The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Does violence spread like a disease? Epidemiolost Gary Slutkin of Cure Violence says the issues has been misdiagnosed, and instead created science-based strategies that aim to stop violence before it erupts.
Copyright Monopoly: Prosecutors in Sweden have sued the root domain registry of .SE domains to kill the domain name of The Pirate Bay. The root registry fights back heavily. This case is important to watch, as it can have thoroughly chilling results for the Internet’s domain name system if criminal secondary liability is established at the DNS level.
Nobody can say that the prosecutors are after justice – they are after results. In the initial lawsuit against IIS, the foundation that manages the root .SE domains, they insisted on an ex parte decision – meaning that they demanded the court to issue a domain seizure order, a final decision in this case, without allowing the accused to speak in their defense. That is not any normal kind of justice.
Just so we’re clear – this is not your average domain registrar, like GoDaddy, EuroDNS, or DomainDiscover. This is the domain registry, the root database of .SE domains, managed by the Swedish Internet Foundation (the IIS), which is the technical back-end to all those domain registrars you see. This makes the prosecutor’s actions even more jaw-dropping.
Austerity Economics
Although those of us in the developed nations take potable water for granted the fact is for several billion people it is a major matter of urgent stress. Here is a new technology that may help relieve this problem. Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Biopolymer-reinforced synthetic granular nanocomposites for affordable point-of-use water purification, PNAS, Published online before print May 6, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1220222110
Nano-scientists Develop New Kind of Portable Water Purification System
BOB YIRKA – Phys.org
I have written extensively about the bias of the media and, particularly, the use of false equivalencies. (For a discussion of this see my esssay: False Equivalencies and the Mediocrity of Nonlocal Consciousness Research Criticism: http://www.explorejournal.com/
How New York Times, NPR And Wall Street Journal Print Fossil Fuel Talking Points Without Full Disclosure
REBECCA LEBER – Climate Progress
Here in a very clear exegetic essay Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz spells out the whole sordid story of the attempt by corporations to patent and own life forms.
Lives versus Profits
JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, PHD, Nobel Laureate Economist – Project Syndicate
Here in one essay the true dimensions of the corruption of The U.S. Department of Agriculture by Monsanto is made clear.
Monsanto Has Taken Over the USDA
DAVID SWANSON – Nation of Change
It is a brutal fact that no country benefited more from war during in the 2oth Century than the United States. World War I enriched and invigorated the US economy, and the self destruction of the 19th Century European state system left the US as the world's mightiest industrial power. World War II ended the Great Depression, put the US on a pathway to unparalleled world military power, and set the stage a long economic boom that created a rich middle class that, not withstanding its recent hardening of the arteries, remains unprecedented in world history. Pearl Harbour excepted, neither war visited any significant destruction on the American homeland.
While we think of war in terms of our sacrifices, it may surprise readers to learn that the United States suffered fewer military deaths in WWII than Yugoslavia, an allied country not usually thought of in the NASCAR mentality of the United States as being a major player that war. In fact, hundreds of millions of people — mostly civilians — died in the wars (and their aftermath) of the 20th Century, while the United States in comparison paid a relatively minor price in lives lost and a vanishingly small price in terms of material destruction wrought at home.
Indeed the most traumatic material destruction and highest number of civilian deaths suffered on the US mainland since the dawn of the unprecedented state violence of the 20th Century were caused by the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September of 2001 (the nearby NYSE was closed for only a week and the Pentagon never shut down). While horrific and psychologically devastating in themselves, these attacks were a horrendous crime, not an act of war.
Moreover, when viewed in the grand sweep of the preceding 100 years, the material and human destruction of 9-11 was pinprick compared to that visited on the trenches in Flanders, the Somme, and Verdun, the cities of Nanking and Warsaw, London and Coventry, Hamburg and Berlin and Dresden, Leningrad and Stalingrad and Minsk, or in the fire bombing raids on Tokyo, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the now forgotten destruction of every city in North Korea, of millions of civilians killed by bombing (and sanctions) in North Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Even casual readers of history know this summary just scratches the surface of carnage wrought by 20 Century warfare — carnage which, by the grace of good fortune, pretty much bypassed the people and land of the United States. Perhaps some American even think this good fortune is a kind of entitlement. Is it not surprising that President Bush's call on the American people to keep consuming and living the good life when he asked Congress to authorize a global war of terror in our national response to the crime of 9-11 was so well received?
None of these facts denigrates the bravery and sacrifice of the American soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who fought and died in the wars of the last 100 years, but they are facts nevertheless, and they provide a backdrop against which the strength our national character is measured by others.
Nor should we be surprised, given this history of good fortune, that many leaders and opinion makers in America, especially strategic wannabees like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina or the armchair strategists in the Heritage Foundation (which receives a lot of grant money from arms merchants who benefit from war), treat war as a cavalier endeavor. Nothing typifies this cavalier attitude so much today as the loose talk about bombing Iran's nuclear reactors (unless it be an intervention in Syria). The attached essay puts this kind of warmongering talk into a perspective appropriate to those who, unlike most Americans during the 20th Century, would be on the receiving end of such an attack.
Chuck Spinney
Bombing Iran’’s Nuclear Facilities Would Leave the Entire Gulf States Region Virtually Uninhabitable
By Wade Stone
Global Research, May 11, 2013
Syria – Deception and Cover for Disaster
US sinking down into the Syrian quicksand
“…I think it [intervention] is a mistake in Syria, even if we had intervened more significantly a year or six months ago. We overestimate our ability to determine outcomes.” …former Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates
As the rebel assault has ground to a halt, and the superior manpower of the Syrian army having shown it can conduct search and clear operations, the Free Syrian army is in a war of attrition it cannot win.
It is much easier to recruit when you are winning and casualties not too bad than when the tide turns to stalemate and losing ground.
The al-Nusra Front has been bleeding fighters away from the FSA. They are paying better and the AN brigades now have access to weapons the FSA does not. The al-Nusras had strategically focused on key infrastructure acquisition including some of the oil revenue prizes. Win or lose, Assad or no Assad, or even with a negotiated settlement, they aren’t leaving.
Complete article with photographs below the line.
Continue reading “Jim Dean: Syria — Deception & Disaster — Time for Truth or Consequences”
Flashback: Watergate, Nazis, Nixon, Rockefeller
by Jon Rappoport
May 15, 2013
Watergate eventually became the story of two young rookie reporters who exposed and took down a president.
Try to think of another major story in your lifetime where the reporters themselves took center stage, and in the process nearly eclipsed their own work. Odd.
One of them, Bob Woodward, expanded his fame. The powers-that-be permitted him to go on and, with extraordinary access, write books criticizing future presidents. Woodward became the in-house attack dog. Mr. Limited Hangout.
The other reporter, Carl Bernstein, faded into relative obscurity. Well, he began connecting journalists to the CIA. That wasn't a smart career move. That was, perhaps, a case of biting the hand that had fed him.
To learn why Richard Nixon was really blown out of the White House, you could begin with the infamous Nazi chemical/pharmaceutical cartel, IG Farben. The cartel that pushed Hitler over the top into power in Germany.
Phi Beta Iota: For the convenience of our professionals reluctant to click through, the entire post is reproduced below. We believe that the assassination of JFK, the cover up by LBJ, and the fact that the Bush and Rockefeller families got away with it, was the beginning of the decline of responsible politics (the art of satisficing the needs of all) in the USA. There is serious matter for reflection in this post.
