaker Pelosi released the May 2 statement saying:
“Access to medicinal marijuana for individuals who are ill or enduring difficult and painful therapies is both a medical and a states’ rights issue. Sixteen states, including our home state of California, and the District of Columbia have adopted medicinal marijuana laws – most by a vote of the people.
“I have strong concerns about the recent actions by the federal government that threaten the safe access of medicinal marijuana to alleviate the suffering of patients in California, and undermine a policy that has been in place under which the federal government did not pursue individuals whose actions complied with state laws providing for medicinal marijuana.
“Proven medicinal uses of marijuana include improving the quality of life for patients with cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and other severe medical conditions.
“I am pleased to join organizations that support legal access to medicinal marijuana, including the American Nurses Association, the Lymphoma Foundation of America, and the AIDS Action Council.
“Medicinal marijuana alleviates some of the most debilitating symptoms of AIDS, including pain, wasting, and nausea. The opportunity to ease the suffering of people who are seriously ill or enduring difficult and painful therapies is an opportunity we must not ignore.
“For these reasons, I have long supported efforts in Congress to advocate federal policies that recognize the scientific evidence and clinical research demonstrating the medical benefits of medicinal marijuana, that respects the wishes of the states in providing relief to ill individuals, and that prevents the federal government from acting to harm the safe access of medicinal marijuana provided under state law. I will continue to strongly support those efforts."
Administrative Note: like the only commentor at the East Bay Express, SHE had her chance between Jan 2009 and Jan 2011 when Dems lost control of 60 Senate and House leadership positions. Where were you then Nancy? You did what you just stated you can't do..IGNORE the issue. Now Obama not only LETS the Bankster Gangsters who bankrupted the planet with outright PROSECUTABLE FRAUD get away with TRILLIONS in cash in bonuses and puts the onus on the Middle Class and Poor, the FRAUD CONTINUES...yet grow a natural plant our Founding Fathers grew and WROTE the Declaration of Independance on Cannabis Paper get their doors kicked in, hauled off to jail, in perfectly STATE LEGAL activities. Republicons are worse of course, but Obama promised to NOT interfere. As Dylan Ratigan said today...the poor, middle class and homeless people are hooked on "Hopeiness". Obama and Dems have FAILED to lead when they had the chance. I wonder how much of the upwards of $12 Million Hollywood Fundraisers will WITH-HOLD DONATIONS until Cannabis Raids ... STOP ???
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,[75] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Authered by and Written on Cannabis Paper by Thomas Jefferson, THE Most Everyday Person, all around Good Soul of the lot 'em (imho) on July 4th 1776
Imagine the tax revenue had the FBI/DEA in Prohibition Era Days End decided to RACIALLY make Cannabis Illegal for PRISONERS was a bad idea and that regulating and taxing it like alchohol would be a better solution...sadly they did not.
Henry Ford Father Model-T Car Ethanol Plastic Body http://ow.ly/23Jti #Henry #Ford #Father #Model #T #Car #Ethanol #Plastic #Body #hemp #vid
AN: I wonder if INSURANCE INDUSTRY made automobiles, Air Craft of ALL types that caused little body damage when FORCE is applied to it we, their Business wouldn' be as big or needed now would it? Average Diver would have lighter and stronger cars and cheaper renewable fuel. So what's the problem? Capitalsim REQUIRES a steady stream of incoming monetary units to each individual to spend on products and serices that ALL businesses companies need to generate income, make those products and hire the workes needed to create that value. Trouble is we've become "hooked" on what Dyna Ratigan quickly firing his breain on moter energetic cells saying the symptons the Poor and Middle Class have is "Hopeiness". Strung out on living under two set of double systems ( that is QUDROUPLING [ ^4] the problem). The "injustices" done to the Americans, and GLOBAL citizens as well are obvious and make people angry. Small time crooks get jail, large style Lawyer Lobbying Lying Lizard Lords get to go free and continue to consolodate the crimanlize crapititalistc crap game our global default swap bubble and they are trying to consoldate power in the fewest of chosen hands and policy is based on politics NOT true everyday flat fact science.
Variations of the Cannabis plant is the BEST for building material for resilient strength. The New French President should tout and lobby for the United States to buy THEIR Building Materials made from Cannabis which are Superior to pine, oak, birch, maple etc. And Propaganda can come from a Corpwhorational Crapititalistic Control Complex as well as any group of Bought Bumbling Babbling Blathering Blustering Bitching Blithering Buffoons Belittling Bravado Boorish Bureaucrats who take orders from any Philandering Prurient Prostituted Pampered Payrolled Pork-Barrel Profiteering Pirate Prattling Politician Pontificating Pigeon Poop Puffery & Phony Profundities. MeanStream Media Means Millionaire Mobster Moguls Misleading Misdirecting Mindless Minions Masticating Munching Meaningless Misty Meandering Melodious Mush Missing Much Meaning all finaced by Bangster Gansters STILL buying the Politicians.
"We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do." Newly Elected President Barrack Obama January 20, 2009
The Road To Marijuana Legalization http://ow.ly/1spOg #Road #Marijuana #Legalization #hemp #industry #tax #revenue #prohibition #people
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UC studies find promise in medical marijuana http://ow.ly/18X4T #UC #studies #find #promise #medical #marijuana #legalize #tax #pot #hemp =
Debunking the Hemp Conspiracy Theory http://ow.ly/4pbHj #Debunking #Hemp #Conspiracy #Theory #Prohibitionists #key #roles #outlaw #cannabis
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Cannabis on the syllabus http://ow.ly/4pbza #Cannabis #syllabus #Entrepreneur #trains #caregivers #issues #medical #marijuana #green #growth
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Reality must be truthful to be useful
If there's nothing to hide...why hide the information, objects or gag people or documents or loose emails violating Federal Law?
Say what you mean and mean what you say.
Don't make promises and policies you don't intend to keep and to keep the policies and promises you do make.
ACTIONS speak louder than words. ACTIONS are PROOF of intent. ACTIONS are the final judgment of character.
It REALLY is that simple.
If one finds THIS page of collective links of value...please FaceBook, My_Space, Tweet, Tumbler it like a "'weed' in the wind wizard whizzing across the wires"'...I am trying save what is the BEST from my perspective the Internet before its gone. Being disabled I do what I can as I can. My Passion for this came from an Intra-Webpage in 1992 when I started Teaching as Associate Professor at Clinton Community College. It was called The Secret History of the United States. Grab one of these before going there.
An American soldier says he released the photos to the Los Angeles Times to draw attention to the safety risk of a breakdown in leadership and discipline. The Army has started a criminal investigation.
A soldier from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division with a dead insurgent's hand on his shoulder. It's one of 18 photos given to The Times of troops posing with corpses.
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times April 18, 2012
The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification.
The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan's Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held — and others squatted beside — the corpse's severed legs.
A few months later, the same platoon was dispatched to investigate the remains of three insurgents who Afghan police said had accidentally blown themselves up. After obtaining a few fingerprints, they posed next to the remains, again grinning and mugging for photographs.
Two soldiers posed holding a dead man's hand with the middle finger raised. A soldier leaned over the bearded corpse while clutching the man's hand. Someone placed an unofficial platoon patch reading "Zombie Hunter" next to other remains and took a picture.
The Army launched a criminal investigation after the Los Angeles Times showed officials copies of the photos, which recently were given to the paper by a soldier from the division.
"It is a violation of Army standards to pose with corpses for photographs outside of officially sanctioned purposes," said George Wright, an Army spokesman. "Such actions fall short of what we expect of our uniformed service members in deployed areas."
Wright said that after the investigation, the Army would "take appropriate action" against those involved. Most of the soldiers in the photos have been identified, said Lt. Col. Margaret Kageleiry, an Army spokeswoman.
The photos have emerged at a particularly sensitive moment for U.S.-Afghan relations. In January, a video appeared on the Internet showing four U.S. Marines urinating on Afghan corpses. In February, the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at a U.S. base triggered riots that left 30 dead and led to the deaths of six Americans. In March, a U.S. Army sergeant went on a nighttime shooting rampage in two Afghan villages, killing 17.
The soldier who provided The Times with a series of 18 photos of soldiers posing with corpses did so on condition of anonymity. He served in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne's 4th Brigade Combat Team from Ft. Bragg, N.C. He said the photos point to a breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops.
He expressed the hope that publication would help ensure that alleged security shortcomings at two U.S. bases in Afghanistan in 2010 were not repeated. The brigade, under new command but with some of the same paratroopers who served in 2010, began another tour in Afghanistan in February.
U.S. military officials asked The Times not to publish any of the pictures.
Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said the conduct depicted "most certainly does not represent the character and the professionalism of the great majority of our troops in Afghanistan.... Nevertheless, this imagery — more than two years old — now has the potential to indict them all in the minds of local Afghans, inciting violence and perhaps causing needless casualties."
Kirby added, "We have taken the necessary precautions to protect our troops in the event of any backlash."
Times Editor Davan Maharaj said, "After careful consideration, we decided that publishing a small but representative selection of the photos would fulfill our obligation to readers to report vigorously and impartially on all aspects of the American mission in Afghanistan, including the allegation that the images reflect a breakdown in unit discipline that was endangering U.S. troops."
The photos were taken during a yearlong deployment of the 3,500-member brigade, which lost 35 men during that time, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks casualties. At least 23 were killed by homemade bombs or suicide bombers.
Suicide attacks on two bases of the brigade's 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment killed six U.S. soldiers and four Afghan interpreters. The platoon whose soldiers posed for the photos was part of the battalion.
The soldier who provided the photos, and two other former members of the battalion, said in separate interviews that they and others had complained of inadequate security at the two bases.
An Army investigation into a July 2010 suicide attack in Kandahar that killed four U.S. soldiers found that senior members of the battalion had complained about security. But it concluded that force protection measures were "reasonable and prudent" in the face of limited resources.
Virtually all of the men depicted in the photos had friends who were killed or wounded by homemade bombs or suicide attacks, according to the soldier who provided the images. One paratrooper on the mission wore a bracelet bearing the name of a fallen comrade.
On the first mission, to the police station in the provincial capital of Qalat, Afghan police told the platoon that the severed legs belonged to a suicide bomber whose explosives detonated as he tried to attack a police unit, according to the soldier who provided the photos.
On the second mission, to the morgue in Qalat in late April or early May 2010, Afghan police told the platoon that explosives had detonated as three insurgents were preparing a roadside bomb.
The platoon was able to obtain some fingerprints from the corpses for a database maintained by U.S. forces, the soldier said.
The soldiers felt a sense of triumph and satisfaction, especially after learning that the insurgents had been killed by their own explosives, he said.
"They were frustrated, just pissed off — their buddies had been blown up by IEDs" — improvised explosive devices — the soldier said. "So they sort of just celebrated."
The Qalat photos were circulated among several members of the platoon, the soldier said, and soldiers often joked about them. Most of the soldiers in the photos were low-ranking — including six specialists or privates.
Col. Brian Drinkwine, then-commander of the 4th Brigade, and Lt. Col. David Oclander, then-commander of the 1st Battalion, said they were not authorized to comment on the photos.
The Pentagon declined a Times request that Army officials contact all active-duty soldiers in the photos to provide an opportunity to comment. The Times sent requests for comment by email and Facebook to seven soldiers in the photos. One, now serving in Afghanistan, declined to comment. The others did not respond.
The photos were taken during a tumultuous period in the brigade's deployment.
In January 2010, the commander of the brigade's 2nd Battalion and the battalion's top noncommissioned officer were relieved of duty and ordered home after slides with racial and sexist overtones were shown during daily PowerPoint briefings.
Separately, an Army investigation criticized Drinkwine for failing to prevent his wife from threatening and harassing some unit officers and their spouses during the deployment.
Ft. Bragg's commanding general, Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick, told the Fayetteville Observer in June 2010 that Drinkwine had created "a dysfunctional situation" in the unit. Drinkwine remained in command until after the deployment ended that August.
Dr. Nora Volkow, the head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has revolutionized how science and medicine view addiction: as a disease, not a character defect. Morley Safer reports.
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by Anne Trafton, MIT News Released:5/3/2012 4:00 PM EDT Embargo expired: 5/6/2012 1:00 PM EDT
Newswise — Gaining access to the inner workings of a neuron in the living brain offers a wealth of useful information: its patterns of electrical activity, its shape, even a profile of which genes are turned on at a given moment. However, achieving this entry is such a painstaking task that it is considered an art form; it is so difficult to learn that only a small number of labs in the world practice it.
But that could soon change: Researchers at MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a way to automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons in the living brain. The researchers have shown that a robotic arm guided by a cell-detecting computer algorithm can identify and record from neurons in the living mouse brain with better accuracy and speed than a human experimenter.
The new automated process eliminates the need for months of training and provides long-sought information about living cells’ activities. Using this technique, scientists could classify the thousands of different types of cells in the brain, map how they connect to each other, and figure out how diseased cells differ from normal cells.
The project is a collaboration between the labs of Ed Boyden, associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, and Craig Forest, an assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech.
“Our team has been interdisciplinary from the beginning, and this has enabled us to bring the principles of precision machine design to bear upon the study of the living brain,” Forest says. His graduate student, Suhasa Kodandaramaiah, spent the past two years as a visiting student at MIT, and is the lead author of the study, which appears in the May 6 issue of Nature Methods.
The method could be particularly useful in studying brain disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, autism and epilepsy, Boyden says. “In all these cases, a molecular description of a cell that is integrated with [its] electrical and circuit properties … has remained elusive,” says Boyden, who is a member of MIT’s Media Lab and McGovern Institute for Brain Research. “If we could really describe how diseases change molecules in specific cells within the living brain, it might enable better drug targets to be found.”
Automation
Kodandaramaiah, Boyden and Forest set out to automate a 30-year-old technique known as whole-cell patch clamping, which involves bringing a tiny hollow glass pipette in contact with the cell membrane of a neuron, then opening up a small pore in the membrane to record the electrical activity within the cell. This skill usually takes a graduate student or postdoc several months to learn.
Kodandaramaiah spent about four months learning the manual patch-clamp technique, giving him an appreciation for its difficulty. “When I got reasonably good at it, I could sense that even though it is an art form, it can be reduced to a set of stereotyped tasks and decisions that could be executed by a robot,” he says.
To that end, Kodandaramaiah and his colleagues built a robotic arm that lowers a glass pipette into the brain of an anesthetized mouse with micrometer accuracy. As it moves, the pipette monitors a property called electrical impedance — a measure of how difficult it is for electricity to flow out of the pipette. If there are no cells around, electricity flows and impedance is low. When the tip hits a cell, electricity can’t flow as well and impedance goes up.
The pipette takes two-micrometer steps, measuring impedance 10 times per second. Once it detects a cell, it can stop instantly, preventing it from poking through the membrane. “This is something a robot can do that a human can’t,” Boyden says.
Once the pipette finds a cell, it applies suction to form a seal with the cell’s membrane. Then, the electrode can break through the membrane to record the cell’s internal electrical activity. The robotic system can detect cells with 90 percent accuracy, and establish a connection with the detected cells about 40 percent of the time.
The researchers also showed that their method can be used to determine the shape of the cell by injecting a dye; they are now working on extracting a cell’s contents to read its genetic profile.
Development of the new technology was funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the MIT Media Lab.
New era for robotics
The researchers recently created a startup company, Neuromatic Devices, to commercialize the device.
The researchers are now working on scaling up the number of electrodes so they can record from multiple neurons at a time, potentially allowing them to determine how different parts of the brain are connected.
They are also working with collaborators to start classifying the thousands of types of neurons found in the brain. This “parts list” for the brain would identify neurons not only by their shape — which is the most common means of classification — but also by their electrical activity and genetic profile.
“If you really want to know what a neuron is, you can look at the shape, and you can look at how it fires. Then, if you pull out the genetic information, you can really know what’s going on,” Forest says. “Now you know everything. That’s the whole picture.”
Boyden says he believes this is just the beginning of using robotics in neuroscience to study living animals. A robot like this could potentially be used to infuse drugs at targeted points in the brain, or to deliver gene therapy vectors. He hopes it will also inspire neuroscientists to pursue other kinds of robotic automation — such as in optogenetics, the use of light to perturb targeted neural circuits and determine the causal role that neurons play in brain functions.
Neuroscience is one of the few areas of biology in which robots have yet to make a big impact, Boyden says. “The genome project was done by humans and a giant set of robots that would do all the genome sequencing. In directed evolution or in synthetic biology, robots do a lot of the molecular biology,” he says. “In other parts of biology, robots are essential.”
Other co-authors include MIT grad student Giovanni Talei Franzesi and MIT postdoc Brian Y. Chow.
Research News & Publications Office Georgia Institute of Technology 75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314 Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Writer: Anne Trafton, MIT News
Source: http://www.newswise.com/institutions/view/2712/ image 1: Sputnik Animation and MIT McGovern Institute Researchers at MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a way to automate a process called whole-cell patch clamping, which involves bringing a tiny hollow glass pipette in contact with the cell membrane of a neuron, then opening up a small pore in the membrane to record the electrical activity within the cell. image 2: MIT researcher Ed Boyden (left) and Georgia Tech researchers Suhasa Kodandaramaia (seated) and Craig Forest have developed a way to automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons in the living brain image 3: MIT and Georgia Tech researchers developed a four-step process that a robotic arm guided by a cell-detecting computer algorithm uses to find and record information from neurons in the living brain. The pipette is lowered to a target zone in the brain, the pipette is advanced until a neuron is detected, a seal is formed between the pipette and the cell, and a small pore is opened in the membrane to record the electrical activity within the cell.
(Phatforums News / Match.com)— When your man says he wants to turn the basement into a “man cave,” you might greet this news enthusiastically, thinking: Great, I can finally banish that LeBron James poster he insisted on hanging up in the kitchen! Conversely, you might have reservations. Is him asking for a space of his own a polite way of saying that he’s going a little crazy from all the time you spend together?
To find out how a man cave could affect your relationship, we spoke with a few couples whose basements and garages were made over into havens of masculinity, courtesy of the DIY Network show, Man Caves. We discovered that the men weren’t the only ones benefitting from having their own dedicated personal space…
Man cave benefit #1: Recharging from time spent alone
Andy Chen, 41, and Kathy Chen, 39, of Bridgewater, NJ, have been married 13 years and are a definite case of opposites attracting. “I’m a bit of an extreme extrovert, and Andy’s on the other side,” says Kathy. “He’s the first to leave the party, and I’m the last to leave.”
Early in their marriage, they figured out that the relationship operated far more smoothly when Andy was able to spend a little time by himself each day. Doing so is now much easier thanks to Andy’s man cave in the couple’s former basement, which is filled with memorabilia representing one of Andy’s favorite places: the Jersey Shore.
“Coming home in the past was kind of crazy with our two kids and two dogs pulling for my attention,” Andy says. “I don’t need a lot of time there, but I need the isolation and time to recharge by myself.” Though Andy visits his man cave daily after work, Kathy doesn’t feel that this has led to him disengaging from family life or any of its responsibilities. In fact, it’s had the opposite effect. “Because Andy has more time and space to himself, he actually helps out more. He never used to do the dishes, and he has now started to do them,” she explains.
Man cave benefit #2: Getting work done more efficiently
Spending some of their leisure time alone isn’t as important to newlyweds Ryan and Kiara Bolger, both 29, of Spring Lake Heights, NJ. However, after the DIY crew turned their garage into Ryan’s extreme sports-themed man cave, Kiara found that the new space increased their overall productivity. “I’m a teacher, and a lot of times I’ll come home and need to take over the kitchen area with school work. But our house is small, and it’s easy to get distracted: the TV is right there, Ryan and I start talking to each other, and things just take longer than they need to,” explains Kiara. “Now that we have the man cave, I can be in here getting some stuff done and Ryan can be out there working out on the rock-climbing wall. It allows us to be more efficient with our time.”
Man cave benefit #3: Spending quality time with the family
Antonio Manata, 36, and Isabel Manata, 33, of Clark, NJ, have been married eight years and wanted more room; specifically, they desired a place for family activities. Antonio’s soccer-themed man cave located in their basement certainly fit the bill. “Before, we would usually hang out in the kitchen and watch TV. Now that we have the man cave, we can spend more quality time playing with our son,” says Isabel. “We have a mini-soccer field, so we play soccer and also do everything from playing Wii to watching TV and movies,” adds Antonio. “My wife, my son and I can all be in the basement at the same time doing different things or doing them all together.”
Of course, not all men would think of their caves as the place to spend time with a significant other. That’s OK, too, according to Avi Roseman, author of Secrets of Shiksa Appeal: Eight Steps to Attract Your Shul-Mate. “When a couple starts dating, time apart was built in, and time apart is very healthy in small doses,” Roseman explains. “When you live together, you need to ensure that there is time apart so that he has the opportunity to miss you and long for you.”
Additionally, a man spending too much time in his cave likely won’t be an issue in healthy relationships. “If he does not want to come out of his cave, you probably have some bigger issues,” says Roseman. “That’s the equivalent of saying, ‘We’re dating, but he never makes an effort to see me.’”
Indeed, the women we spoke with said that adding man caves into their homes had affected their relationships positively — and in some cases, inspired them to also seek out a space of their own. Kathy Chen has taken over a spare bedroom for reading and scrapbooking. Isabel Manata would like to see women not only receive a cave of their own, but a corresponding TV program as well.
“Maybe it could focus on converting closets or adding a nice tub to the bathroom for the woman cave,” she says. “I definitely think DIY should have some sort of equivalent show for women.”
Maggie Flynn is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer. She has written for websites such as Salon, The Huffington Post, and many local print publications
Oakland, California - University of California administrators should take more responsibility for controlling their police and police should be better trained to keep campus protests peaceful, says a report the university system released Friday.
The report was prepared in the aftermath of protests in November at UC-Berkeley and UC-Davis. Both protests drew criticism of police actions: jabbing protesters with batons at Berkeley and using pepper spray on passive protesters at Davis.
UC President Mark Yudof in November said he was "appalled" at those actions and vowed to protect the rights of student and staff.
Among the recommendations emphasized in the report by authors UC-Berkeley Law Dean Christopher Edley and UC General Counsel Charles Robinson during a news conference were:
-Chancellors should be directly involved with police during demonstrations.
-Campus police should rely on officers from other campuses instead of calling in support from outside law enforcement agencies.
Using pepper spray on protesters at campuses is still up for debate. But the report says it is not clear if pepper spray is more harmful than batons and Tasers and offers no recommendation on its use.
One earlier report criticized the use of pepper spray at Davis, but another suggested it would have been useful at the Berkeley protest.
Free speech should be the primary focus of police and administrators at places like Berkeley and Davis, the lawyers reported. The mind-set "that has been focused primarily on the maintenance of order and adherence to rules and regulations" must change, Edley said.
"I have had conversations with my students who were struck by batons and stopped by police and pressed to produce ID and explain themselves, and it makes them feel shaky and uncomfortable," Edley said. "Those kinds of occurrences have to be minimized."
One way to do that is have chancellors at campuses more involved with police.
"Imagine a situation in which a chancellor says you can't let them occupy the building, but then they start to move toward the building," Edley said. "If the civilian leadership is nowhere to be found, the police are going to do what they have to do."
Using police from nearby cities to control protesters is "one of the thorniest and most challenging questions," he said.
"It's a difficult issue because even though they are under command of UC police, they are under supervision of their local agency," Edley said. "We think it's important to resort to other campus police before" going outside.
Police and administrators should also use common sense, Edley said.
"If you know you have to clear a building and it's Friday, do we have to do it now?" he said. "It's one thing if they are damaging personal files; it's another if they are sitting there having pizza."
Among the report's other main recommendations are:
-Establishing what "less-than-lethal" weapons, such as tear gas and batons, campus police may use and making that list public,
-Requiring campus police to use "pain compliance" techniques before using force,
-Training police and administrators in crowd management, mediation and de-escalation techniques.
(Andrew McGall of the Oakland Tribune contributed to this report.)
image: Protesters hold signs during a rally at the University of California, Davis campus in Davis, California, November 21, 2011. (Photo: Annie Tritt / The New York Times)
The human vagina is a lively place, full of beneficial bacteria that discourage nasty microbes from invading. Now, new research finds this ecosystem is even more mysterious than previously realized.
Not only do women vary widely in what sorts of microbes call the vagina home, the study finds, but the ecosystem of the vagina can also change rapidly — to no ill effect. That's important, because while some vaginal infections are associated with changes in the vagina's native flora, it's now clear that not every change is a sign of disease.
"I think people are going to be surprised at the extent of variation that we see in these species, and that practitioners and women alike are going to see why they don't behave like their sisters or their daughters or the last patient that they saw," said study researcher Larry Forney of the University of Idaho.
The vaginal ecosystem
Researchers have increasingly come to realize that without the help of the microbes that live on our skin, in our guts and even in our reproductive systems, humans would be in trouble. Disruptions in gut bacteria have been linked to everything from obesity to depression, for example.
Does the word vagina make you squeamish?
No, it's a proper anatomical term.Yes, I prefer euphemisms ("vajayjay," anyone?). Sometimes, it depends who is doing the talking.
One of the most famous residents of the vagina is a group of bacteria called Lactobacillus, which produces lactic acid and helps keep the pH of the vagina around 4.5 — about the same acidity as the juice of a tomato. But studies have shown that at least five different types of bacterial communities that can colonize a woman's vagina. Types 1to 3 are dominated by Lactobacillus species, while the last two types are a diverse bunch without many Lactobacillus. White women are more likely to host a type 1 colony, dominated by Lactobacillus crispatus, than black women, who more often harbor diverse type 4 colonies. [10 Odd Facts About the Female Body]
Now, Forney, his colleague Jacques Ravel of the University of Maryland and their collaborators have shown that this vaginal microbial "fingerprint" changes over time in individual women, with one colony type displacing another, sometimes quite rapidly. The researchers analyzed vaginal microbe samples, taken by a swab twice a week for 16 weeks from 32 women. The women also kept daily diaries of their activities and hygiene.
"With 32 women, we can capture almost all the different types of communities that we have observed in previous samples," Ravel said.
The researchers analyzed the genes of the microbes discovered in order to identify them. They found that the vaginal ecosystem varies widely over time, sometimes changing during menstruation, sometimes swapping from one colony type for another as a result of sexual activity or unknown reasons. In some women, monthly bleeding didn't perturb the microbes at all; in others, the period heralded a short-lived era in which on microbe would reign supreme, only to be replaced when the bleeding ended by another species that dominated the rest of the month.
"We know that different women have different kinds of vaginal microbiota, and now we know that over time the dynamics of the change that we observed vary," Ravel told LiveScience.
Unique vaginas
The unstable world of the vagina is more than a scientific curiosity. Disruptions in the vaginal "microbiome" have been linked with bacterial vaginosis, a common condition sometimes marked by itching, unusual discharge and unpleasant odor. [The Sex Quiz: Myths, Taboos and Bizarre Facts]
The problem, said William Ledger, a gynecologist at Weill Cornell Medical College, is that about half of women who get a diagnosis of bacterial vaginosis have no symptoms at all — laboratory tests mark them as having an out-of-whack vaginal ecosystem, and most doctors respond with antibiotics to bring the vagina back to "normal." But the new study shows that it's actually fluctuations, not stability, that are normal for many women.
"What we're saying is there can be changes in the flora," said Ledger, who was not involved in the original study put penned an opinion piece published alongside it. "We think that women are probably in most cases able to modify these changes and get back to what their normal status is and that they shouldn't be treated [if they don't have symptoms]."
The research showed that even as microbes change, their essential functions might not, Ravel said. If you assume that the only healthy vagina is a Lactobacillus-colonized vagina, you might assume that if you don't see Lactobacillus present, the woman is ill. In fact, other species may take up the acid-generating slack in the absence of Lactobacillus, the researchers found.
"We hope that by using more personalized treatments based on what a woman looks like over time, you can actually start preventing disease instead of just curing [it]," Ravel said."It can have a lot of implications in medicine, for example, reducing the use of antibiotics."
Mystery remains about what drives the changes in a woman's vaginal ecosystem. Unlike gut or skin bacteria, vaginal bacteria don't get outside sources of nutrients such as food or lotions (with the possible exception of vaginal lubricants), Forney said. Initial colonization probably happens at birth, but the bacterial colonies change during puberty and menopause, he said. Estrogen levels, sexual activity and menstruation likely all play a role in short-term fluctuations.
"It's a remarkable system in that it tends to stay within certain boundaries," Forney said. "You don't see the system just come apart. It comes back. It's a very resilient system."
That resilience and the specific bacteria that tend to show up suggest an evolutionary selection for bacteria that help women survive and pass on their genes in some way, Forney said. Besides the microbes' role in preventing vaginal infections, they may also play a role in fertility and childbirth, protecting the infant during labor, for example, Ravel said, though that is "all speculation." [5 Reasons Being a Woman Is Good for Your Health]
The researchers are now studying a larger group of women and collecting daily vaginal samples to better understand how fast change happens. One hundred and sixty women are already enrolled and have sampled their vaginas on a daily basis for 10 weeks, Ravel said. The goal is both to understand any changes that come before a vaginal infection, and to unravel the mysteries of the microbiome more broadly, he said.
"One of our main drivers in some of the next-step questions that we are taking on is trying to understand the true function of the vaginal microbiota," Ravel said.
Former ‘Guns & Ammo’ editor charged in Arizona slaying
By David Edwards Friday, May 4, 2012 9:41 EDT
The former editor of Guns & Ammo magazine was accused of murdering a friend with a gun and ammo in Golden Valley, Arizona on Wednesday.
Mohave County sheriff’s charged 53-year-old Richard Erick Venola with second-degree murder for the killing 39-year-old James Patrick O’Neill, who was found dead at the scene.
Sheriff department spokeswoman Trish Carter told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Venola shot O’Neill in the chest with a “high-caliber” rifle and at least three weapons were removed from the scene. O’Neill was visiting the former Guns & Ammo editor’s house at the time.
Detective Larry Matthews wrote in his report that Venola seemed to be intoxicated by the time he talked to officers. Neighbors told deputies that the the suspect was having “heavy words” with O’Neill.
“Mr. Venola came over to the neighbors carrying a rifle and stated he just killed a man,” according to the report. “Mr. Venola acknowledged he killed the man, but didn’t say why.”
According to the Guns & Ammo website, Venola became the 12th editor of the magazine in 2007. He had served as the associate editor of RifleShooter magazine since 2004 after being honorably discharged from the Marine Corps in 1996.
After President Barack Obama took office in 2009, Venola used his position as editor to warn readers that they should join his “largest business competitor,” the National Rifle Association (NRA), or “those in the new administration who drool at the chance of neutering the Second Amendment will become emboldened.”
Guns & Ammo spokeswoman Amy Sorrells told the Journal-Review that the former editor continued contribute as a writer. The magazine has also said that his 2010 departure as editor was “amicable.”
Venola was booked at Mohave County Jail. Bond was set at $100,000 by Justice of the Peace Rick Lambert.
Watch this video of Venola firing a rifle at an iPad, uploaded Dec. 22, 2010.
Administrative Note: Because YouTube "embeds" may save time and space, but, all too often that video can disappear for any variety of reasons at ANY moment. I had wished RawStory had done what I do with videos...record and upload to host them on my own site of MCSP where the user may NOT delete it; thus loosing a vital flat fact brutal truth of history and Hagiography reigns supreme over its lost content.
New Police Strategy in New York – Sexual Assault Against Peaceful Protestors
By David Graeber, a Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and an author and activist currently based in New York Thursday, May 3, 2012
A few weeks ago I was with a few companions from Occupy Wall Street in Union Square when an old friend — I’ll call her Eileen — passed through, her hand in a cast.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“Oh, this?” she held it up. “I was in Liberty Park on the 17th [the Six Month Anniversary of the Occupation]. When the cops were pushing us out the park, one of them yanked at my breast.”
“Again?” someone said.
We had all been hearing stories like this. In fact, there had been continual reports of police officers groping women during the nightly evictions from Union Square itself over the previous two weeks.
“Yeah so I screamed at the guy, I said, ‘you grabbed my boob! what are you, some kind of fucking pervert?’ So they took me behind the lines and broke my wrists.”
Actually, she quickly clarified, only one wrist was literally broken. She proceeded to launch into a careful, well-nigh clinical blow-by-blow description of what had happened. An experienced activist, she knew to go limp when police seized her, and how to do nothing that could possibly be described as resisting arrest. Police dragged her, partly by the hair, behind their lines and threw her to the ground, periodically shouting “stop resisting!” as she shouted back “I’m not resisting!” At one point though, she said, she did tell them her glasses had fallen to the sidewalk next to her, and announced she was going to reach over to retrieve them. That apparently gave them all the excuse they needed. One seized her right arm and bent her wrist backwards in what she said appeared to be some kind of marshal-arts move, leaving it not broken, but seriously damaged. “I don’t know exactly what they did to my left wrist—at that point I was too busy screaming at the top of my lungs in pain. But they broke it. After that they put me in plastic cuffs, as tightly as they possibly could, and wouldn’t loosen them for at least an hour no matter how loud I screamed or how much the other prisoners begged them to help me. For a while everyone in the arrest van was chanting ‘take them off, take them off’ but they just ignored them…”
On March 17, several hundred members of Occupy Wall Street celebrated the six month anniversary of their first camp at Zuccotti Park by a peaceful reoccupation of the park—a reoccupation broken up within hours by police with 32 arrests. Later that evening a break-away group moved north, finally establishing itself on the southern end of Union Square, two miles away, even sleeping in park—though the city government soon after decided to defy a century-old tradition and begin closing the park every night just so they would not be able to establish a camp there. Since then, occupiers have taken advantage of past judicial rulings to continue to sleep on sidewalks outside the park, and more recently, on Wall Street itself.
During this time, peaceful occupiers have been faced with continual harassment arrests, almost invariably on fabricated charges (“disorderly conduct,” “interfering with the conduct of a police officer”—the latter a charge that can be leveled, for instance, against those who try to twist out of the way when an officer is hitting them.) I have seen one protestor at Union Square arrested, by four officers using considerable force, for sitting on the ground to pet a dog; another, for wrapping a blanket around herself (neither were given warnings; but both behaviors were considered too close to “camping”); a third, an ex-Marine, for using obscene language on the Federal steps. Others were reportedly arrested on those same steps for singing a satirical version of the “Officer Krumpke” song from West Side Story. Almost no march goes by without one or two protestors, at least, being hurled against vehicles or have their heads bashed against the ground while being arrested for straying off the sidewalk. The message here is clear. Law has nothing to do with it. Anyone who engages in Occupy Wall Street-related activity should know they can be arrested, for virtually any reason, at any time.
Many of these arrests are carried out in such a way to guarantee physical injury. The tone was set on that first night of March 17, when my friend Eileen’s wrists were broken; others suffered broken fingers, concussions, and broken ribs. Again, this was on a night where OWS actions were confined to sitting in a park, playing music, raising one or two tents, and marching down the street. To give a sense of the level of violence protestors were subjected to, during the march north to Union Square, we saw the first major incident of window-breaking in New York. The window in question was broken not by protestors, but by police—using a protestor’s head. The victim in this case was a street medic named José (owing to the likelihood of physical assault and injuries from police, OWSers in New York as elsewhere have come to carry out even the most peaceful protests accompanied by medics trained in basic first aid.) He offered no resistance.
Here is a video of the incident. The window-breaking begins at 3:45. (Admin. Note: Video is also reproduced from YouTube below)
Police spokesmen later claimed this incident was a response to a bottle that was hurled at a police vehicle used to transport arrestees. Such claims are made almost automatically when videos appear documenting police assaults on non-violent protestors, yet, despite the presence of cameras everywhere, including those wielded by the police themselves, no actual documentation of any such claims ever seems to appear. This is no exception. In fact numerous witnesses confirmed this simply isn’t true, and even if a bottle had been thrown at an armored vehicle, not even the police have suggested they had any reason to believe the medic whose head was smashed into the window was the one who threw it.
Arbitrary violence is nothing new. The apparently systematic use of sexual assault against women protestors is new. I’m not aware of any reports of police intentionally grabbing women’s breasts before March 17, but on March 17 there were numerous reported cases, and in later nightly evictions from Union Square, the practice became so systematic that at least one woman told me her breasts were grabbed by five different police officers on a single night (in one case, while another one was blowing kisses.) The tactic appeared so abruptly, is so obviously a violation of any sort of police protocol or standard of legality, that it is hard to imagine it is anything but an intentional policy.
For obvious reasons, most of the women who have been victims of such assaults have been hesitant to come forward. Suing the city is a miserable and time-consuming task and if a woman brings any charge involving sexual misconduct, they can expect to have their own history and reputations—no matter how obviously irrelevant—raked over the coals, usually causing immense damage to their personal and professional life. The threat of doing so operates as a very effective form of intimidation. One exception is Cecily McMillan, who was not only groped but suffered a broken rib and seizures during her arrest on March 17, and held incommunicado, denied constant requests to see her lawyer, for over 24 hours thereafter. Shortly after release from the hospital she appeared on Democracy Now! And showed part of a handprint, replete with scratch-marks, that police had left directly over her right breast. (She is currently pursuing civil charges against the police department):
I’d like to emphasize this because when I first mention this, the usual reaction, from reporters or even some ordinary citizens, is incredulity. ‘Surely this must be a matter of a few rogue officers!’ It is difficult to conceive of an American police commander directly telling officers to grope women’s breasts—even through indirect code words. But we know that in other countries, such things definitely happen. In Egypt, for example, there was a sudden spate of sexual assaults by security forces against protestors in November and December 2011, and followed a very similar pattern: while women activists affirmed there had been beatings, but relatively few specifically sexual assaults during the height of the protests, starting in November, there were dozens of reports of women being groped or stripped while they were being beaten. The level of the violence in Egypt may have been more extreme, but the circumstances were identical: an attempt to revive a protest movement through re-occupation is met by a sudden ratcheting up of tactics by the security forces, and in particular, the sudden dramatic appearance of a tactic of sexual attacks on women. It is hard to imagine in either case it was a coincidence. In Egypt, no serious observer is even suggesting that it was.
Of course we cannot how such decisions are made, or conveyed; in fact, most of us find it unpleasant even to contemplate the idea of police officials ordering or encouraging sexual assault against the very citizens they are sworn to protect. But this seems to be precisely what is happening here. . For many, the thought of police officials ordering or condoning sexual assault—even if just through a nod or a wink—seems so shocking that absolute proof would be required. But is it really so out of character? As Naomi Wolf has recently reminded us, the US security apparatus has long “used sexual humiliation as a tool of control.” Any experienced activist is aware of the delight police officers so often take in explaining just how certainly they will be raped if placed in prison. Strip searches—which the Supreme Court has recently ruled can be deployed against any citizen held for so much as a traffic violation—are often deployed as a tool of humiliation and punishment. And one need hardly remark on well-documented practices at Guantanamo, Bagram, or Abu Ghraib. Why target women in particular? No doubt it’s partly simply the logic of the bully, to brutalize those you think are weak, and more easily traumatized. But another reason is, almost certainly, the hope of provoking violent reactions on the part of male protestors. I myself well remember a police tactic I observed more than once during the World Economic Forum demonstrations in New York in 2002: a plainclothes officer would tackle a young female marcher, without announcing of who they were, and when one or two men would gallantly try to come to her assistance, uniforms would rush in and arrest them for “assaulting an officer.” The logic makes perfect sense to someone with military background. Soldiers who oppose allowing a combat role for women almost invariably say they do so not because they are afraid women would not behave effectively in battle, but because they are afraid men would not behave effectively in battle if women were present—that is, that they would become so obsessed with the possibility of women in their unit being captured and sexually assaulted that they would behave irrationally. If the police were trying to provoke a violent reaction on the part of studiously non-violent protestors, as a way of justifying even greater brutality and felony charges, this would clearly be the most effective means of doing so.
There’s a good deal of anecdotal evidence that would tend to confirm that this is exactly what they are trying to do. One of the most peculiar incidents took place on a recent march in New York where police seem to have simulated such an assault, arresting a young women who most activists later concluded was probably an undercover officer (no one had seen her before or has seen her since), then ostentatiously groping her as she was handcuffed. Reportedly, several male protestors had to physically restrained (by other protestors) from charging in to help her.
Why is all this not a national story? Back in September, when the now famous Tony Bologna arbitrarily maced several young women engaged in peaceful protest, the event became a national news story. In March, even while we were still hearing heated debates over a single incident of window-breaking that may or may not have been by an OWS activist in Oakland four months earlier, no one seems to have paid any significant attention to the first major incident of window-breaking in New York—even though the window was broken, by police, apparently, using a non-violent protestors’ head!
I suspect one reason so many shy away from confronting the obvious is because it raises extremely troubling questions about the role of police in American society. Most middle class Americans see the primary role of police as maintaining public order and safety. Instances when police are clearly trying to foment violence and disorder for political purposes so fly in the face of everything we have been taught that our instinct is to tell ourselves it isn’t happening: there must have been some provocation, or else, it must have just been individual rogue cops. Certainly not something ordered by the highest echelons. But here we have to remember the police are an extremely top-down, centralized organization. Uniformed officers simply cannot behave in ways that flagrantly defy the law, in full public view, on an ongoing basis, without having at least tacit approval from those above.
In this case, we also know precisely who those superiors are. The commander of the First Precinct, successor to the disgraced Tony Bologna, is Captain Edward J. Winski, whose officers patrol the Financial District (that is, when those very same officers are not being paid directly by Wall Street firms to provide security, which they regularly do, replete with badges, uniforms, and weapons). Winski often personally directs groups of police attacking protestors:
Winsky’s superior is Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, former director of global security of the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns:
And Kelly’s superior, in turn, is Mayor Michael Bloomberg – the well-known former investment banker and Wall Street magnate. The 11th richest man in America, he has referred to the New York City Police Department as his own personal army:
One of the great themes of Occupy Wall Street, of course, is the death of US democracy—the near-total capture of our political system by Wall Street firms and the financial power of the 1%. In the beginning the emphasis was on political corruption, the fact that both parties so beholden to the demands of Wall Street and corporate lobbyists that working within the political system to change anything has become simply meaningless. Recent events have demonstrated just how much deeper the power of money really goes. It is not just the political class. It is the very structure of American government, starting with the law and those who are sworn to enforce it—police officers who, as even this brief illustration makes clear, are directly in the pay of and under the orders of Wall Street executives, and who, as a result, are willing to systematically violate their oaths to protect the public when members of that public have the temerity to make a public issue out of exactly these kind of arrangements.
As Gandhi revealed, non-violent protest is effective above all because it reveals how power really operates: it lays bare the violence it is willing to unleash on even the most peaceful citizens when they dare to challenge its moral legitimacy. And by doing so, it reveals the true moral bankruptcy of those who claim authority to rule us. Occupy Wall Street has demonstrated this time and time again. What the current spate of assaults shows is just how low, to what levels of utter moral degradation, such men are really willing to sink.
Update (3:40 PM): In comments, a reader asked why I did not go to the media. My response:
To be honest my first impulse was to call a sympathetic Times reporter. He said he was going to see if he could spin a story out of it. Apparently his editors told him it wasn’t news.
democracynow.org - Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan suffered a seizure when New York City police officers pulled her from the crowd and arrested her as hundreds attempted to re-occupy Zuccotti Park on Saturday, to mark sixth months since the launch of the movement. In her first television interview since her arrest, McMillan says she has decided to speak out because of an outpouring of public support. "I have received so many emails, Twitter messages and phone calls. People are just horrified about what happened to me." McMillan has a black eye and her body is covered in bruises, at least one in the shape of a handprint. She says she was not allowed to contact an attorney while she was taken to the hospital and transferred to a jail cell along with some of the 72 other detained protesters. Facing charges of police assault and obstructing governmental administration, she was released Monday after a judge denied a request that her bail be set at $20,000. McMillan is northeast regional organizer for Young Democratic Socialists of America, and a graduate student at the New School for Social Research. We're also joined by Meghan Maurus, McMillan's attorney and mass defense coordinator at the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
To watch the complete daily, independent news hour, read the transcript, download the podcast, and for Democracy Now! interviews with Matt Taibbi and the U.S. financial crisis, please visit http://www.democracynow.org.
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Visit Www.TheDailyOccupier.Net for full coverage of #M17 events and all events and OWS bodies in the future. An Occupy Wall Street medic has his head smashed in to an NYU glass door as he's walking down the street by 3 NYPD officers. The window breaks as the violently continue to arrest him.
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After NYPD raided Zuccotti Park on March 17 2012, about 100 people were arrested. Among them a young girl suffering a seizure and panic attack as she was being brought to the bus. The cops not only handle the situation wrongly, carrying her by the head as she's seizing, it also takes 17 minutes until professional help arrives. Protester standing outside the barricades had to make the 911 call to get EMT to come
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= Cops turn Violent, NYPD drag girl across the street. #OccupyWallStreet
Police brutalize, beat, drag, and attest peaceful protestors speaking out against wallstreet and the banks. American citizens, look at your rights being violated! All for what? For wall street? For money? Don't think for a second that they wouldn't do this to you in a heartbeat. We are all Americans and our constitution is being shattered every day. It's time to wake up.
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ACTION Dear kind Lieutenant Winski, You gotta understand The economy just stinksis, Our future’s in the can, The world is on the brinksi, And hope’s in short supply. Golly Bloomberg, that’s why we Occupy!
OCCUPIERS Gee, Officer Winski, please put down your mace. Your checks are paid by citizens you punch in the face. Your pension’s been stolen, and nobody cares. Deep down inside we know you’re scared.
ACTION You are scared
OCCUPIERS You are scared, you are scared We know you’re just scared We know that you’re angry cause you’re scared
SNOWBOY (spoken) That’s a touchin’ good story!
ACTION (spoken) Lemme tell it to the world!
SNOWBOY (spoken) Just tell it to the judge.
ACTION Dear kindly Judge, your Honor, The laws don’t make no sense. You get jail for marijuana, At the citizen’s expense. But the criminals on Wall Street Are getting off scott-free Leapin’ Lehman! They crashed the economy!
DIESEL (as Judge) Right!
OCCUPIERS Gee, Officer Winski, the laws are unjust. You can’t arrest us all, soon there’ll be no-one to bust. The charges are trumped up, they’ll all be dismissed. That’s why the people are so pissed.
ACTION We are pissed!
OCCUPIERS We are pissed, we are pissed We are really pissed We are sick of oppression so we’re pissed!
DIESEL (spoken as Judge) In the opinion of this court, this activist is depraved on account he ain’t got a decent education!
ACTION (spoken) Hey, I’m depraved on account I’m deprived.
DIESEL (spoken) So send him to college!
ACTION My school is too expensive, The debt is out of hand. The loansharks are oppressive, But I’m doing all I can. To get some real employment, I need a real degree. Goodness gradschool costs too much for me!
A-RAB Yes! Officer Winski, this boy has been robbed. He finished school in debt and now he can’t find a job. Society told him that this was the way. But now he has bills that he can’t pay.
ACTION I can’t pay!
OCCUPIERS We can’t pay, we can’t pay No we cannot pay Like we can’t find work so we can’t pay!
A-RAB (spoken) In my opinion, this kid don’t need college. Poverty is purely a social disease!
ACTION (spoken) Hey, I got a social disease!
A-RAB (spoken) So take him to a social worker!
ACTION Dear kindly social worker, They say go earn a buck, Like be a coffee perker, Which means like be a schmuck. But even Starbucks coffee Wants employment history. Glory Trotsky! So they wont hire me.
BABY JOHN (As Social Worker) Eek! Officer Winski we know you’re annoyed But pretty soon even you will be unemployed There’s work down at Walmart if you’ll man the door So type your resume and join the poor.
ACTION I am poor!
OCCUPIERS We are poor, we are poor! We are too damn poor. There’s no hope for us because we’re poor.
DIESEL The trouble is on Wall Street
A-RAB The trouble is the war
BABY JOHN The trouble is the Mayor Who doesn’t care about the poor
A-RAB The trouble is Monstanto
BABY JOHN The trouble is worldwide
OCCUPIERS Winski, all our grievances are tied!
Gee, Officer Winski who do you represent? The only folks you’re serving are the damn one percent. Gee, Officer Winski, what are we to do? Gee, officer Winski, Fuck you.
The Census Motto "We cannot move forward until you mail it back" applies to President Obama, Congress, Supreme Court, Military and ALL Government: We cannot move forward until the COUNTRY looks back at 911. How we got here is MORE important than just blindly going forward. It IS in our collective National Security Interest NOT to let a proven lie stand as an "official record" of that terrible day written and engineeed by Philip D. Zelikow, Executive Director/Chair. Like the warning we now KNOW the White House had before the earlier Pearl Harbor of WWII. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident as a False Flag ops to get the Vietnam War going. Actual PROOF of a "Secret Goverment". We can't wait, and do not NEED to wait, to discover the Brutal Truth of "...a new Pearl Harbor" September 11, 2001 and the Progress for New American Century members. This 10th anniversary has NOT given us the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How questions of that day. Even at the end it was admitted all flat facts were not revealed, or even presented. yet, we went ahead as the propoganda machine started 2 wars without answering or discussing why WTC 7 fell why WTC 3 (22 floors), 4, 5 and 6 did not also fall despite being MORE damaged with bigger fires remained standing after the two towers EXPLOSIVELY demolished came down atop them. Deceptions http://ow.ly/6mbmv must stop at the highest and lowest level. Every person has a reason to know the story of the Science and Physics of the WTC 911 blueprint for truth http://ow.ly/6qSMD Reality MUST be Truthful to be Useful. Robert Williams Administrator
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"Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?" -- Alexander Hamilton - (1757-1804) - Source: at the US Constitutional Convention AdminNote: The United States currently spends GREATER than 50% of its budget to a NEVER audited Department of Defense for MAKING WAR, and being TOTALLY unaccountable for ALL their mistakes. This is the "Democracy" we want? And with more than 80 Cameras looking over the Pentagon, where are the 911 videos? Only 7 FRAMES of a crappy security cam, and not ONE SINGLE FRAME from any of the more than 80 REAL-TIME cameras in operation on September 11, 2001. WHERE's THE VIDEO ???
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"Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell." - New York Times Co. v. United States - US Supreme Court - June 30, 1971
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The military mentality is a bandit and raider mentality. Thus, all military represents a form of organized banditry where the conventional mores no longer prevail. The military is a way of rationalizing murder, rape, looting and other forms of theft which are always accepted as part of warfare. When denied an outside target, the military mentality always turns against its own civilian population, using identical rationalizations for bandit behavior. -BuSab Manual, Chapter Five: “The Warlord Syndrome”
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"An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for" - James Madison
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"It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry."-Thomas Paine =
"When we tolerate what we know to be wrong--when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened--when we fail to speak up and speak out--we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice". - Robert Francis Kennedy = "Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it; I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons should I make a whore of my soul". - Thomas Paine = "By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy - indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction." - William Osler = We create our own future by our own beliefs, which control our actions. A strong enough belief system, a suffeciently poweful conviction, can make anything happen. This is how we create our consensus reality, including our gods. - DUNE Reverend Mother Ramallo, Sayyadina of the Fremen
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“Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas?” - Joseph Stalin =
A lie told often enough becomes the truth: Lenin (1870 - 1924)
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“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) =
We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men: George Orwell = "A slave is he who cannot speak his thoughts.": Euripides
= "Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty." : Anne Louise Germaine de Stael - (1766-1817) French author
= One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous: Carl Sagan
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Stabilizing the present is assumed to be a form of balance, but inevitably this action turns out to be dangerous. Law and Order are deadly. Trying to control the future serves only to deform it. DUNE Karben Fethr, The Folly of Imperial Politics
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"Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity." Cornelius Tacitus = "The first war crime committed in any war of aggression by the aggressors is against the truth" - Michael Parenti =
Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind: George Orwell =
The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth. - Bene Gesserit Precept = "We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government.... Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson ... and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business." - William Jennings Bryan, Democratic Convention, 1896
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If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20 percent. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. Thomas Edison 1920s =
"If we do go to war, psychological operations are going to be absolutely a critical, critical part of any campaign that we must get involved in.": General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
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The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them: George Orwell = "The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.": Joseph Goebbels was born in 1897 and died in 1945. Goebbels was Hitler's Minister of Propaganda
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“It is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world.....
These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.....
Every solitary one of these aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These autocrats, these tyrants, these red- handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims-they are the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight. " Eugene V. Debs - The Canton, Ohio, Anti-War Speech. June 16, 1918
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Swim Against The Current. Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow. Jim Hightower
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"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.": Abraham Lincoln
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"The American people should be made aware of the trend toward monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands." -- Spiro Agnew U. S. Vice-President Source: 13 November 1969
= Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue: Sallust (86 BC - 34 BC), The War with Catiline
= The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal: Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Advice to Youth
= False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil: Plato, Dialogues, Phaedo - Greek author & philosopher in Athens (427 BC - 347 BC)
= "The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology." : Michael Parenti political scientist, author
= "The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of the people." David Edwards - British columnist - Source: Burning All Illusions, 1996
= "He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man...: Samuel Adams (1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution." =
"We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity.": Theodore Roosevelt - (1858-1919) 26th US President
= "If the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.": Noah Webster - (1758-1843) American patriot and scholar, author of the 1806 edition of the dictionary that bears his name, the first dictionary of American English usage.
= Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires: Edward W. Said - "Orientalism 25 Years Later," Counterpunch.org website, 4 August 2003.
= Sovereignty over any foreign land is insecure.: Lucius Annaeus Seneca : 4 BC-65. Roman philosopher and playwright
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"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless." -- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi - (1828-1910) Russian writer Source: On Life and Essays on Religion = "Free inquiry requires that we tolerate diversity of opinion and that we respect the right of individuals to express their beliefs, however unpopular they may be, without social or legal prohibition or fear of success." -- Paul Kurtz "A Secular Humanist Declaration," in On The Barricades, 1989
= "This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." -- Simon Heffer : Daily Mail, 7 June 2000
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We allow the most atrocious lies uttered by political and moral prostitutes to go unchallenged. These lies are endlessly recycled in the commercial media until they become ingrained in the public conscience as truth. Worse than burying our heads in the sand, we bury them up our collective ass. How do you like the view?: Charles Sullivan
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Brahmanism: This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.: Mahabharata 5:1517
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Christianity: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.:Matthew 7:12
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Islam: No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother what which he desires for himself. Sunnah
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Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.: Udana Varga 5:18
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Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not to your fellowmen. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.: Talmud, Shabbat 31:a
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Confucianism: Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you.: Analects 15:23
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Taoism: Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss.: T'ai Shag Kan Ying P'ien
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Zoroastrianism: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good: for itself. : Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5
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"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom." -- Fredrich August von Hayek (1899-1992), Nobel Laureate of Economic Sciences 1974
= "Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good for their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation." -- Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice Source: We, The Judges, 1956
= "The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind." -- Thomas Paine - (1737-1809)
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From Dune:
"Superiority is in the eye of the beholder and invariably involves filtering out details that do not conform to a particular preconceived notion." - Erasmus
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"How will I be remembered by my children? This is the true measure of a man." - Abulurd Harkonnen
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"To keep from dying is not the same as "to live"." - Bene Gesserit Saying
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"Why look for meaning where there is none? Would you follow a path you know leads no where?" - Query of the Mentat School
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"Innovation and daring create heroes. Mindless adherence to outdated rules creates only politicians." - Viscount Hundro Moritani
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"The capacity to learn is a gift; The ability to learn is a skill; The willingness to learn is a choice." - Rebec of Ginaz
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"One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp with too much force is to be taken over by power, thus becoming its victim." - Bene Gesserit Axiom
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"The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." - Meditations from Bifrost Eyrie = "Love is the highest achievement to which any human may aspire. It is an emotion that encompasses the full depth of heart, mind, and soul." - Zensunni Wisdom from the Wandering = "There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgements." - Bene Gesserit Axiom = "If you surrender, you have already lost. If you refuse to give up, though, no matter the odds against you, at least you have succeeded in trying." - Duke Paulus Atreides = "To know what one ought to do is not enough." - Prince Rhombur Vernius = "Never underestimate the power of the human mind to believe what it wnats to believe, no matter the conflicting evidence." - Caedmon Erb = "There is no reality---only our own order imposed on everything." - Basic Bene Gesserit Dictum = "The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." - Bene Gesserit Precept = "The desert is a surgeon cutting away the skin to expose what is underneath." - Fremen Saying = "Special knowledge can be a terrible disadvantage if it leads you too far along a path that you cannot explain anymore." - Mentat Admonition = "The strictest limits are self-imposed." - Friedre Ginaz = "The universe is our picture. Only the immature imagine the cosmos to be what they think it is." - Sigan Visee = "Even innocents carry within them their own guilt in their own way. No one makes it through life without paying, in one fashion or another." - Lady Helena Atreides = "In adverse circumstances, every creature becomes something else, evolving or devolving. What makes us human is that we know what we once were, and--let us hope--we remember how to change back." - Ambassador Cammar Pilru = "Hatred is as dangerous an emotion as love. The capacity for either one is the capacity for its opposite." - Cautionary Instructions for the Sisterhood = "The surest way to keep a secret is to make people believe they already know the answer." - Ancient Fremen Wisdom =
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"Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?" -- Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) Source: at the US Constitutional Convention
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"We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this." - Woodrow T. Wilson - (American 28th President of the United States 1856-1924) = "This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are." - Plato - Greek Philosopher - 428 BC-348 BC = "Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war and until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained... now everywhere is war." - - Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia - Popularized by Bob Marley in the song War = Half a truth is often a great lie: Benjamin Franklin
= "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.": Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
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" I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." Thomas Jefferson: = "There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings." Dorothy Thompson:
= " As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand." Josh Billings:
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"We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom." Stephen Vincent Benét
= "Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." Andre Gide
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"Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." Arundhati Roy:
= "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all". : Dale Carnegie:
= "Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be": Don Quixote:
= "Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow". Dorothy Thompson:
= "Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired". Erik H. Erikson:
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" ... I am a wholly independent newspaperman, standing alone, without organizational or party backing, beholden to no one but my good readers. I am even one up on Benjamin Franklin - I do not accept advertising." -I.F. Stone
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"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank. "- Barack Obama, October 27, 2007
= "Ah yes, truth. Funny how everyone is always asking for it but when they get it they don't believe it because it's not the truth they want to hear.": Helena Cassadine
= Without seeking, truth cannot be known at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor set down in articles, nor in any wise prepared and sold in packages ready for use. Truth must be ground for every man by itself out of it such, with such help as he can get, indeed, but not without stern labor of his own: John Ruskin
= The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear: Herbert Sebastien Agar
= Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth: Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi
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"...freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation." - Thomas Jefferson
= "The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus ... are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution] contains. ...The practices of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. Alexander Hamilton
Administrative Note: In light of Obama continuing Bush policy, the illegal and permanent detention without charge, the above quotes are MORE important now then ever. We are slowly becoming a FASCIST POLICE MILITARY STATE.
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"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.": Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - (1749-1832)
= "A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins." -- Benjamin Franklin - (1706-1790) US Founding Father
= "To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave.": Frederick Baily (1818-1895), escaped slave, Abolitionist, author, editor of the North Star and later the New National Era
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I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. Rev. Martin Luther King -
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"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." -- Thomas Jefferson - (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
= "Anyone who tells you that 'It Can't Happen Here' is whistling past the graveyard of history. There is no 'house rule' that bars tyranny coming to America. History is replete with republics whose people grew complacent and descended into imperial butchery and chaos." -- Mike Vanderboegh : (1953- ) Alabama Minuteman
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"Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.": Oswald Spengler - (1880-1936) Source: The Decline of the West, 1926
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Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible 'noble purpose', but to plain, naked, human evil.: Ayn Rand
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"I wouldn't call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either." -- Edward Zehr - (1936-2001) Columnist
= "Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them." -- Justice Joseph Story : (1779-1845) US Supreme Court Justice 1833
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"Our modern society is engaged in polishing and decorating the cage in which man is kept imprisoned." - -- Swami Nirmalananda - Source: Enlightened Anarchism
= "A free man is he who does not fear to go to the end of his thought." -- Leon Blum - (1872-1950)
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My eyes have been trained to look for other things. A beautiful person may still be repugnant inside, and a malformed body may contain a pefect heart. What sort of creature are you? - Liet Kynes DUNE
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An elder Cherokee Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, "A fight is going on inside me...It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, pride and superiority. The other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside of you and every other person too."
They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied..."The one I feed." Cherokee Teachings
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Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost: Thomas Jefferson
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Think truly, and thy thoughts Shall the world's famine feed. Speak truly, and each word of thine Shall be a fruitful seed. Live truly, and thy life shall be A great and noble creed: Horatius Bonar, D.D.
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Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people: John Adams
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What want these outlaws conquerors should have But History's purchased page to call them great?: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
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"Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society" : Albert Einstein
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"MEN WANTED: FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY.
SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS
OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER,
SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND
RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS."
SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON
= We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." -Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Why We Can't Wait, 1963 = "This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed ... were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees.": Rudolf Hoess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz. = "It has been for some time a generally received opinion, that a military man is not to inquire whether a war be just or unjust; he is to execute his orders. All princes who are disposed to become tyrants must probably approve of this opinion, and be willing to establish it; but is it not a dangerous one, since, on that principle, if the tyrant commands his army to attack and destroy, not only an unoffending neighbor nation, but even his own subjects, the army is bound to obey? A negro slave, in our colonies, being commanded by his master to rob or murder a neighbor, or do any other immoral act, may refuse, and the magistrate will protect him in his refusal. The slavery then of a soldier is worse than that of a negro!" Benjamin Franklinto Benjamin Vaughan, 14 March 1785 (B 11:18-9) =
"It's a mistake to think that poor people get the benefit from the welfare system. It's a total fraud. Most welfare go to the rich of this country: the military-industrial complex, the bankers, the foreign dictators, it's totally out of control." Ron Paul - (1935-) American physician, US Congressman
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"A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretense of defending, have enslaved the people." - James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention, June 29, 1787
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"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.
"The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." - James Madison, "Political Observations" April 20, 1795
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" If there was ever a time in the modern history of America that the American people should become engaged in what's going on here in Washington, now is that time." -Bernie Sanders: July, 2011 - The longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. = " ... the media in the United States effectively represents the interests of corporate America, and ... the media elite are the watchdogs of what constitutes acceptable ideological messages, the parameters of news and information content, and the general use of media resources. - Peter Phillips, Project Censored, 1998 = "It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds" - Samuel Adams = "Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security." - Michael Lerner, journalist = "It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms." - John Stockwell, former CIA official and author = "Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come!" -Victor Hugo = "When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie." - Yevgeny Yevtushenk = "America is a land of enchantment, virtually the entire population is in a trance induced by the magic spell of mass media". - William Whitten, Social critic = "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." - Bumper sticker = "Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure. But we're in a stage of denial: we want to re-establish things as they used to be, to put the country back where it was." - James Hillman = What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do. - John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) = "There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting." -- Buddha = "I count myself as a spiritual sister to those the US government has murdered, and I am angry at my powerlessness. I have the budding heart of a terrorist." - Karen Kwiatkowski - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26425.htm = "There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction." - Ayn Rand (1905-1982) Author = "There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." -- Robert A. Heinlein -- (1907-1988) American writer = "You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common, they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views, which can be uncomfortable, if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering." - Doctor Who - Source: The Face of Evil = "People sometimes rationalize their greed by saying that it is all for the good of their children but this is nothing but an excuse they use to make their despicable actions appear respectable and praiseworthy." - Democritus -(460-370 BC) Greek philosopher = We don't know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it. - Will Rogers (1879 - 1935) = The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. - Flannery O'Connor (1925 - 1964) = "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." - SABRE = Common sense is not so common. - Voltaire
= Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration. - Ayn Rand =
Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society. - Thomas Jefferson
= ...far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system. - Richard Mitchell
= There is only one step from fanaticism to barbarism. - Denis Diderot
= Many bad policies are simply good policies taken too far. - Thomas Sowell
= The unphilosophical majority among men are the ones most helplessly dependent on their era's dominant ideas. In times of crises these men need the guidance of some kind of theory; but, being unfamiliar with the field of ideas, they do not know that alternatives to the popular theories are possible. They know only what they have always been taught. - Leonard Peikoff
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The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge. - Thomas Henry Huxley
= Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them. - George Santayana
= Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.-- F.A. Hayek
= You can get a lot more done with a kind word and a gun, than with a kind word alone.-- Al Capone
= The test of civilization is the estimate of woman. Among savages she is a slave. In the dark ages of Christianity she is a toy and a sentimental goddess. With increasing moral light, and greater liberty, and more universal justice, she begins to develop as an equal human being. - George William Curtis
= "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."-Thomas Jefferson = "Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President."- Theodore Roosevelt = "in times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act."– George Orwell = "I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind."-Thomas Jefferson = "I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."- James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son = "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive."-Thomas Jefferson = "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."-Thomas Jefferson = "If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest."-Thomas Jefferson = "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be."-Thomas Jefferson = " To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."– Abraham Lincoln = "Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."-Benjamin Franklin = " If there is no sufficient reason for war, the [war] party will make war on one pretext, then invent another pretext after war is on."– Sen. Robert M. La Follette = " I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."– Dwight D. Eisenhower = " Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."– Albert Einstein = " War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."– John F. Kennedy = " If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."– James Madison = " It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."– James Madison = " No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."– James Madison = " The Department of Defense is a behemoth...With an annual budget larger than the gross domestic product of Russia, it is an empire." - The 9/11 Commission Report (Norton First Edition) = "Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government."– Sen. Robert Taft, (R) Ohio = " I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it."– Dwight D. Eisenhower = "The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America."– Martin Luther King, Jr. = " It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell."– General William Tecumsah Sherman = " It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear."– General Douglas MacArthur = "War is mainly a catalogue of blunders."– Winston Churchill =
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The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. - John F. Kennedy
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We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. - John F. Kennedy =
We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. -John F. Kennedy
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We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last. -John F. Kennedy
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We must use time as a tool, not as a couch. -John F. Kennedy
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We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination. - John F. Kennedy
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Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence. - Thomas Jefferson
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If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest. - Thomas Jefferson
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Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. - Thomas Jefferson
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"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done, (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember the occasions in which maybe if you had stood others would have stood too. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair." - Milton Mayer - They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 University of Chicago Press, 1955 = "... the establishment can't admit [that] it is human rights violations that make ... countries attractive to business -- so history has to be fudged, including denial of our support of regimes of terror and the practices that provide favorable climates of investment, and our destabilization of democracies that [don't] meet [the] standard of service to the transnational corporation..." - Edward S. Herman, economist, author, and US media and foreign policy critic = "Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind."– John F. Kennedy
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"In our world's history, peace has never prevailed where justice was absent. Injustice is the garden that nourishes terrorism. - Tom Feeley
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"Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." - George W. Bush -- (1946- ) 43rd US President
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"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it... Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise." - Adolf Hitler - (1889-1945) Source: Mein Kampf, p. 197. 14th Edition.
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If We do NOT arise, we shall be herded like sheeple into tryanny and despotism. We have lost all our civil liberties. The police are supposed to protect the people, now they protect the government that does False Flag Black Operations outside constitutional limits. - rhw
