The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
‘Double Enclosure’- the shut down of democratic accountability, participation and transparency
What’s going on is a double-enclosure: a massive privatization and commodification of the physical world – the atmosphere, land, forests, genes, life forms, and more – and a massive privatization and commodification of economic decision making and democracy themselves.
Nuclear power, bastard child of the Cold War is just fine until it's not, and when its not the problem can quickly escalate beyond the human ability to deal with it — Fukushima tells that tale very convincingly. And then there is the issue of the nuclear waste which no one knows what to do with and which, in theory, must be maintained in a stable state for, well no one is really sure, but potentially 200,000 years. Since human recorded history only dates back to the Fourth Millennium BCE, roughly 6,000 years, you can see the problem.
Part 1 of a two part series — This interview with Professor Stephen Cohen provides a very useful, and I believe largely accurate, portrayal of why our policy toward Russia has gone off the rails and could lead to a 2nd Cold War that is even more dangerous than the first — with one serious omission, IMO. Cohen's discussion of the reasons for NATO’s expansion, while accrurate, does not include the influence of the arms manufacturers in promoting that expansion. The MICC had a huge interest in NATO expansion, because adding new countries to NATO had the obvious potential for opening up huge arms markets in the name of NATO’s policy of standardization and interoperability. That the market has turned out less than predicted in the 1990s does not obviate the power of the motive. It is part of the mosaic of domestic political impulses to expand NATO that Cohen describes as being so dangerous. CS
Professor Shane O'Mara, Director of the Trinity College – Dublin Neuroscience Lab, is having his new book published. A very powerful message to the Bush OLC Lawyers who looked into SERE technuques… they damage the brain when applied over time.
Torture is banned because it is cruel and inhumane. But as Shane O’Mara writes in this account of the human brain under stress, another reason torture should never be condoned is because it does not work the way torturers assume it does. …
For ethical reasons, there are no scientific studies of torture. But neuroscientists know a lot about how the brain reacts to fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, and immersion in freezing water, all tools of the torturer’s trade. …
…if we want information that we can depend on to save lives, O’Mara writes, our model should be Napoleon: “It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.”
Exclusive: In August 2013, when the U.S. government almost went to war in Syria over a Sarin attack, suspicions that it was a rebel “false-flag” were ridiculed. But new disclosures about a rebel role in kidnapping NBC’s Richard Engel several months earlier show the rebels knew such propaganda tricks, says Robert Parry.
I find the lie that America tells itself and the world, that we care about our children, particularly heinous and pernicious. By any measure the U.S., as a society — of course you love your children — doesn't give a damn about the next generation. We should be ashamed of ourselves. That we do not care for and nurture our young is a serious national character flaw. One that will shape our future in ways great and small.
The Numbers Are Staggering: U.S. Is ‘World Leader' in Child Poverty
Of note.
Counterpunch: Footing Israel’s Bill – Israel Won't Change Its Ways Until Washington Puts Military Aid on the Chopping Block
ConsortiumNews: Did Money Seal Israeli-Saudi Alliance?
