Caller: Rodney In Illinois
'What Happened to Our Dream
of Freedom?' - Full Film
of Freedom?' - Full Film
BBC: Adam Curtis - The Trap
Individual Freedom
Adam Curtis says: "The political goal of our age is the idea of individual freedom. In Britain our government has set out to create a revolution that will free individuals from the control of elites and bureaucracies: A new world, where we are allowed to choose our lives. We won't be trapped by class or income into a predestined role.
"And abroad, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Britain and America have set out to liberate individuals from tyranny. For those leading, it is just a first step for a global revolution: Democracy.
"But if one steps back and looks at what has resulted, it is a very strange kind of freedom. The attempt to liberate people from the dead hand of bureaucracy has led to a new and increasingly controlling system of management, driven by targets and numbers.
"While governments, committed to creating free choice in all areas have actually presided over a rise of inequalities and a dramatic collapse in social mobility. The consequence has been a return of the power of class and privilege.
"And abroad, the attempt to create democracy has not just created bloody mayhem, but a rejection of the American-led campaign to bring freedom and it has summoned up an anti-democratic, authoritarian Islamism. This, in turn has helped inspire terrorist attacks on Britain, itself. In response, the government has dismantled longstanding laws designed to protect our freedom.
"This is a series of films about how this strange, paradoxical world came to be created. This episode tells the story about how in the 1990s, politicians from both the right and the left tried to extend an idea of freedom modeled on the freedom of the market to all other areas of society. This was something that previously no one, not even the high priest of Capitalism, Adam Smith had thought possible or appropriate but now it was seen as inevitable because underlying it was a scientific model of ourselves as simplified robots. Rational, calculating beings whose behavior and even feelings could be analyzed and managed by numbers.
"And what resulted was the very opposite of freedom. The numbers took on a power of their own, which began to create new forms of control, greater inequalities and the return of a rigid class structure, based on the power of money."
===
Uploaded by mysticdave666
December 26, 2010
Drugs such as Prozac and lists of psychological symptoms, which might indicate anxiety or depression, are being used to "normalize" behavior and make humans behave more predictably, like machines. Adam Curtis argues this is a logical although unpredicted outcome of market-driven self-diagnosis by checklists based on normal symptoms of human emotion.
Part 2 of Curtis' "The Trap" claims that, in formal experiments, the only people who behaved exactly according to the mathematical models created by game theory/free market economics are economists themselves. And psychopaths.
"And abroad, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Britain and America have set out to liberate individuals from tyranny. For those leading, it is just a first step for a global revolution: Democracy.
"But if one steps back and looks at what has resulted, it is a very strange kind of freedom. The attempt to liberate people from the dead hand of bureaucracy has led to a new and increasingly controlling system of management, driven by targets and numbers.
"While governments, committed to creating free choice in all areas have actually presided over a rise of inequalities and a dramatic collapse in social mobility. The consequence has been a return of the power of class and privilege.
"And abroad, the attempt to create democracy has not just created bloody mayhem, but a rejection of the American-led campaign to bring freedom and it has summoned up an anti-democratic, authoritarian Islamism. This, in turn has helped inspire terrorist attacks on Britain, itself. In response, the government has dismantled longstanding laws designed to protect our freedom.
"This is a series of films about how this strange, paradoxical world came to be created. This episode tells the story about how in the 1990s, politicians from both the right and the left tried to extend an idea of freedom modeled on the freedom of the market to all other areas of society. This was something that previously no one, not even the high priest of Capitalism, Adam Smith had thought possible or appropriate but now it was seen as inevitable because underlying it was a scientific model of ourselves as simplified robots. Rational, calculating beings whose behavior and even feelings could be analyzed and managed by numbers.
"And what resulted was the very opposite of freedom. The numbers took on a power of their own, which began to create new forms of control, greater inequalities and the return of a rigid class structure, based on the power of money."
===
Uploaded by mysticdave666
December 26, 2010
Drugs such as Prozac and lists of psychological symptoms, which might indicate anxiety or depression, are being used to "normalize" behavior and make humans behave more predictably, like machines. Adam Curtis argues this is a logical although unpredicted outcome of market-driven self-diagnosis by checklists based on normal symptoms of human emotion.
Part 2 of Curtis' "The Trap" claims that, in formal experiments, the only people who behaved exactly according to the mathematical models created by game theory/free market economics are economists themselves. And psychopaths.
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http://www.answers.com/topic/paroxysm
paroxysm
American Heritage Dictionary
(păr'ək-sĭz'əm) pronunciation
n.
A sudden outburst of emotion or action: a paroxysm of laughter.
A sudden attack, recurrence, or intensification of a disease
A spasm or fit; a convulsion
[Middle English paroxism, periodic attack of a disease, from Medieval Latin paroxysmus, from Greek paroxusmos, from paroxūnein, to stimulate, irritate: para-, intensive pref.; see para-1 + oxūnein, to goad, sharpen (from oxus, sharp).]
paroxysmal par'ox·ys'mal (-ək-sĭz'məl) adj.
paroxysmally par'ox·ys'mal·ly adv.
eureka
American Heritage Dictionary
(yʊ-rē'kə) pronunciation
interj.
Used to express triumph upon finding or discovering something
[Greek heurēka, I have found (it) (supposedly exclaimed by Archimedes upon discovering how to measure the volume of an irregular solid and thereby determine the purity of a gold object), first person sing. perfect of heuriskein, to find.]
"Eureka" is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery, a transliteration of a word attributed to Archimedes.
Archimedes
This exclamation is most famously attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He reportedly proclaimed "Eureka!" when he stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose—he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. This relation is known as Archimedes' principle. He then realized that the volume of irregular objects could be measured with precision, a previously intractable problem. He is said to have been so eager to share his discovery that he leapt out of his bathtub and ran through the streets of Syracuse naked.
Archimedes' insight led to the solution of a problem posed by Hiero of Syracuse, on how to assess the purity of an irregular golden votive crown; he had given his goldsmith the pure gold to be used, and correctly suspected he had been cheated, by the goldsmith removing gold and adding the same weight of silver. Equipment for weighing objects already existed, and now that Archimedes could also measure volume, their ratio would give the object's density, an important indicator of purity.
This story first appeared in written form in Vitruvius's books of architecture, two centuries after it supposedly took place. Some scholars have doubted the accuracy of this tale, saying among other things that the method would have required precise measurements that would have been difficult to make at the time. For the problem posed to Archimedes, though, there is a simple method which requires no precision equipment: balance the crown against pure gold in air, and then submerge the scale with crown and gold in water to see if they still balance.
Names and mottoes
The expression is also quoted as the state motto of California, referring to the momentous discovery of gold near Sutter's Mill in 1848. The California State Seal has included the word "eureka" since its original design by Robert S. Garnett in 1849; the official text from that time describing the seal states that this word's meaning applies "either to the principle involved in the admission of the State or the success of the miner at work". In 1957, the state legislature attempted to make "In God We Trust" the state motto, but this attempt did not succeed, and "Eureka" became the official motto in 1963.
The city of Eureka, California, founded in 1850, uses the California State Seal as its official seal. Eureka is a considerable distance from Sutter's Mill, but was the jumping off point of a smaller gold rush in Trinity County, California in 1850. It is the largest of at least eleven remaining US cities and towns named for the exclamation, "eureka!". As a result of the extensive use of the exclamation dating from 1849, there were nearly 40 locales so named by the 1880s in a nation that had none in the 1840s. Many places, works of culture, and other objects have since been named "Eureka".
dissimulation
v.tr.
To disguise (one's intentions, for example) under a feigned appearance. See synonyms at disguise.
v.intr.
To conceal one's true feelings or intentions
[Middle English dissimulaten, from Latin dissimulāre, dissimulāt- : dis-, dis- + simulāre, to simulate; see simulate.]
dissimulation dis·sim'u·la'tion n.
dissimulative dis·sim'u·la'tive adj.
dissimulator dis·sim'u·la'tor n.
verb
To change or modify so as to prevent recognition of the true identity or character of: camouflage, disguise, dissemble, mask, masquerade. See show/hide.
History of AIM
Accuracy in Media was founded in 1969 by a group of concerned citizens, led by economist Reed Irvine, who were troubled by the inaccuracies and one-sidedness they saw in the American media. Frustrated by the media’s unwillingness to address their individual concerns, they banded together to form Accuracy in Media, hoping that an organization would have more clout than individuals in getting the media to correct serious errors.
AIM began by sending letters to newspaper editors asking for corrections. If a newspaper refused to correct the error or print the letter, AIM bought advertising space in the paper to print the correction. In 1972, Accuracy in Media started publishing the AIM Report, a newsletter dedicated to correcting serious media errors. AIM began purchasing stock in major media corporations in 1975, which enabled its representatives to attend news companies’ annual shareholder meetings and ask executives to resolve issues with the corporation’s reporting. In an unprecedented victory in 1984, AIM persuaded PBS to air a documentary it produced challenging the network’s coverage of the Vietnam War.
AIM has built on these methods through the years, publishing countless articles, books, pamphlets, advertisements, documentaries, special reports, and commentaries; holding rallies, protests, and special events; and finding creative ways to draw attention to the issue of media bias and inaccuracy.
Originally a tiny all-volunteer group, Accuracy in Media has grown into an influential organization with several full-time media analysts and thousands of supporters. AIM has enjoyed great success in exposing and correcting errors, educating the public to become intelligent news consumers, and convincing media organizations to address errors they have made.
YAF - Young Americans for Freedom
Young America's Foundation is committed to ensuring that increasing numbers of young Americans understand and are inspired by the ideas of individual freedom, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and traditional values.
As the principal outreach organization of the Conservative Movement, the Foundation introduces thousands of American youth to these principles. We accomplish our mission by providing essential conferences, seminars, educational materials, internships, and speakers to young people across the country.
Young America's Foundation stepped forward to save President Reagan's Western White House, Rancho del Cielo, in the spring of 1998 to preserve it as a living monument to Ronald Reagan to pass on his ideas to future generations. President Reagan committed himself to reaching young people with his ideas—a goal that is also central to the Foundation's mission.
What’s FAIR?
FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an anti-censorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information.
Uniquely, FAIR works with both activists and journalists. We maintain a regular dialogue with reporters at news outlets across the country, providing constructive critiques when called for and applauding exceptional, hard-hitting journalism. We also encourage the public to contact media with their concerns, to become media activists rather than passive consumers of news.
FAIR publishes Extra! the hard-hitting magazine of media criticism, and produces the weekly radio program CounterSpin, the show that brings you the news behind the headlines. In addition, FAIR's thriving listserv distributes regular Action Alerts to our international network of over 50,000 activists. Sign up today.
For an in-depth explanation of FAIR's critique of the mainstream media, you should start with our overview, What's Wrong with the News? You might also check out the article What's FAIR?, by FAIR founder Jeff Cohen. And see what journalists, activists and scholars have to say about FAIR.
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Inc. (FAIR) is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. FAIR's federal tax-exempt I.D. number is 13-3392362. Donations to FAIR are fully tax-deductible.
About PCAP
The Presidential Climate Action Project was created in January 2007 to develop policy recommendations on climate change and clean energy for the 2008 presidential candidates and the Obama Administration. The project issued four reports containing more than 200 recommended changes in federal policies and programs. PCAP issued its final report in January 2011. Three of the reports appear on this page. (The first was not published in electronic form.) PCAP thanks the several foundations and individuals who funded the work and the many organizations and individuals who contributed ideas. If you have questions, please direct them to the project's executive director, Bill Becker.
Strike-the-Root
How the 1% Took America's Wealth--and How to Get It Back
Column by Glen Allport
Marx and Agenda 21
Column by Paul Drockton
Civilian Inmate Labor Program
Army Regulation 210–35
Installations
Headquarters
Department of the Army
Washington, DC
This rapid action revision dated 14 January 2005--
o Assigns responsibilities to Headquarters, Installation Management Agency
o Makes administrative and editorial changes (throughout).
This new regulation dated 9 December 1997
o Provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor
programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations.
o Discusses sources of Federal and State civilian inmate labor.
NDAA: National Defense Authorization Act
SOPA: Stop Online Piracy Act
PIPA: Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act
ACTA: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
What Is ACTA?
Counterfeit Law-Making
video short
European Parliament Official In Charge Of ACTA Quits, And Denounces The 'Masquerade' Behind ACTA
This is interesting. Kader Arif, the "rapporteur" for ACTA, has quit that role in disgust over the process behind getting the EU to sign onto ACTA. A rapporteur is a person "appointed by a deliberative body to investigate an issue." However, it appears his investigation of ACTA didn't make him very pleased:
I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.
As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens' legitimate demands.”
Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications.
This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.
Pretty rare to find such direct honesty in political circles. That's quite a direct and clear condemnation of the entire process. In terms of process, it will be interesting to see if this has an impact. While the EU did sign on to ACTA today, it still needs to be ratified by the European Parliament (more on that in a little while). Having Arif quit makes a pretty big statement, and hopefully makes it easier for Parliament Members to speak out loudly against ACTA... Still, this is an uphill battle. The supporters of ACTA have been working to get ACTA approved for years. To them, this is basically a done deal.
JFK Countercoup
Hemingway & David Bruce
A.C. Grayling
Anthony Clifford Grayling (born 3 April 1949) is a British philosopher. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, a private undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. Grayling is the author of around 30 books on philosophy, including The Refutation of Scepticism (1985), The Future of Moral Values (1997), The Meaning of Things (2001), and The Good Book (2011). He is a Trustee of the London Library, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is also a director of and contributor to Prospect Magazine. His main academic interests lie in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophical logic. He is also associated in the UK with the new atheism…
Refutation of Skepticism by A. C. Grayling (August 1, 1985)
Berkeley: The Central Arguments by A. C. Grayling (September 1, 1987)
The Refutation of Scepticism by A. C. Grayling (Oct 27, 1988)
China: A Literary Companion by A. C. Grayling (May 1, 1995)
Philosophy 1: A Guide through the Subject (Vol 1) by A. C. Grayling (Apr 8, 1999)
Philosophy 2: Further through the Subject (Vol 2) by A. C. Grayling (Feb 18, 1999)
The Future of Moral Values: Predictions by A. C. Grayling (February 1, 1999)
An Introduction to Philosophical Logic by A. C. Grayling (May 16, 2001)
Quarrel of the Age by A. C. Grayling (July 19, 2001)
Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by A. C. Grayling (Jul 28, 2001)
Russell: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by A. C. Grayling (May 16, 2002)
Meaning of Things by A. C. Grayling (Jul 4, 2002)
Reason of Things by A. C. Grayling (Jun 26, 2003)
Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age by A. C. Grayling (Dec 18, 2003)
What Is Good? by A. C. Grayling (Feb 5, 2004)
The Mystery of Things by A. C. Grayling (Oct 1, 2004)
Life, Sex and Ideas: The Good Life without God by A. C. Grayling (Dec 16, 2004)
The Heart of Things by A. C. Grayling (Feb 1, 2005)
Descartes: The Life and times of a Genius by A. C. Grayling (Oct 31, 2006)
Among The Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan by A. C. Grayling (Mar 20, 2007)
Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness (Oberon Masters Series) by A. C. Grayling (Apr 1, 2007)
Toward the Light of Liberty: The Struggles for Freedom and Rights That Made the Modern Western World by A. C. Grayling (Oct 2, 2007)
Towards the Light by A.C. Grayling (September 1, 2008)
The Choice of Hercules: Pleasure, Duty and the Good Life in the 21st Century by A. C. Grayling (Apr 1, 2009)
Liberty in the Age of Terror by A. C. Grayling (Jun 1, 2009)
Scepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge by A. C. Grayling (Jan 26, 2010)
Ideas That Matter: The Concepts That Shape the 21st Century by A. C. Grayling (Mar 9, 2010)
Thinking of Answers: Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life by A. C. Grayling (Aug 3, 2010)
To Set Prometheus Free (Oberon Masters Series) by A. C. Grayling (Sep 7, 2010)
The Good Book: A Humanist Bible by A. C. Grayling (Mar 29, 2011)
Amazon Discussion Forum
"Ancient Aliens" on History (Japan)
Posted on Nov 12, 2010 2:03:17 PM PST
Spiritual Architect says:
The caduceus is one of the most ancient of symbols. You might best know this symbol as the DNA structure and healing used by the medical profession. Since ancient Mesopotamia the caduceus presented two serpents intertwined (the central nervous system) around a staff (the spinal column) with the wings (the "swan") on either side (the two hemispheres of the brain, with the circle in the center representing the pineal gland, or the central sun and psychic center within). It also symbolized the kundalini energy.
This was originally the symbol for the Anunnaki-Sirian creator god, EA, or EN.KI (who has become an Archetype), was the chief of the magicians, "the one who knows," and infamous for being the serpent of the Garden of Eden who created lifeforms in test tubes half a million years ago with his half-sister Ninharsag, at the suggestion of his son, Marduk, to create humans to be the workers for the gods. (The symbol is also based upon the winged globe for the planet Nibiru, the symbol of the royal Anunnaki family.)
Biblical writers called the healing serpent Nehushtan. The Hebrew word for serpent is "nahash." The root of the word are the Hebrew letters Nun, Het and Shin, which means "to guess." This was translated into other languages as "satan," which some say mean "enemy," or "adversary."
Enki's identity, as Lord of Earth or In Earth (EN.KI), also known as EA ("whose house is water") is reflected in other names, as well:
* Adonai * Ptah * Aton * Aten * Adom * Adam * Amen
(Linguistic paleontology is a marvelous and vast area for proving these connections.)
The name EARTH also comes from EA/Enki. Actually, the name "earth" can be traced to Enki (a.k.a. EA), and "human" is related to Ninharsag/Ninhursag, who was Hathor (the House of Horus): HU (Horus) is also a transliteration of the ancient Sumerian EA (Grimms' law of interchangeable letters and sounds). If we use Hebrew, HU means "she."
India, the "nagas" were the serpent gods and goddesses. In the Americas there was Quetzlcoatl (or Thoth). The entire world has worshipped the serpent for its wisdom, but ironically, it was not really about snakes at all - unless you feel you have to "guess" what a snake is up to! Why was the snake chosen? For its cleverness, ability to survive in the harshest of environments, and again, its shape resembling the flow of energy up the spine - to the crown chakra, and the third eye. The snake sheds its skin and is reborn. The snake is clever. And perhaps because it naturally instilled a bit of caution or awe in people. Was Enki really a snake? Not literally. He has many different appearances.
The serpent always represents spiritual wisdom, life and healing. The first symbols of serpents were attributed to Enki and then Ninhursag. However, the story of the serpent becoming an evil symbol began with the wars between Enki and his brother, Enlil (later known by the name "Allah"). These conflicts began at birth and had to do with birthright to the royal throne of the Nibiruan civilization in which their father, Anu, was the leader and father to Enki and Enlil. There was a time when Anu felt Enki (due to his wisdom and magical abilities) was the only savior of the Anunnaki people ("Enuma Elish").
This story later was reflected in Cain and Abel, and all the stories throughout your times of brothers competing for power, favoritism and inheritance. Enlil's anger with Enki caused him to twist the truth around to make the serpent evil, which later became what you know as the story in the Bible. What you think of as being Satan is not that at all, but THE REVERSE!
Although there was love between Enki and Enlil, they often did not see eye to eye on many issues, especially when it came to supporting human beings. Enlil never had patience or compassion for people, and on several occasions, Sodom and Gomorrah as one example, he literally nuked them out of existence. He attempted this again during the time of the Great Flood but Enki (and those who supported him) took swift action to alert the Noahs around the planet of the forthcoming dangers. Some of the Anunnaki outraged with Enki for doing so but saw they had little choice in finally carrying out the rescue. Anu supported saving humanity.
In the Garden of Eden situation, Enlil was furious that Enki permitted humans to have access to knowledge, the mixing of the Anunnaki with human genes, thereby becoming more "godly," and equal to the Anunnaki. To strike back at Enki, and in the attempt to regain his power over humans, Enlil vowed to tarnish Enki's reputation by spreading the idea that the serpent of wisdom was evil. Enlil tried to wipe out knowledge of the DNA coding Enki gave humans.
E.T. ENCOUNTERS or MIND CONTROL HOAX?
An Inquiry Into Covert Psychotronics and Belief System Engineering
By MARY SEAL
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
o "Free Will and Social Engineering"
o History of Mind Control
o A Mind Controlled Society?
o Bibliography
Conspiracy or just Business as Usual?!
CONSPIRACY:
A Planning and acting together secretly, especially for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason
Webster's New World Dictionary
IN SEARCH OF ATLANTIS
...A DOCUMENTARY
By Brad and Mary Sutherland
Burlington Research Center
Copyright 2006
In Search of Atlantis and the Lost Mines of Solomon in Kentucky
On the Road with Brad and Mary Sutherland
Atlantis in the Appalachian Mountains of North America
Evidence points to Atlanteans in the Appalachians
Cherokee Star Constellation - Prophecy of the Rattlesnake
THE LIZARD MEN OF KENTUCKY
On the Road with Brad and Mary Sutherland
REPTILIAN ABDUCTIONS IN THE SUPERSTITION MOUNTAINS
THE MASONIC CONNECTION
ON THE ROAD WITH BRAD AND MARY SUTHERLAND -
KENTUCKY AND THE SEARCH FOR SOLOMON'S MINE AND ATLANTIS
By Mary Sutherland
(2006)
Nanyehi - Nancy Ward - The last of the Ghigua
My Cherokee (Nanyehi) Lineage
THE ANCIENTS 0NES - ANI KU TANI OR AH NI GU TA NI
THE LOST TEMPLE OF ATLANTIS
A Hidden Camelot
THE OLD RED LAND
At one time our earth looked very different than it does today - As a matter of fact - our earth, at one time , looked like a large Island surrounded by water . All the continents were together as one super continent known as Pangaea. This Land was later to be called Lemuria. The people all lived together in peace, spoke one language, and lived by the Law of On - very different than what we have today. Lemuria had satellites, of which Atlantis was one. As time went by, Atlantis parted ways with the Lemurians and started their own cultures, based on a priest/ kingship hierarchy which governed the people. This governmental system stands yet today.
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography --- by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin
Chapter - V - Poppy and Mommy
The BRILL Library of Ancient Judaism, Vol 7
Faith at the Crossroads: A Theological Profile of Religious Zionism
By Dov Schwartz
(2002)
Mizrahi Jews
Mizrahi Jews or Mizrahiyim, (Hebrew: מזרחיים, Modern Mizraẖiyyim Tiberian Mizrāḥiyyîm; "Easterners"), also referred to as Adot HaMizrach (עֲדוֹת-הַמִּזְרָח) (Communities of the East; Mizrahi Hebrew: ʿAdot(h) Ha(m)Mizraḥ) are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus. The term Mizrahi is used in Israel in the language of politics, media and some social scientists for Jews from the Arab world and adjacent, primarily Muslim-majority countries. This includes Jews from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kurdish areas, the eastern Caucasus, India, Northern and Eastern Sudan and Ethiopia. Sometimes, Sephardi Jews such as Jews from Morocco, Algeria, or Turkey are erroneously grouped into the Mizrahi category for some historical reasons.
Despite their heterogeneous origins, Mizrahi Jews generally practice rites identical or similar to traditional Sephardic Judaism, although with some differences among the minhagim of the particular communities. This has resulted in a conflation of terms, particularly in Israel, and in religious usage, where "Sephardi" is used in a broad sense to include Mizrahi Jews as well as Sephardim proper. Indeed, from the point of view of the official Israeli rabbinate, the Mizrahi rabbis in Israel are under the jurisdiction of the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel who, in most cases, is a Mizrahi Jew. Today they make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population, but before the mass immigration of 1,000,000 mostly Ashkenazi immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s they made up over 70% of Israel's Jewish population.
History and usage
"Mizrahi" is literally translated as "Eastern", מזרח (Mizraḥ), Hebrew for "east." In the past the word "Mizrahim," corresponding to the Arabic word Mashriqiyyun (Easterners), referred to the natives of Syria, Iraq and other Asian countries, as distinct from those of North Africa (Maghrabiyyun). For this reason some speakers object to the use of "Mizrahi" to include Moroccan Jews.
The term Mizrahim or Edot Hamizraḥ, Oriental communities, grew in Israel under the circumstances of the meeting of waves of immigrants from the Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Oriental Jewish communities. In modern Israeli usage, it refers to all Jews from North African and West Asian countries, many of them Arabic-speaking Muslim-majority countries. The term came to be widely used more by so-called Mizrahi activists in the early 1990s. Since then in Israel it has become an accepted semi-official and media designation.
Many "Mizrahi" ("Oriental" Jews) today reject this (or any) umbrella and simplistic description and prefer to identify themselves by their particular country of origin, or that of their immediate ancestors, e.g. "Morrocan Jew", etc., or prefer to use the old term "Sefardic" in its broader meaning.
Other designations
Many Jews identify all non-Ashkenazi Jews as Sephardim, in modern Hebrew "Sfaradim". This broader definition of "Sephardim" as including all or most Mizrahi Jews is also common in Jewish religious circles. The Ethiopian Jewish religious leaders in Israel have also joined the Mizrahi-Sefardic rite collectivities.
The reason for this classification is that most Mizrahi communities use much the same religious rituals as Sephardim proper. The prevalence of the Sephardic rite among Mizrahim is partly a result of Sephardim joining some of their communities following the 1492 expulsion from Sepharad (Spain and Portugal). Over the last few centuries, the previously distinctive rites of the Mizrahi communities were influenced, superimposed upon or altogether replaced by the rite of the Sephardim, perceived as more prestigious. Even before this assimilation, the original rite of many Jewish Oriental communities was already closer to the Sephardi rite than to the Ashkenazi one. For this reason, "Sephardim" has come to mean not only "Spanish Jews" but "Jews of the Spanish rite", just as "Ashkenazim" is used for "Jews of the German rite", whose ancestors spoke the Judeo-German, Yiddish language, whether or not they originated from Germany.
Many of the Sephardic Jews exiled from Spain resettled in greater or lesser numbers in many Arabic-speaking countries, such as Syria and Morocco. In Syria, most eventually intermarried with and assimilated into the larger established community of Arabic-speaking Jews. In North African countries, by contrast, where the Sephardim came to outnumber the pre-existing Mizrahi Jew communities it was some of the latter who assimilated into the more prosperous and prestigious Sephardic communities. In Morocco a distinction remained with the purely Sephardic Gerush Castilia of the Spanish-speaking northern strip who kept their Judeo-Spanish language known as Haketia. Either way, this assimilation, combined with the use of the Sephardic rite, led to the popular designation and conflation of most non-Ashkenazic Jewish communities from the Middle East and North Africa as "Sephardic", whether or not they were descended from Spanish Jews, which is what the terms "Sephardic Jews" and "Sepharadim" properly implied when used in the ethnic as opposed to the religious sense.
In many Arab countries, older Arabic-speaking Jewish communities distinguished between themselves and the newer arrivals speaking Judeo-Romance languages, that is, Sephardim expelled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497. The established Arabic-speaking Jews called themselves Musta'arabim (Arabic for Arabizers), while the newer Sephardi arrivals called them Moriscos (Ladino for Moorish).
The term "Arab Jews" is controversial, used for self-identification by some members of the communities concerned but strongly opposed by others due to its political, social and ideological implications (see Arab Jews).
Language
Most of the so-called Oriental Jewish or Mizrahi communities spoke Arabic, although Arabic is now mainly used as a second language, especially by the older generation. Most of the many notable philosophical, religious and literary works of the Jews in the Orient were written in Arabic using a modified Hebrew alphabet.
Among other languages associated with Mizrahim are Judeo-Persian (Dzhidi), Georgian, Bukhori, Kurdish, Judeo-Berber, Punic language, Juhuri, Marathi, Judeo-Malayalam and called by some Judeo-Aramaic dialects. Most Persian Jews speak standard Persian.
Neo-Aramaic is a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew. It is identified as a "Jewish language", since it is the language of major Jewish texts such as the Talmud and Zohar, and many ritual recitations such as the Kaddish. Traditionally, Aramaic has been a language of Talmudic debate in yeshivoth, as many rabbinic texts are written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. As spoken by the Jews of Kurdistan, Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects are descended from Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, as could be seen from its hundreds of reflexes in Jewish Neo-Aramaic.
By the early 1950s, virtually the entire Jewish community of Kurdistan—a rugged, mostly mountainous region comprising parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Caucasus, where Jews had lived since antiquity—relocated to Israel. The vast majority of Kurdish Jews, who were primarily concentrated in northern Iraq, left Kurdistan in the mass aliyah (emigration to Israel) of 1950-51. This ended thousands of years of Jewish history in what had been Assyria and Babylonia.
In 2007, an important book was published, authored by Mordechai Zaken, describing the unique relationship between Jews in urban and rural Kurdistan and the tribal society under whose patronage the Jews lived for hundreds of years. Tribal chieftains, or aghas, granted patronage to the Jews who needed protection in the wild tribal region of Kurdistan; the Jews gave their chieftains dues, gifts and services. The text provides numerous tales and examples about the skills, maneuvers and innovations used by Kurdistani Jews in their daily life to confront their abuse and extortion by greedy chieftains and tribesmen. The text also tells the stories of Kurdish chieftains who saved and protected the Jews unconditionally.
Post-1948 dispersal
Main article: Jewish exodus from Arab lands
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and subsequent establishment of the state of Israel, most Mizrahi Jews (900 000) were either expelled by their Arab rulers or chose to leave and immigrated to Israel. Roughly half of Israeli Jews are of Mizrahi origin.
Anti-Jewish actions by Arab governments in the 1950s and 1960s, 25,000 Mizrahi Jews from Egypt left after the 1956 Suez Crisis, led to the overwhelming majority of Mizrahim leaving Arab countries. They became refugees. Most went to Israel. Many Moroccan and Algerian Jews went to France. Thousands of Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian Jews immigrated to the United States and to Brazil.
Today, as many as 40,000 Mizrahim still remain in communities scattered throughout the non-Arab Muslim world, primarily in Iran, but also Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. There are few remaining in the Arab world. About 5,000 remain in Morocco and fewer than 2,000 in Tunisia. Other countries with remnants of ancient Jewish communities with official recognition, such as Lebanon, have 1,000 or fewer Jews. A trickle of emigration continues, mainly to Israel and the United States.
JONATHAN TURLEY
Res ipsa loquitur ("The thing itself speaks")
Search Results for 'communitarian'
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“Anything Can Happen”: New York Lawyer At The Center Of Lottery Mystery
New York attorney Crawford Shaw is in the center of an odd mystery. Just two hours before the passing of a deadline for a jackpot ticket to the state lottery, Shaw contacted the Iowa Lottery to submit the winning ticket on behalf of an unnamed client. The ticket was sold 13 months previously at a Des Moines gas station with a payout of $7.5 million cash or $10.3 million spread over 25 years. However, things then got pretty weird. The Iowa lottery proclaims that “Anything Can Happen” and it appears it has.
Both Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the Iowa attorney general have been asked to investigate the matter and Shaw has withdrawn the claim as mysteriously as it was made. Officials say that they received the ticket on behalf of a trust on Dec. 29th — a trust listed as a corporation in the country of Belize. When the lottery asked about how the ticket was located and the identification of the purchaser, Shaw withdrew the claim. The lottery wants to know how Shaw, 76, obtained the ticket to make sure it wasn’t stolen and that a valid player bought it. Shaw — not the client — signed the ticket on behalf of the trust. Shaw signed on behalf of Bedford, N.Y.-based Hexham Investments Trust, but misspelled the trust name. He shipped the ticket by FedEx to a Des Moines law firm for submission to the lottery. He then sent a fax to the lottery saying that he simply did not know the identity of the purchaser.
As questions grew, Shaw, 76, had the local firm submit a fax that read “In order that the claim be resolved without further controversy, Crawford Shaw, as Trustee for and on behalf of the Trust, does hereby withdraw the Claim and does hereby agree to take no further action to enforce the Claim.”
Shaw reportedly has been involved in controversies involving fraud in the past, including a minor role in Industrial Enterprises of America, a chemical company that was bankrupted in 2009 in a stock manipulation scheme.
There is no evidence that Shaw would have benefitted from the ticket’s redemption, but lawyers can be sanctioned for failing to make reasonable inquiries on the basis for claims and, of course, there are criminal penalties if a lawyer knowingly participates in a fraudulent claim.
Source: ABC
JONATHAN TURLEY
Res ipsa loquitur ("The thing itself speaks")
Archive for the 'Lawyering' Category
JONATHAN TURLEY
Res ipsa loquitur ("The thing itself speaks")
Who in Hell is Saul Alinsky?
Dredd Blog
The Universal Smedley
Dr. Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote the song The Universal Soldier.
That generally unknown song was later recorded and made much more generally well known, on the pop charts, by Sir Donovan of England.
In case you have not heard her perform it, that song is shown being performed by Dr. Sainte-Marie in the video at the end of this post.
So what about the photo to the left, is that The Universal Smedley?
Yes and no, that is a photo of General Hermann Goering, a NAZI of the old Germany who became infamous, because, as Robert McNamara pointed out, the Germans lost that war, and those nations who lose the wars are drafted to supply the war criminals in the subsequent war trials.
I will quote General Goering later in this post.
The Universal Smedley is General Smedley D. Butler, who was a U.S. Marine and who is the very epitome of the universal soldier, every bit as much as the blues singer Blind Willie McTell is the epitome of the mainstream media.
I say that because Smedley not only participated in more wars than most mortals, but he was also decorated as much or more during war activities than most mortals.
The catch to this is that General Butler also wrote the book "War Is A Racket", as well as being the first 99% v 1% Occupy Washington D.C. speaker ever.
While doing that, The Universal Smedley seems to have also coined the phrase "the soldier class" way back in 1933:
"We are divided, in America, into two classes: The Tories on one side, a class of citizens who were raised to believe that the whole of this country was created for their sole benefit, and on the other side, the other 99 per cent of us, the soldier class, the class from which all of you soldiers came. That class hasn’t any privileges except to die when the Tories tell them. Every war that we have ever had was gotten up by that class. They do all the beating of the drums. Away the rest of us go. When we leave, you know what happens. We march down the street with all the Sears-Roebuck soldiers standing on the sidewalk, all the dollar-a-year men with spurs, all the patriots who call themselves patriots, square-legged women in uniforms making Liberty Loan speeches. They promise you. You go down the street and they ring all the church bells. Promise you the sun, the moon, the stars and the earth–anything to save them. Off you go. Then the looting commences while you are doing the fighting. This last war made over 6,000 millionaires. Today those fellows won’t help pay the bill."
(General Smedley Butler, Foreign Service Magazine, Dec. 1933, emphasis added). So, "what is the point Dredd?", you may be wondering.
The point is that talking the talk but not walking the walk is the reason our nation and civilization are in serious trouble.
Listen to one of Smedley's contemporaries:
“Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship ... voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
(General Hermann Goering, Gilbert, G., 1995. Nuremberg Diary. New York: Da Capo Press. pp. 278–279. ISBN 0306806614).
Dig the song in that light, or dig graves, it has always been our choice after all.
Helical Helix
Solar System a Dynamic Process
By P. Keshava Bhat, M.Sc., Ph.D.,
(2008)
Zero Point
Institute for Mystical and Spiritual Science
Box 700, Kemptville, Ontario, Canada
Theosophy.net
A Community of the Curious
ZERO POINT: The Monad
Henry Makow
Financial Advice From Christ
We are so busy saving our skins, we neglect to save our souls.
That's the real gold.
By Anthony Migchels
Which Communitarianism? The Ecclesial Ethics of Stanley Hauerwas by Ryan Newson | Papers by Ryan
Written as a Masters student at Wake Forest University; submitted as my writing sample to various doctoral programs.
This paper situates Stanley Hauerwas' ethical project within the larger liberal-communitarian philosophical debate. After reminding the reader that there really is no such thing as "communitarian ethics" in general, I explore the ways in which Hauerwas' ethics may properly be called communitarian, the ways they may not, and what difference this makes to oft-repeated criticisms of his work. I hope to show that Hauerwas seeks less to create enclaves of Christian purity in a broken world, and more promotes the church as a school for Christian virtue through which one learns to see the world well in order that one may rightly move within it. By making explicit the too-often implicit philosophical debates behind critiques and support of ecclesial ethics, I hope to clear a path for more fruitful and informed arguments concerning Hauerwas' ethic, and Christian communitarianism more generally.
Liberalism, Michael Walzer, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Rawls, Communitarianism, Virtue Ethics, and Stanley Hauerwas
The Herald | Sunday Herald
Independence Part 1: How Scotland has changed
By Ian McWhirter
Scotland has changed, and the confirmation came last week. The old arguments against independence just aren't working any more. But what has changed, and could it all be down simply to the presentational magic of Alex Salmond? Why are so many people who would never have regarded themselves as nationalists now coming under his spell?
It's not just that the Unionists' arguments are sounding old and tired. When you think about it, there's nothing older and tireder than nationalism – Burns, Bannockburn and Sean Connery. But somehow Salmond has breathed life into an old passion and made it sound new and exciting – a vehicle not for the promotion of national identity, but for securing socially worthwhile objectives and pursuing an ethical foreign policy. And Scotland seems to like this confident, outward-looking image of itself. The secret of Salmond's success is that he has turned himself into an echo chamber for Scottish communitarian values, in a nation where Conservative values are anathema and where Labour, the old national party of Scotland, no longer knows what its values are.
NY Times | SundayReview | Opinion Page
Government and Its Rivals
By ROSS DOUTHAT
WHEN liberals are in a philosophical mood, they like to cast debates over the role of government not as a clash between the individual and the state, but as a conflict between the individual and the community. Liberals are for cooperation and joint effort; conservatives are for self-interest and selfishness. Liberals build the Hoover Dam and the interstate highways; conservatives sit home and dog-ear copies of “The Fountainhead.” Liberals know that it takes a village; conservatives pretend that all it takes is John Wayne.
In this worldview, the government is just the natural expression of our national community, and the place where we all join hands to pursue the common good. Or to borrow a line attributed to Representative Barney Frank, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.”
Many conservatives would go this far with Frank: Government is one way we choose to work together, and there are certain things we need to do collectively that only government can do.
But there are trade-offs as well, which liberal communitarians don’t always like to acknowledge. When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good. Unlike most communal organizations, the government has coercive power — the power to regulate, to mandate and to tax. These advantages make it all too easy for the state to gradually crowd out its rivals. The more things we “do together” as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.
Sometimes this crowding out happens gradually, subtly, indirectly. Every tax dollar the government takes is a dollar that can’t go to charities and churches. Every program the government runs, from education to health care to the welfare office, can easily become a kind of taxpayer-backed monopoly.
But sometimes the state goes further. Not content with crowding out alternative forms of common effort, it presents its rivals an impossible choice: Play by our rules, even if it means violating the moral ideals that inspired your efforts in the first place, or get out of the community-building business entirely.
This is exactly the choice that the White House has decided to offer a host of religious institutions — hospitals, schools and charities — in the era of Obamacare. The new health care law requires that all employer-provided insurance plans cover contraception, sterilization and the morning-after (or week-after) pill known as ella, which can work as an abortifacient. A number of religious groups, led by the American Catholic bishops, had requested an exemption for plans purchased by their institutions. Instead, the White House has settled on an exemption that only covers religious institutions that primarily serve members of their own faith. A parish would be exempt from the mandate, in other words, but a Catholic hospital would not.
Ponder that for a moment. In effect, the Department of Health and Human Services is telling religious groups that if they don’t want to pay for practices they consider immoral, they should stick to serving their own co-religionists rather than the wider public. Sectarian self-segregation is O.K., but good Samaritanism is not. The rule suggests a preposterous scenario in which a Catholic hospital avoids paying for sterilizations and the morning-after pill by closing its doors to atheists and Muslims, and hanging out a sign saying “no Protestants need apply.”
The regulations are a particularly cruel betrayal of Catholic Democrats, many of whom had defended the health care law as an admirable fulfillment of Catholicism’s emphasis on social justice. Now they find that their government’s communitarianism leaves no room for their church’s communitarianism, and threatens to regulate it out of existence.
Critics of the administration’s policy are framing this as a religious liberty issue, and rightly so. But what’s at stake here is bigger even than religious freedom. The Obama White House’s decision is a threat to any kind of voluntary community that doesn’t share the moral sensibilities of whichever party controls the health care bureaucracy.
The Catholic Church’s position on contraception is not widely appreciated, to put it mildly, and many liberals are inclined to see the White House’s decision as a blow for the progressive cause. They should think again. Once claimed, such powers tend to be used in ways that nobody quite anticipated, and the logic behind these regulations could be applied in equally punitive ways by administrations with very different values from this one.
The more the federal government becomes an instrument of culture war, the greater the incentive for both conservatives and liberals to expand its powers and turn them to ideological ends. It is Catholics hospitals today; it will be someone else tomorrow.
The White House attack on conscience is a vindication of health care reform’s critics, who saw exactly this kind of overreach coming. But it’s also an intimation of a darker American future, in which our voluntary communities wither away and government becomes the only word we have for the things we do together.
Overlawyered
“Their government’s communitarianism leaves no room for their church’s communitarianism”
By Walter Olson
Related posts
Zombie Litigation (1)
Where that Connecticut Catholic bill came from (5)
Vatican as defendant (3)
Updates: Heikkinen v. Archdiocese of Milwaukee; Drypen (0)
Slower saint-making (2)
About
Overlawyered began in July 1999 and is regularly described as the oldest law blog; at least, no one seems to be able to name one that’s older. Its founder and predominant writer is Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute (formerly at the Manhattan Institute) and author of several books about the U.S. litigation system. Between 2003 and 2010 it also featured frequent contributions by Ted Frank, who founded and directs the Center for Class Action Fairness and is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute; he was formerly director of the American Enterprise Institute’s AEI Legal Center and a practicing lawyer with O’Melveny & Myers. New Jersey lawyer David Nieporent, also contributed occasionally, and the site has had dozens of visiting guest bloggers.
The site is not published by, and should not be seen as reflecting the views of, any wider organization. Its modest hosting and operating expenses come out of my own pocket. The site took advertising for a while but at the moment does not.
For a sampling of the many nice things said about us, check our accolades page.
– Walter Olson, editor
The site’s original self-description:
Overlawyered.com explores an American legal system that too often turns litigation into a weapon against guilty and innocent alike, erodes individual responsibility, rewards sharp practice, enriches its participants at the public’s expense, and resists even modest efforts at reform and accountability.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
2012 Tuesday: With Obamacare contraception ruling, the president burns a wide bridge
THE AMERICAN | The Online Magazine of the American Enterprise Institute
Are There Hidden Virtues to Bowling Alone?
By Peter A. Coclanis
The Times of India
Oracles trade trance for union
The Pedophocracy
By David McGowan
"Paedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose ... I am also a theologian and as a theologian, I believe it is God's will that there be closeness and intimacy, unity of flesh, between people ... paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness, they can say, 'I believe this is in fact part of God's will.'"
--Ralph Underwager, 'expert' witness for the defense in scores of child abuse cases and former vocal member of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, in an interview in Paidika (a pro-pedophilia publication), conducted in June 1991
The Pedophocracy, Part I: From Brussels ...
The Pedophocracy, Part II: ... to Washington
The Pedophocracy, Part III: Uncle Sam Wants Your Children
The Pedophocracy, Part IV: McMolestation
The Pedophocracy, Part V: It Couldn't Happen Here
The Pedophocracy, Part VI: Finders Keepers
GOA
Gun Owners of America
“The only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington”
--Ron Paul (R-TX)
IAPCAR
International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights
CCRKBA
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Second Amendment Foundation
Second Amendment Committee* | Liberty Gun Rights
Published in New Gun Week (July, 2011)
NOTICE: THE U.N. LIES!
American firearms are no longer subject to debate! That issue was settled by Patrick Henry in the great debates. It is just plain stupid to allow the communist United Nations Organization to tell us whether or not we may own guns! Without guns, people are helpless against tyrannous leaders, domestic or international.
"No nation ever did, nor ever can, retain its liberty after the loss of the purse and the sword."
--Patrick Henry
Although we have lost control of the purse, we do not intend to lose control over firearms. Next, the U.N. intends to forbid any private ownership of land. Tell the U.N. they have no authority over us! The solution is to stop funding this parasitic organization.
*The Second Amendment Committee of Hanford, California is independent of any other organization with a similar sounding name or title, and in particular, is NOT and has never been connected in any form or fashion to the Alan Gottlieb Second Amendment Foundation of Bellevue, Washington.
Liberty Gun Rights
THE SMALL ARMS TREATY MUST BE STOPPED!
By Bernadine Smith
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Immanuel Kant
Born: 22 April 1724
Birthplace: Konigsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia)
Died: 12 February 1804
Best Known As: German philosopher who wrote Critique of Pure Reason
German philosopher Immanuel Kant's position as one of the greats in Western metaphysics comes from works he published late in life, including Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics (1785). He grew up in Königsberg and never really left home, spending most of his professional life attached to the university there as a lecturer on philosophy. His lectures made him internationally famous, and he followed an outstanding academic career with published works that became standards in Western philosophy. Kant, influenced by the works of David Hume, held that we could only know what we experience, what he called the phenomenal, and that we could never know that which is beyond experience, what he called the noumenal. In doing so, Kant ruled out the possibility of our demonstrable knowledge of God, without ruling out the existence of God. But he also argued for an absolute morality based on free will and rationality, referred to as the categorical imperative: "Act as if the maxim from which you act were to become through your will a universal law." His brilliant, sometimes impenetrable arguments about the limits of human understanding are part of the canon of Western thought. His works include Prolegomena (his 1783 attempt to better explain Critique of Pure Reason), Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and Critique of Judgment (1790).
Kant's belief that our understanding of objects would always be skewed by our limited capacity to understand can be seen in his famous quote: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made."
Whittaker Chambers
Juliet Stuart Poyntz
Right Side News
The Rise of Socialism
By Ray Peach
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist"
– C. S. Lewis as dramatized in the movie "The Usual Suspects"
The modern history of socialism can be traced to the renaissance and the age of enlightenment. When the Germanic tribes invaded ancient Rome, they brought with them a Teutonic religion centered on the worship of Odin (Wōden), the ruler of Asgard, and the Earth Goddess Nerthus. After the fall of Rome, Christians replaced the worship of Odin and his pantheon of gods with the worship of Jesus Christ, but the conversion was not total.
During the age of enlightenment and the renaissance, meaning the re-awakening, Christianity would be turned on its head and the teachings of the ancients, especially the Greeks, would be re-introduced as the enlightened way to think of things. This resulted in a re-awakening of Egyptian, East Indian, Greek, and Roman philosophy. The European elite explored the Middle East, India, and China; bringing them into contact with a variety of ancient religions that supported a strong aristocracy at the expense of a poor working class.
Weimar Romanticism
By the mid-18th century, German paganism began to replace Christianity in Europe as part of a “romantic” German folk movement called the Volksthiitigkeit (no English translation). This movement came to symbolize what would become the Weimar or German Romantic movement, which would totally abandon not only Christianity, but also its empirical science. People who came from wealthy aristocratic families would bring this about; and contrary to how they are portrayed in today’s textbooks, they were not interested in the working class or in equality.
In reality they were reacting to the republican experiment in representational democracy and individual liberty they saw taking place in America. The last thing the European elite wanted was to endorse representational democracy or the Christian faith that supported it – causing Thomas Jefferson to exclaim: “The comparisons of our governments with those of Europe are like a comparison of heaven and hell.”
Immanuel Kant
Weimar romanticism found it’s manifestation with 18th century German Philosophers like Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), who is widely accredited with providing the first definition of enlightenment saying, “Enlightenment is Man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.” The other he refers to is the Hebrew-Christian God and His priests. Instead Kant taught pagan metaphysics and spiritualism, where morality does not come from God, but from the state, where only those trained to reason correctly can dictate what is or is not moral. Today Kant is idolized as the epitome of morals and ethics, when in reality just the opposite is true.
Fichte
Kant’s protégé was Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 – 1814) who embraced Kant’s metaphysical and transcendental ideals with extraordinary fanaticism. Fichte eventually became the rector of the newly constructed University in Berlin, where he would turn the university into a political tool for the promulgation of the Romantic (neo-pagan) religion, creating the precursor to National Socialism and the rise of Adolph Hitler. Hitler dedicated his book Mein Kampf to Dietrich Eckart, a leading figure in the Theosophical Society, which was started by the occult lesbian Helena Blavatsky. The National Socialists developed a form of Christianity that rejected the “Jewish” Jesus and replaced him with Wotan and the cult of nature that was centered on the worship of the Sun, Earth, and Moon.
Hegel
In 1814, Fichte died and his chair went to George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who taught that man’s full cooperation with the state was the only definition of freedom. Hegel said, “The state is the spirit which stands in the world; it is the realization of morality. The state is the reality of the moral idea – the moral spirit as the manifest, self-evident, substantial will which thinks for itself … The state is the sole condition of the attainment of the particular end and good. The objective of which is to achieve the absolute realization of the state as a higher being.” The popularity of Hegel led to a Hegelian movement among the ruling class, academia, and bureaucrats – representing the elite.
Communitarianism
Eventually Hegel’s movement fractured, taking two paths; where one path resulted in socialism, and the other in the works of Karl Marx. Today the re-branding of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel are at the heart of the Communitarian movement headed by professors in our universities. By re-branding the philosophy of these three men as being the purveyors of personal freedom and moral virtue, the philosophies of some of the most evil men in modern history are being inculcated into young minds.
Robert Owen and the New Moral Order
The modern concept of socialism begins with the English industrialist Robert Owen (1771 – 1858) who built on the works of Plato, Kant, and Hegel. Owen believed that socialism would be a “new” religion founded on the “immutable laws of the universe,” and would ultimately “replace all other religions founded on testimony.” The sole purpose of this religion, he said, was to “feel as much pleasure as one’s knowledge and power would permit.” Instead of a Church, socialism would worship in the “Halls of Science,” its clergy would be journalists and teachers, and Owen himself would be the new Jesus Christ.
Owen claimed that socialism would become the New Moral Order, what we today call the New World Order, consisting of a worldwide socialist dictatorship. Socialism would replace the Old Moral Order and its satanic beliefs in the family and Christianity where the Priesthood made mankind subservient to their slavish superstitions. He went on to say that the causes of evil in the world are existing religions, the governments of the world, professions, the monetary system of all nations, the practice of buying and selling for a profit, practices that produce competition, the current practice of producing and distributing wealth, and the current method of education.
Socialism as a Religion
Owens’ religion says man is just a machine or animal. It is considered blasphemy to break the laws of nature by tolerating human feelings of love and affection, or even liking or disliking one another. In the “New Moral Order,” marriage is condemned because it perverts “natural instincts” and subverts pleasure. Families are disallowed because they are perverse, and raising children is selfish since it deprives the state of its right to breed the species. In socialism, only the state can properly train a child on how to give pleasure or to accept edicts from the state on when to eat and when to die.
What is the New Faith?
The question is: what are the immutable laws of the universe that Owens’ “religion of science” is based on? Owen and his sons based their beliefs on what they called the “phenomena of a magneto-psychological character of analogous objects,” which were to be understood through “spiritualism and mediumship.” In 1868, Robert Owens’ son, Robert Dale Owen, published Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, in which he described the “scientific” study of the Universe as a single cosmic being and proposed ways to commune with the dead – positions that come from ancient paganism.
Communing with the dead is called necromancy, and along with other forms of divination, has been a central tenant of every pagan religion dating back to Babylon and the worship of Ba’al. This includes the worship of Gaia (mother earth) in ancient Greece, and other pagan gods. In the Bible necromancy is mentioned chiefly in order to forbid it, or to admonish those who have practiced it. The Mosaic Law forbids necromancy (Leviticus 19:31; 20:6), declaring that to seek the truth from the dead is abhorred by God (Deuteronomy 18:11, 12), making it punishable by death (Leviticus 20:27; cf. 1 Samuel 28:9).
Paganism would return with the Renaissance through the revival of ancient doctrines, especially from ancient Greece. In his memoirs the Italian occultist and artist Benvenuto Cellini relates that he assisted at “necromantic” evocations in which multitudes of “devils” appeared and answered his questions. The German occultist Cornelius Agrippa talks about the magical rites by which souls are evoked. Both of these men would contribute to Weimar Romanticism, nature worship, and the works of Wolfgang von Goethe, which are discussed in the book. The Romantic Movement will serve as the catalyst that has manifested itself in what we now call socialism. As a distinct belief and practice, necromancy has reemerged under the name of “New Age Spiritualism” as espoused by Robert Owen, and today’s leading socialists; including faux Christian leaders – both Catholic and Protestant.
Communist Confession of Faith
In 1847, Karl Marx’s partner, Friedrich Engels issued a Confession of Faith in which he stated, “All religions which have existed hitherto were expressions of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is that stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and supersedes them.”
Eventually, the Socialist Faith would be instilled into Christianity much like Hellenism was with Judaism. In 1904, German socialists Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch, together with the Protestant theologian Gustav Deissmann, started a group called the Eranos Circle. This group sought to reconcile Marxism and Hermeticism with the Protestant movement. Among their stated beliefs was that Christianity was actually a product of the Mithras Cult who worshiped Sol Invictus Mithras. This cult, they said, had its foundation in Persian Zoroasterism. The Eranos Circle and their beliefs would have a profound influence on the Weimar Republic and Hitler’s National Socialist Party, which still affects Christianity today. (Note: Zoroasterism postdates the Mithras Cult so this could not have been possible.) Eventually this would turn into such things as the Social Gospel movement that infects Churches in America today.
It should be pointed out that there are over 800 Protestant denominations in America, and many of them have not been infected. There is a similar situation in the Catholic Church, where organizations like the Cardinal Newman Society are working to drive socialism from the Church.
Socialism vs. Capitalism – The False Choice
In order to attack Christianity and free market economics, Marx would separate political economics from morality, creating the opposite of natural law, what we now call moral relativism. Since the Christian concept of Natural Law did not allow for the separation of morality from political economics, Marx needed a “straw man” that he could argue against without attacking Christianity directly, or bringing his own immorality into question. To do this he used a fictional political economy he got from the anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809 –1865). Proudhon said that private property is theft and coined the word capitalism as a system that worships money.
Marx used Proudhon’s arguments against private property and capitalism in Das Kapital where he made his version of political economy the cornerstone of Marxist ideology. Capitalism was described as a system based on private property and wealth that was totally devoid of any moral responsibility. It became a defamatory word used to malign Hebrew and Christian beliefs, especially their beliefs in the free-market and the middle class, without attacking them directly. A point to be made here is that socialism never attacks the elite, only the middle class, which is called the bourgeoisie in either French or German. In fact, Owens and Engels were wealthy, controlling the worldwide market for cotton and wool.
Marx and Proudhon would define Marxism as a natural outgrowth of capitalism, where socialism is presented as an intermediate step, calling capitalism the “Philosophy of Misery.” This definition of capitalism, socialism, and Marxism is taught in American universities today as history, where feudalism supposedly evolved into capitalism, which would evolve into socialism, and finally Marxism – even though Marx and Proudhon made it all up. Today this fictional view of history is at the heart of an argument as to which is better, Capitalism or Socialism. The purpose of this argument is to weigh the worship of money against the worship of power, a nihilistic argument that ignores the laws of God; and socialism wins either way.
Progressives vs. Radicals
The difference between Owen and Marx was that Owen wanted to impose his New Moral Order gradually by attacking the system from within, while Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wanted to impose socialism through a worldwide revolution. This shows that the idea in which there is an inevitable historical process that will result in socialism and then Marxism is a complete work of fiction. However, it does comply with the pagan belief that we have no free will.
Owen’s religion would result in the Fabian movement in England and the progressive movement in the United States, while the Marxists would become known as radicals. The radicals began to take form in 1848 with the Communist Manifesto and the creation of the First International organization in 1864. This would grow into a worldwide movement called the Comintern, with the First International Communist Congress being held in 1866 in Geneva. The Progressive’s received their first legal recognition at the Hague Conventions in 1899 and 1907, which produced a plan for “World Peace” through the creation of a world court and a set of international laws. The ultimate objective of these efforts was a one world socialist government, sometimes called a World Federation, or the New World Order – the stated goal of both radicals and progressives.
Marx and the Radicals
Traditional Marxist theory held that the concept of totalitarian ideology could only be accomplished through a worldwide revolution by the working class, who would rise up against their bourgeoisie oppressors. While the bourgeoisie were demonized as being rich industrialists, it was the elite who truly owned the multi-national corporations and wanted to destroy the middle class. After this destruction, the ruling class would then use force and coercion as their basis of domination, imposing every aspect of the socialist worldview at once.
The trigger for Marx’s worldwide revolt was supposed to be the outbreak of a massive prolonged war. However, when the First World War began, the Western factory workers who were supposed to rebel didn’t do so. Instead they clung to their Christian worldviews and patriotically defended their countries.
Towards the end of 1922, the Comintern began to ask itself: why workers around the world hadn’t risen up in support of Marxism? On Lenin’s initiative, a meeting was organized at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow to address this issue; their initial conclusion was that success and prosperity in the West had blinded people to their need to revolt. Socialists basically said that people were living too well to know that they were being taken advantage of, a criticism that is still leveled against American citizens today. If socialism was to succeed, a new method needed to be found for its implementation. Today we call what they came up with: Political Correctness and Multiculturalism, together called neo-Marxism sometimes called Cultural Marxism. This is discussed in much more detail in the book.
Progressives and neo-Marxism
The purpose of neo-Marxism is to implement the socialist faith over time by persuading people to embrace each element of that faith one piece at a time – bringing socialism and Marxism together. This would be accomplished by turning specific groups into victims of society, so as to convince people that Western civilization is a corrupt system that is unworthy of support. Together with something called Critical Theory, neo-Marxism would criticize every aspect of American life as being wrong. One way to understand the purpose of political correctness and multiculturalism is to watch Stephen King’s movie “Needful Things,” and see how each person or group is pitted against another, the real purpose of multiculturalism.
Economics
What we today call free market economics was actually the product of the Christian Church and the Late Scholastics – which is where our founding fathers got it from; but contrary to popular belief, the concepts of free market economics and free trade are not synonymous. Modern history books assert that Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) and Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) invented the modern science of economics, but it just isn’t so. The first proposed concept of economics as a separate discipline originated with Alfred Marshal in 1890. Textbooks say that Adam Smith was the father of American economics; but in reality Smith borrowed his ideas from America, not the other way around. The myth says that Smith supported free trade and that each individual should do what is in his or her own best interest. The truth is, Smith was a Reverend and believed in the concept of Natural Law, where ones’ best interest is not obtainable in this world. He was also opposed to what we today call free trade.
About Marx, the economist Thomas Sowell points out, “[T]here is no premise, doctrine, or tool of analysis in economics today that is derived from the writings of Karl Marx.” In fact, Marx called his own work “Scheiße,” as none of it was original.
The concept that socialism is a system of economics began when people rebelled against the Fabians and their socialist faith, calling it a heresy. As a result, socialism as a faith would be redefined under the concepts of social democracy, giving rise to the Humanist movement. From this point on, the word socialism itself would come to be described only in economic terms, accounting for the Dictionary definition. The Fabian leader Sidney Webb would codify the concept that socialism is strictly an economic system, when he persuaded the Royal Commission of London University to declare economics to be a science.
On February 20, 1900, Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary, “This divorce of economics from metaphysics is a great gain, that is, for the advancement of scientific socialism in the English speaking world.” She admitted that the coup had been achieved by packing the University of London Commission with Fabians - thus hiding the spiritual aspect of the socialist faith – separating economics from morality.
Ricardian Socialism and Free Trade
The modern concept of free trade comes from the socialist David Ricardo (1772 – 1823), who worked with Owens’ partner Jeremy Bentham to produce what became known as Ricardian Socialism. In time, Ricardian Socialists and Owenite Socialists would converge creating a foundation for both Fabian and Marxist economics. The goals of Ricardian Socialism is the destruction of all world governments and the use of free trade to redistribute wealth, while redefining wealth in terms of labor, instead of capital investment. About the true nature of free trade Marx said, “The protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution.” Like the graduated income tax, free trade is a socialist invention, championed by Marx.
The return of the Latifundia
Kevin Bales is the President of Free the Slaves, an associate of Anti-Slavery International. Bales estimates some 27 million people labor as slaves – more than at any time in history. He describes the situation very well saying: “One of the striking qualities of the post-Cold War globalization is how easily business and government in the capitalist democracies have abandoned the values they putatively espoused for forty years during the struggle against communism - individual liberties and political legitimacy based on free elections. Concern for human rights, including freedom of assembly for workers wishing to speak for themselves, has been pushed aside by commercial opportunity. Multinationals plunge confidently into new markets, from Vietnam to China, where governments routinely control and abuse their own citizens.”
The truth is free trade and international globalization is about making money through the use of slave labor; an abomination having nothing to do with free market economics. The shoes you wear, and the carpet you stand on were most likely made by slaves in Pakistan, India, China, Brazil, the Philippines, or Vietnam. They make the TV you watch and grow the rice that fed the woman who wove the cloth for your curtains.
While the slaves who manufacture consumer goods keep the return on investment high, the slave trade itself is a booming business, worth tens of billions of dollars. While illegal in every country in the world, today the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) view slavery as an integral part of trade, making a statement about the value of human life.
Bales points out: “Unlike Chattel Slavery of the past, where one person owned another, complete with a bill of sale, slavery today doesn’t care about such subtleties; they simply buy, kidnap, or mandate forced labor, that is used until it is no longer required” – just like ancient Rome. In China, workers are paid but can never escape a system where usury keeps them in debt, while in India the caste system allows those in the upper classes to use the lower classes as tools. In Brazil, native Indians are simply abducted from the jungle, being fed just enough to grow crops for ethanol until they are no longer needed. The most enslaved people in the world are Christians, and their most prominent oppressors are Muslims and Hindus. Saudi Arabia controls most of the Muslim slave trade, luring Filipino Christians to the Middle East on promises of employment where they are pressed into slavery.
Domestically cheap foreign labor is imported into the United States, both legally and illegally, replacing citizens. This includes “temporary” guest worker programs like the H-1B program where engineers, mathematicians, and scientists are being replaced with workers from India and China. Last year some 3 million foreign workers were imported under these programs, taking the same number of jobs Obama says he created during his 2012 State of the Union Speech.
Lost Knowledge
While portrayed as a modern system, socialism is actually the second oldest faith in the world. Around 1946, the writer and ex-Soviet spy, Whittaker Chambers, converted from socialism to Christianity and provided congressional testimony that contributed to setting the socialist movement back nearly 60 years. Chambers describes socialism as posing the age-old question: God or Man?
“It is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ It is the great alternative faith of mankind, Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man's relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.”
Ronald Reagan credited Chambers for his conversion from a “New Deal” Democrat, posthumously awarding Chambers the Medal of Freedom.
The apostle Paul warned us of what was coming in 2 Timothy 3, where he said: “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”
Who is right?
Socialism is “a permanent revolution, terrorism and bloodshed for revolution's sake. There is no purpose to be attained; violence to the point of paroxysm is its only objective. This is what distinguishes Satanism from ordinary human sinfulness.”
– Karl Marx
We began this series of articles with the question: who is right, Fox business pundit Stuart Varney, Governor Rick Perry, the dictionary, or GOP strategist Frank Luntz? As it turns out, Luntz comes the closest when he says that Marx invented capitalism as a way of attacking Western Civilization. Unfortunately he missed the most important part – socialism is a pagan faith that has tormented mankind for some 6,000 years. It is a shining lie that corrupts our Christian nation where people are told that socialism is simply a matter of economics. The truth is that a Christian cannot be a socialist because it is a sin to steal or covet your neighbor’s property; but Christians cannot be capitalists either, because we have a moral obligation to give and receive freely – putting the laws of God ahead of the unrestrained quest for profit.
Read the Book
If you liked this series, or it helped you to understand what is happening to our country today, you should purchase: Totalitarianism: How the Socialist Faith is Destroying America. This article is about 4,000 words, while volume 1 of the book is over 160,000 words – providing a lot more information. It is imperative that we Americans understand what is broken; otherwise we will be duped into working against our own best interest.
Information contained in the book will challenge almost everything you believe to be true. It describes an ongoing war between Hebrew-Christianity and Socialism, between Good and Evil, and why America is currently losing that war. Central to this description is a documented assertion that Socialism is a faith, the only definition that explains its actions.
Book Summary
Totalitarianism: How the Socialist Faith is Destroying America
Ray Peach Bio
The Daily Bell
Facebook IPO Is US Intel Operation?
Media reports suggest that Facebook will file for an IPO this week that could value the company at $100 billion — and leave the company sitting on $10 billion in cash. I'm not a financial analyst, so I'll leave it to Wall Street to discuss and debate that valuation. But the fact is this newfound wealth could not only allow Facebook to solve its biggest business challenges, it could also help Facebook finally achieve its longstanding goal to change how marketing works. So how should Facebook use its IPO windfall?
− Nate Elliott's Blog
Free-Market Analysis: No, we don't believe the hype. It's directed history, perhaps, not reality. Zuckerberg is in his later twenties. Did you ever meet anyone who'd built a US$100 billion company in a single decade, much less at a time when most young men and women are still deciding on career choices?
It strikes us as a dominant social theme of sorts, despite all the excitement that the IPO has caused (see excerpt above). The media is full of breathless adulation regarding Facebook and Zuckerberg.
We're supposed to accept this narrative unquestioningly. We don't.
There is a group of impossibly wealthy families, in our view − a power elite initially based in the City of London − that controls central banking around the world. This handful of families uses trillions in cash flow to aid in the construction of what is popularly known as the New World Order.
This NWO is not erected without a good deal of effort, and what we call the Internet Reformation has proven to be a stumbling block. The information revealed on the Internet has generated extreme opposition to what the NWO families are trying to do, along with their enablers and associates.
In order to overcome this opposition, the power elite has launched a series of false flags that are intended to make the Internet more confusing to the opposition and more supportive of its efforts.
Facebook, from what we can tell, is a kind of false flag intended to gather huge numbers of users in an environment that will be – at least gently – pro-globalist. Or at least useful to the globalist agenda.
Why do we believe that Facebook is a kind of false flag? The biggest tip-off in our view is Facebook's astonishing popularity. It's simply another social networking site but it's one that's attracted nearly a billion users. Is it really so much better than other such facilities?
No ... the barriers-to-entry seem fairly modest to us. What probably differentiates Facebook from other such facilities is not its technology or brilliance but its backers.
When a company gets this big this fast it seems to us that there are always the powers-that-be lurking close by. In this case, Zuckerberg seems to us to have the requisite pedigree for someone that would be subject to elite cultivation.
We note a "big" movie has been made about his life. This, too, is a kind of red flag. When the elites are involved in a sizable promotion, one tool seems to be a Hollywood movie. Supposedly, Julian Assange – who also may function as a kind of false flag, in our view – is also getting a movie. He already has a book.
What's even less debatable than the evident hype surrounding Zuckerberg and Facebook is the reality of the facility's initial funding. There is almost no doubt – so far as we can tell, anyway – that the initial funding Facebook received was in part organized by US Intel.
An article posted at Advent of Deception, entitled "Behind Facebook—A New World Order Agenda?", seems to show us clearly the kind of capital that Facebook was able to amass...
Facebook's first round of venture capital funding ($US500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome 'The Diversity Myth', he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC.
The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company's key areas of expertise are in "data mining technologies".
Breyer also served on the board of R&D firm BBN Technologies, which was one of those companies responsible for the rise of the internet. Dr. Anita Jones joined the firm, which included Gilman Louie. She had also served on the In-Q-Tel's board, and had been director of Defence Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defence.
She was also an adviser to the Secretary of Defence and overseeing the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for high-tech, high-end development.
This makes plenty of sense, of course. The way to control and promote promising technologies is to fund them. By funding some technologies lavishly – and ensuring they are able to avoid inconvenient run-ins with the US legal and regulatory community – one can likely build a successful company fairly easily.
Of course, it's perhaps the luck of the draw as to whether a company grows to the size of, say, MySpace or gets as big as Facebook. But in either case, one is struck by the paucity involved in the actual business model. Facebook's content is furnished by its users – and user information is then resold to advertisers.
The model is simplicity itself and involves little creative content. This is probably one reason why Facebook is constantly getting into trouble over its privacy policy. The company really has nothing to offer but user-driven data.
The more of it that the company can extract, the more valuable the company becomes. It is perhaps, therefore, the first company in history where the business model is based almost entirely on spying.
Google does much the same thing, but at least Google provides a search algorithm. Facebook's business posture is almost irredeemably hostile to its users. It's a strategy based on a kind of deception.
The data Facebook gathers is valuable to more than just advertisers. Anyone who investigates Facebook in an unbiased way will find clear evidence that the website is being used for "Intel" purposes, much in the same manner as Google.
There is plenty of admitted precedent for this sort of thing. Project Mockingbird comes to mind. Such gambits show clearly that top companies and their leaders work very closely with Anglosphere spying operations.
The agencies themselves are supposedly hard at work supporting the safety of their respective nations. But in fact, the over-riding focus of Western intelligence has little to do with national security and much to do with building global government. At the very top, they probably work for the "families." That's where the real agenda is set.
In his blog on Facebook, Elliot points out that the cash that Facebook will supposedly generate from its IPO will come in handy in building a "real" company out of one that is playing "small ball."
He makes the point that "marketing doesn't work very well on Facebook," and that Facebook's revenue model is "pretty simplistic"...
He writes: "For Facebook to become the company it wants to be (and the company investors want it to be), they need to swing for the fences ... Building or buying an ad exchange or a sell-side platform is one obvious way to do this; and they need to work hard on other creative and profitable (and legal) uses of their data as well."
Boil this down and what Elliot is saying is that he is puzzled by Facebook's business model and doesn't believe it's sustainable. And this is the company that Wall Street is valuing at US$100 billion!
Elliot also points out that Facebook isn't especially popular overseas, certainly not as popular as it is in North America and Europe. In countries where there is a lot of "social media," Facebook is doing poorly: Russia, Japan and Korea. Facebook apparently isn't even offered in China.
We're not surprised, of course. Facebook is most popular where Western Intel agencies have the most sway and can exercise the most influence. China doesn't want Facebook gaining a foothold for obvious reasons.
The idea that Zuckerberg is some sort of rogue genius whose implacable vision has swept the world is unrealistic, in our view, and that's putting it mildly. In fact, we're grateful to the Internet for revealing the larger promotional patterns of the Anglosphere power elite when it comes to "global brands" and their marketing.
We used to believe the normative narrative, but no more. We "get it" now. In the 20th and 21st centuries anyway, business and large-scale technology applications are a kind of directed history. Those who are about to try to invest in the Facebook mythology ought to bear this in mind.
If Facebook is not what it seems, then what is it? And if it is something other than what it purports to be, then is it built to last? Or will it be thrown over as soon as it has served its purpose – or when something more useful comes along?
Conclusion: These are not, of course, the normal investing questions that one might ask. But then, these are not normal times.
EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE THIS RIGHT NOW!
If you don’t come to democracy, democracy will come to you!
Wellstone: They Killed Him – preview
Who is Esau-Edom?
The Life, History, Genealogy, Prophecy, Predestination, and Modern Identity of the Biblical Esau
By Charles A. Weisman
(1991)
Concrete Canvas Shelters '09
In the Crosshairs | Farm Wars | BlogTalk Radio
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Chemtrails and Breast Cancer, Etcetera
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Nature is the true healer. The physician is only nature's assistant.
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Difference in blood pressure between both arms 'reveal real health risk'
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Marine 'claims to have had threesome with Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson'
A former US Marine reportedly claims to have had threesomes with the abdicated King Edward VIII and his wife Wallis Simpson in a new book.
America got "nuked" in 12,500 BC!
Sibel Edmonds’ Boiling Frogs
BFP Exclusive: U.S. Transit Hub-Base in Kyrgyzstan for Afghan Heroin
Henry Makow
US was Target of Libyan-Style "Revolution"
The difference between the US Civil War and the Libyan "revolution" is that Russia came to America's rescue in 1863 but did not intervene on Libya's behalf in 2011.
The US Civil War took place for reasons similar to the "Arab Spring" revolution that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi.
Yes folks, Gadhafi may have been the Abraham Lincoln of our day.
In 1832, President Andrew Jackson ended the Charter of the Rothschild-controlled Bank of the United States. This Central Bank had given the Rothschilds exclusive right to create money and control of the US economy.
The bankers decided that the US had to be weakened by civil strife and brought to heel. It was intended that the northern states should become a British colony again, and the southern states should be dependent on France.
According to Gertrude Coogan, "the American Civil War was planned in London in 1857." (The Money Creators, p. 179.)
The bankers' plan would have succeeded but for the intervention of Tsar Alexander II. He warned the "Allies" that an attack on the North would be considered an attack on Russia. He sent his Atlantic and Pacific fleets to New York and San Francisco to make the point. The bankers' backed down but made a mental note: Remove the Tsar.
The difference between the US in 1863 and Libya in 2011 is that Russia did not come to Libya's aid.
Like Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, Muammar Gadhafi was resisting Rothschild world hegemony. An article in The New American, explains how Gadhafi became an outcast after being a "trusted ally" for so long:
According to more than a few observers, Gadhafi's plan to quit selling Libyan oil in U.S. dollars -- demanding payment instead in gold-backed "dinars" (a single African currency made from gold) -- was the real cause. The regime, sitting on massive amounts of gold, estimated at close to 150 tons, was also pushing other African and Middle Eastern governments to follow suit.
And it literally had the potential to bring down the dollar and the world monetary system by extension, according to analysts. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a "threat" to the financial security of the world. The "Insiders" were apparently panicking over Gadhafi's plan.
When Abraham Lincoln eschewed the bankers' exorbitant rates and financed the war by creating "greenbacks," the bankers panicked.
Their house organ The London Times, feared that, “if the US furnished its own money without cost, it would be without debt and would have all the money necessary to carry on commerce. It would become prosperous beyond precedent... [It] must be destroyed."
Gadhafi was shot down in the dessert like a dog; Abe Lincoln was murdered at Ford Theater.
Both the US Civil War and the Libyan revolution were instigated by the bankers to undercut opposition to their satanic world government agenda.
The final irony is that now, the US is the Rothschild's chosen goon menacing Iran, the last hold-out.
"Our watchword is force and make-believe," say the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
But the greater bondage is a mental and spiritual one: "Make-believe."
Our true condition is hidden from us by the mass media which diverts us with sex, lies and trivia.
---
This account is indebted to Andre Krylienko, The Red Thread, pp. 127-129
Related- Illuminati Murdered at Least Two More Presidents
Henry Makow
Resist Biometrics - Your Liberty Depends on It
The vision of the goyim as cattle is coming true. Biometrics is the human equivalent of a dairy cow's ear tag.
It's official. The biometric cataloging of the human race has begun. India's intent to record its entire nations' 1.2 billion people by iris and fingerprint scans signals a devious high tech human monitoring and control agenda.
Although no one ever asks for such systems, biometrics will be sold to the populace as cool, sexy, convenient, safe and secure but will eventually prove to be a living hell for everyone on planet earth. Most just don't know it yet.
--- To surveil and identify, sold as to serve and protect
In order to recognize biometrics as the human equivalent of a dairy cow's ear tag, a brief explanation is in order. One of many current biometrics systems is referred to as "facial recognition" technology.
When someone volunteers to get their drivers' license or passport, photos are required to have an unobstructed, relaxed, static, straight-on portrait face. The subjects' photo is then digitized and entered into a computer.
Via biometric software algorithms, the constant inter-relational dimensions are measured, such as height, width, relation of the nose to the eyes, mouth to chin's end etc.
Facial expressions, such as smiling for instance, alter these ratio calculations and are no longer allowed during photography. Based upon these unique facial landmarks, an identifying number is arrived at, assigned and data based. Biometrics standards are also internationalized.
Similar biometrical examples in sporadic use include fingerprint, palm, retinal & iris scans, gait and speech recognition and cranial thermal (measuring unique thermal heat signatures of a persons' scalp) recognition.
In order to operate, these biometrics systems require some kind of input device to connect the real world with database, such as a person placing their hands on a scanner or peering into one.
Facial, cranial and gait recognition rely on vast networks of un-invited CCTV video cameras which, not surprisingly, account for their dramatic weed-like proliferation into society.
The physically dangerous full body x-ray scanners used at U.S. airports (now thankfully banned in several countries which initially had them) can peer right through clothing and record and store a 360 degree biometric profile for future use (travelers' personal ticket and/or passport info is stored in conjunction with their scan.)
Similar existing street level systems can scan anyone's body as they walk down the sidewalk without their even knowing it. These real time scans can then be compared to existing databases (which a subject previously provided at the airport, as example.)
Ultimately, biometrics offers a means to identify, surveil and monitor an entire populace's actions and whereabouts in real time. (See DARPA's Total Information Awareness Network)
BUILDING THE DATABASE AND GROOMING THE POPULACE
In February 2008, at a cost of one billion dollars per year, the FBI awarded a ten year contract to Lockheed Martin to develop a giant database of biometric data including fingerprints, iris scans, and DNA, which the FBI refers to as the "Next Generation Identification" (NGI). The goal is to have such personal data from every human being on file.
How perfect it is then that Lockheed Martin also be responsible for both the Canadian and British Census.
Like with any indoctrination form, it's important to get children friendly with biometrics as early as possible. SONY and Microsoft use facial recognition in their latest Playstation and XBOX. Why not - it's fun! Many schoolchildren are thumb scanning to get school lunches or take out library books. Children’s cartoons abound with biometric references.
Familiarizing society with biometrics is critical to its adoption. Through "patient gradualism" (or in similar military terms, "mission creep"), the slow change takes place while minimizing resistance and reaction. Humans are the most adaptable beings on the planet and if perceptions appear natural, we tend to accept them.
PERSONAL STATEMENT
I refuse to submit to a biometrics photo, iris or thumb scan. As a result, I am no longer able to legally drive a car, or get on a commercial airplane (international or domestic), despite 23 years on the road without a single accident or ticket (an insurance company's actuarial dream), as driver's licenses and passports now employ this loathsome technology.
You have to ask yourself: 'what's your own personal line in the sand'?
Michael Collins was instrumental in gaining Ireland's' independence from the British Crown.
He proved an indefatigable adversary who overcame Britain's' best not only because of his highly unorthodox (read: CREATIVITY) tactics but also undoubtedly due to the fact that the British authorities had no knowledge of him!
They had no known pictures, profiles or whereabouts of the man. Such un-predictable wildcards terrify monolithic oligopolies. Collins managed to free the Irish, from the back of a bicycle. If alive today, I doubt Collins would have submitted to biometrics either.
I recommend the movie "Michael Collins" with Liam Neeson as an introduction to the man.
We still have the power of choice, for the most part, as to who gets what information about ourselves but the only sure way to secure this information is to never divulge it in the first place. In an information war, databases are the weapon of your foe.
Observe wild animals in nature. They carry no I.D., roam as they please, occupy no database and yet somehow they are able to thrive. They are free.
As it stands, your average crow stands freer than most humans.
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--- References and suggested reading:
Citibank to roll out voice biometrics http://www.zdnet.com.au/citibank-to-roll-out-voice-biometrics-339306609.htm?feed=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zdnetaustralia+%28ZDNet+Australia%29
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6309917.stm (make sure to take in readers' comments at that link)
http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=837 "One generation is all we need"
http://www.wethepeoplewillnotbechipped.com/main/news_cats.php?cat_id=39 (excellent biometrics & implantable microchip news archive)
A World Without Water
full documentary
Gallon of Freshwater: Worth More than Gas
Uploaded by ZeroSixtyFive
April 30, 2011
Within the next 20 years, the price for a gallon of freshwater may be higher than the current price for a gallon of gas. The water crisis has been created only in the last two or three decades, largely invisible to those who live in areas full of freshwater. But not for long.
For more Socio-Economics videos, click here
Henry Makow
Philo: "Every Good Man is Free"
"You can't feel good without being good." We spend our lives trying to skirt this truth.
Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Christ, reminds us that freedom is a spiritual state. A reader, Al Thompson, reviews Philo's inspiring essay, "Every Good Man is Free."
Every Good Man is Free: A Review
EVERY GOOD MAN IS FREE
By Walter Allen Thompson
Real Currencies
How about Wealth Preservation?
Ellen Brown’s Public Banking
Ron Paul's Foreign Policy
By Dick Eastman
12-31-11
Ron Paul's great foreign policy -- "privatize military" and sell it all (Patriot Missiles, carriers, other systems) to China as earnest money on the debt we owe.
Ron Paul will end the wars? Sounds great? But the sabotage and give away of our military is already complete. Might as well take credit as a humanitarian for a law that dead whores don't have to suck pipe any more.
Meanwhile, his economic policy is extreme debt slavery. His gold system is a giant increase of real debt, forcing us to repay (plus compounding interest) in gold what was borrowed in thin-air bank credit. His competing currencies allows the international Money Power organized crime to have their own money system, while our pensions and wages and domestic business revenues will all be paid in money that constantly INFLATES against the creditor's money in which your debts have to be paid. His "Austrian-school" theory of economic depressions, that they are caused by inflation is nothing but a lie to keep people from doing the one thing that will end this deflation and put things right -- we need REPUDIATION (not Ron Paul's liquidation of us to pay creditors) -- we need INFLATION THROUGH SOCIAL CREDIT DISTRIBUTION TO ALL HOUSEHOLDS OF THIN-AIR FREE PURCHASING POWER CREATED DEBT-FREE AND INTEREST-FREE BY THE NATIONAL TREASURY (not turning over money creation to the Rothschilds who own all the gold).
This nation is being robbed and drained of its military (Jews and the Communist Criminals who enslave China have used 9-11 and other information-warfare deception to get America to war against innocent Islam -- the enemies of Zionism and Chinese Communism which is controlled by organized crime allied with the Jewish Mafia (Zionism). But the US is all used up. Sure they are going to let Ron Paul call it all back now -- because they are ready for the next phase of our destruction -- the Ron Paul Austrian Economics plan.
It is not Austrian free-market libertarianism against big government socialism. That language merely hides the fact of anarcho-capitalists running a global slave plantation where organized crime owns the assets and enjoys plentiful sound money and the people live on a slave economy with tokens good only at the monopoly "company store" (i.e., Wal Mart as it will become after all its competitors are dead)
Rather it is a true market economy with honest non-debt money that does not go away (Congress has the right to regulate money -- unfortunately criminal money regulates Congress -- we need the entire Senate replaced (keeping maybe four or five) and 90 percent of the House.) As I was saying, we need money as a public utility that appears free and clear in the hands of households for consumption or domestic saving in a banking system that does not create bank credit, but merely lends savings that people put in time deposits -- where the bankers live on the spread between savings rates and lending rates -- and not on credit loan creation as they do now. (If Ron Paul hates fiat money why give the power to Rothschild, who will create fiat money in the form of loans based on gold reserves in gold standard banks???!!! Unless of course he wants the money system to be 100 percent gold with no fractional reserve credit lending -- which means of course that Rothschild will be the central banker of the world -- with fiat gold power over everyone.
The real issue is Goldbricking Aristocracy versus the Reflationist Jeffersonians (who are for repudiation and national money that originates in households and flows to American businesses financed by their own profit -- not by loans from the gold cartel.
The joke of course is that no reader is capable of facing this truth (not because it is difficult to understand and confirm rationally, but because the predicament is so frightening that mass-denial is maintained simply because people feel the truth would crush their will and sanity if they fully accepted the reality of the situation.
And that is why Ron Paul is your candidate -- and my campaign video doesn't have 600 viewers.
While it is not true that "the only thing you have to fear is fear itself," it certainly is true that your fears are the greatest protection of the organized crime that wants you plundered, raped, enslaved and, for the most part, simply dead.
I have an answer -- but you have to overcome your fear and denial problem before you can hear it.
Rothschild has you checkmated unless you (that is everyone) makes one saving move. Ron Paul is not that move.
Or perhaps I am just kidding -- a conspiracy theory whacko and money crank who hates freedom and doesn't understand free-market economics and hates Ron Paul because Paul is for sound money and liquidation of bad debt and small government.
It's your move, chicken.
MASTERS OF SEDUCTION
Beguiling Americans Into Slavery and Self-Destruction
By Jerry Lynn Ball
(2000)
Farm Wars
Executive Order 13575 Rural Council – Agenda 21
“Obama recently signed EO 13575, establishing the White House Rural Council. The council is a list of the most aggressive agencies and departments in the US government. The all-inclusive council members represent the very agencies and departments most dedicated to forcing the subjugation of the US to United Nations control.”
Gilad Atzmon
The Roots of Christian Zionism: How Scofield Sowed Seeds of Apostasy
Mantiq al-Tayr
Not just for the birds
Stealth Zionism
The Spectator | Coffee House The Spectator Blog
The benefits of religion flow from belief
Most Spectator readers have probably heard by now of Alain de Botton's latest, Religion for Atheists, in which he argues that the benefits of religion are too great to be confined to believers — not least because he wrote the Diary column for this week's magazine. And for those who haven't yet read about the book, let alone read it, they need look no further than Terry Eagleton's brilliant demolition of the argument in The Guardian. Mr. de Botton is, he makes clear, in a very long and not entirely creditable line of those who find religion intolerable for themselves but useful for others, notably the servant classes: Matthew Arnold and Auguste Comte in particular. Indeed Mr. de Botton himself acknowledges that his big idea is not new.
What is downright hubristic is his proposal, which has already found backers, for Temples to Atheism, or places for secular contemplation, the first of which would be a 46 metre high tower in the City of London, designed by Tom Greenall, in which people can go and sit to contemplate their own littleness in the great geological scheme of things. If the idea sounds familiar, that's because we've been here already. Remember the Cult of Reason, established during the French Revolution, which saw the cathedral of Notre Dame converted into a Temple of Reason, with a liturgy specifically devised for a Feast of Reason? The ceremonies devised by Pierre Gaspard Chaumette would, perhaps be a little adversarial for Mr. de Botton's taste but the altar of Liberty, the inscription ‘To Philosophy’ and the portrayal of the Goddess of Reason as a real woman would, no doubt, fit in with his call for secularists to have their own feasts and communal rites.
It is certainly the case, as AN Wilson says in a Spectator review, that, until relatively recently, religious ritual did include unbelievers as a matter of course since those rites focused on participation rather than subscribing explicitly to a creed. But the ‘consoling subtle or just charming rituals’ of religion that Mr. de Botton would like to co-opt for unbelievers are not, I'd say, detachable from the beliefs that inspired them. It's a little like saying that the music and poetry of love are too charming, too consoling to be confined to those who love and should be extended to those who have never been in love or who find themselves incapable of it. The benefits of religion flow, I'd say, from the things believers believe.
Christians believe in the brotherhood of man, for instance, because we believe in the Fatherhood of God, or its feminist equivalent. Christians find more than picturesque appeal in the story of the Good Samaritan, precisely because we believe, as St John has it, that ‘God is Love’. The coming together of believers in religious ritual is not an exercise designed for reinforcing communitarian sentiment; rather the communitarian sentiment flows from the things they do together: prayer and worship. There are many unbelievers who take part in the pilgrimage to Santiago, for instance, but without a belief in the sanctity of St James, the benefits of the pilgrimage should as easily come from a bracing hike in the Lake District. Mr. de Botton's atheism was shaken by Bach's cantatas; well they were written by a conventional, believing Protestant for whom the reality of the sacred texts was a matter-of-fact conviction and that's why they have force. There's a distinct relation between the fruits of religion and the tree.
So Mr. de Botton is welcome to his Temple of Atheism. But I bet you anything, the smallest village church will have more in the way of calm and consolation than this contemporary Tower of Babel.
Baylor, You Have a Problem
By DC Dave Martin
STRATFOR
Germany's Role in Europe and the European Debt Crisis
The German government proposed last week that a European commissioner be appointed to supplant the Greek government. While phrasing the German proposal this way might seem extreme, it is not unreasonable. Under the German proposal, this commissioner would hold power over the Greek national budget and taxation. Since the European Central Bank already controls the Greek currency, the euro, this would effectively transfer control of the Greek government to the European Union, since whoever controls a country's government expenditures, tax rates and monetary policy effectively controls that country. The German proposal therefore would suspend Greek sovereignty and the democratic process as the price of financial aid to Greece.
Though the European Commission rejected the proposal, the concept is far from dead, as it flows directly from the logic of the situation. The Greeks are in the midst of a financial crisis that has made Greece unable to repay money Athens borrowed. Their options are to default on the debt or to negotiate a settlement with their creditors. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union are managing these negotiations.
Square Foot Gardening
All New Square Foot Gardening
Grow More in Less Space!
By Mel Bartholomew
Courage and Confidence
Summon the Giant Within and Take Control of your Destiny
Fact, Fact, Bullsh*t!
By Neal Patrick Stewart
(2011)
The Orion Mystery
Unlocking the Secrets of the Pyramids
By Robert Bauval and Adrian Stewart
(1994)
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