Our conversation with William Blair
of Infraspect
"Humanity is too clever
to survive without wisdom."
— E.F Schumacher
"Power concedes
nothing without a demand. It never did
and it never will. Find out just what
any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice
and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they have
been resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the
[tolerance] of those whom they suppress."
--Frederick Douglass
“Where ignorance is our master, there
is no possibility of real peace.”
—Dalai Lama
“Curiosity is the wick
in the candle of learning.”
—William Arthur Ward
force majeure
n.
Superior or overpowering force
An unexpected or uncontrollable event
[French: force, force
+ majeure, greater.]
A French term
literally translated as "greater force", this clause is included in
contracts to remove liability for natural and unavoidable catastrophes that
interrupt the expected course of events and restrict participants from
fulfilling obligations.
Investopedia Says:
This clause is meant
to benefit both parties in a contract. Force majeure would come into play, for
example, when you buy a house. If the house is destroyed in a fire caused by a
lightning strike, neither party remains obligated.
An unavoidable cause
of delay or of failure to perform a contract obligation in time
Example: A force
majeure clause is often inserted in a construction contract to protect the
contractor from delays due to weather, labor disputes, and other unavoidable
incidents.
midrash
An early Jewish
interpretation of or commentary on a Biblical text, clarifying or expounding a
point of law or developing or illustrating a moral principle
A collection of such
interpretations or commentaries, especially those written in the first ten
centuries a.d.
— n, plural midrashim
A homily on a scriptural passage
derived by traditional Jewish exegetical methods and consisting usually of
embellishment of the scriptural narrative
One of a number of collections
of such homilies composed between 400 and 1200 ad
[C17: from Hebrew: commentary, from darash to search]
midrashic
— adj
altruism
n.
Unselfish concern for the welfare of
others; selflessness
Zoology.
Instinctive behavior that is detrimental to the individual but favors the
survival or spread of that individual's genes, as by benefiting its relatives.
Oxford Dictionary of
Politics
Benefiting other
persons or interest-bearers. The common contrast with selfishness reveals some
variations in the understanding of altruism, which may refer to a disposition,
to an intention, or to behaviour. Hence an altruistic person might intend to
benefit others, but fail to do so when executing that intention. Altruism is sometimes
understood as giving more consideration to others than oneself, and sometimes
as giving equal consideration to oneself and others. Since there are commonly
more ‘others’ than the decision-maker, the distinction usually lacks practical
importance, but it may be significant in two-person cases. In discussions
informed by game theory, a contrast is drawn between reciprocal altruism and
universal altruism. Reciprocal altruists display that behaviour towards those
from whom they have received it, or from whom they expect to receive it.
Universal altruism, often seen as the central ethical prescription of
Christianity, is unconditional. In sociobiological applications, it can be
shown that the survival chances of individuals and groups depend not only on the
incidence of selfishness and altruism, but also on the type of altruism in
question.
— Andrew Reeve
Encyclopedia of Judaism
Concern for or
devotion to the interests of others as a matter of principle. In rabbinic
terms, an altruist is one who performs a good deed or fulfills a precept
disinterestedly or le-shem shamayim---"for the sake of heaven."
Whether a person is attending to his own needs or to those of the community, he
should not concentrate on personal gain, achieving power, or self-glorification.
Similarly, one who occupies himself with Torah "for its own sake"
(li-shemah) demonstrates his love for God and mankind, and is said to
"gladden" both (Avot 6:1). According to the rabbis, motivation is
all-important: the study of Torah "for its own sake" (i.e., for
unselfish purposes) constitutes an elixir of life; when studied for ulterior
motives, however, it acts as a deadly poison (Ta'an. 7a). Yet, in the words of
the Talmud, "man should always occupy himself with Torah study and observance
of the precepts, for even if he does not do so altruistically at first, he will
do so by persevering in the end." Additional light was shed on this
thought by Maimonides: even while mindful of the reward or punishment that his
behavior will incur, a man acquires understanding and in the end he will serve
God and man purely out of love. From Second Temple times onward, the
self-denial and generosity awakened by considerations of le-shem shamayim led
to self-sacrificing acts "for the glory of God" (see Kiddush Ha-Shem).
Oxford Dictionary of
Philosophy
Term coined by Comte
for the disinterested concern for the welfare of another, as an end in itself.
Questions include the reality of altruism (see egoism), and its value. While
altruism is frequently thought to be a cornerstone of Christian ethics, as a
category it is unknown in Greek thought. It was energetically attacked by
Nietzsche as entailing an unhealthy suppression or devaluation of the self,
although in fact there is no evidence that altruistic personalities in general
have particularly low self-esteem. In evolutionary theory behaviour is defined
as altruistic only if it decreases the fitness of the animal, and there is the
corresponding question of how such behaviour could exist and sustain itself.
Claude Henri de
Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon
Auguste Comte
Paul Kurtz
Tikkun Olam
TRIVIUM – QUADRIVIUM
Audio-video tutorials
Our World is Changing:
Looking Beyond 'the 2012'
The Post Sustainability
Institute
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE
COLLECTIVE
Communitarianism is the 'balancing of
the individual's rights against those of the community.' In the US Constitution we are guaranteed
rights that we were born with: life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. That last one, as you know, was to be
'property.' Property is not just
land. YOU are your own property. That was an element of fundamental freedom in
the original draft of the Declaration of Independence.
So how can you 'balance' those rights
with those of the community? The
community has no rights under the US Constitution. Individuals have rights and responsibilities,
but the community as a whole, what is that?
The collective? Whenever you
'balance' or subsume, or subordinate, or consensus-ize the individuals' rights
you'll get something different from what we are guaranteed under the Constitution.
Here's an example.
Let's take two glasses and set them
on a table.
One glass is full of water. Let's
call it a Republic.
The other glass is full of milk.
Let's call it a Communitarian state.
Now we'll get a glass pitcher and set
it on the table.
Let's balance the water with the milk
by pouring them both into the pitcher.
What do you have?
It's not water anymore, is it?
It's milk. Watery milk.
But milk. Not water.
The Third Way.
Communitarianism. Balancing your individual rights with the
'rights' of the community. This is being
pitched to you as the new enlightened form of political discourse. You are 'selfish' if you insist on your
individual rights and freedoms. This is
the justification for Agenda 21-Sustainable Development. For the good of the planet. For everyone's security. For your health. To protect your children. To limit workplace violence. To stop bullying.
All of these things are laudable, but
somehow they always result in more restrictive laws that affect everyone. They
criminalize everyone. In many towns the
Civil Code has been criminalized. What
does that mean? If you don't mow your
lawn it's a misdemeanor.
Will your child have a criminal
record if he calls another kid a 'queer?'
Will you be held responsible if your employee shoots someone and you
knew he was upset over a breakup with his wife?
Will your 15 year old daughter be strip-searched at the airport? Will you lose custody of your 10 year old
because he is obese?
Will you be evicted from your apartment because you smoked on your balcony in violation of a local ordinance? Will you be taxed for driving 15 miles to work instead of riding your bike? Will you be fined for watering your vegetable garden? Will your Smart Meter be used to tell advertisers what to sell you? Will your Smart vehicle with remote shut off capability be shut down by someone in your state capitol while you're driving? Will your neighbor report you to the Community Oriented Policing Unit of your local police department because you seemed to be acting strangely? Will you be denied the right to use the water in your well? Will you be required to pay triple your original electricity rates because your town has decided to go into the power business (Community Aggregate Power Generation)? Will you be required to donate acres of your ranchland for county open space before you can put a house on it? Will you pay years of property tax without receiving any services for it because Redevelopment debt has crippled your city? Will you be required to do your mandatory volunteering before you can get your child into Little League? Will you be accused of not caring about the planet if you question Sustainable Development?
Will you be evicted from your apartment because you smoked on your balcony in violation of a local ordinance? Will you be taxed for driving 15 miles to work instead of riding your bike? Will you be fined for watering your vegetable garden? Will your Smart Meter be used to tell advertisers what to sell you? Will your Smart vehicle with remote shut off capability be shut down by someone in your state capitol while you're driving? Will your neighbor report you to the Community Oriented Policing Unit of your local police department because you seemed to be acting strangely? Will you be denied the right to use the water in your well? Will you be required to pay triple your original electricity rates because your town has decided to go into the power business (Community Aggregate Power Generation)? Will you be required to donate acres of your ranchland for county open space before you can put a house on it? Will you pay years of property tax without receiving any services for it because Redevelopment debt has crippled your city? Will you be required to do your mandatory volunteering before you can get your child into Little League? Will you be accused of not caring about the planet if you question Sustainable Development?
Your rights have been balanced.
Activist Post
Scientists: Creativity
Part of ‘Mental Illness’
By Anthony Gucciardi
The New World Order is
Dead On Arrival
Thoughts At Perhaps The
Most Perilous Time In World History
By Stephen Lendman
10-16-12
How Darwin, Huxley, Terence
McKenna, Dr. Tim Leary, Dr. Ted Kaczynski, (the Unabomber), Jose Arguelles,
Daniel Pinchbeck, and the Esalen Institute launched the 2012 and psychedelic
revolutions – and began one of the largest mind control operations in history.
Association for
Psychological Science
The Science of
Distraction Revealed
The Population Control
Agenda Of The Radical Humanists Who Would Love For You And I To Die
The Common Sense Show
The Amerikan Blueprint
for Enslavement and Eventual Extermination
By Dave Hodges
UNESCO
ENVIRONMENT,
POPULATION, DRUG ABUSE
AND AIDS PREVENTION
UNESCO
MILESTONES
Food scarcity: the
timebomb setting nation against nation
As the UN and Oxfam
warn of the dangers ahead, expert analyst Lester Brown says time to solve the
problem is running out
LEFT HOOK by Dean
Henderson
The Illuminati
Depopulation Agenda
(Excerpted from
Chapter 13: USS Persian Gulf: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)
By Dean Henderson
All-Time Darwin Award:
The Nuclear Industry
Activist Post
The One Most Important
Question Survivalists Can Ask Themselves: Why Are You Trying to Survive?
By Dan and Sheila
Gendron
Dan & Sheila are
the authors of Surviving Survivalism –
How to Avoid Survivalism Culture Shock, and hosts of the podcast, Still
Surviving with Dan & Sheila. For questions about space in their Intentional Survivalist Community or
other survivalist issues, they can be reached at surviving@lavabit.com.
PPJ Gazette
Urban Survival:
Prepare, Survive and Thrive in these dangerous times!
Join Yoda and Marti
Friday & Saturday evening October 19th & 20th, 2012 for this important
series!
LEARN SIMPLE STEPS TO
PREPARE, SURVIVE AND THRIVE IN THESE DANGEROUS TIMES!
Yoda is the pen name
of a seasoned counter-terrorist team leader who works with US and allied
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Listeners will
acquire peace of mind, learning how to plan and prepare actionable tactics,
methods and strategies for natural and man-made disasters in their homes,
workplaces and on the road.
Activist Post
Seeds of Freedom
The story of seed has
become one of loss, control, dependence and debt. It’s been written by those
who want to make vast profit from our food system, no matter what the true
cost. It’s time to change the story.
Seeds of Freedom charts the story of seed from
its roots at the heart of traditional, diversity rich farming systems across
the world, to being transformed into a powerful commodity, used to monopolise
the global food system. The film highlights the extent to which the industrial
agricultural system, and genetically modified (GM) seeds in particular, has
impacted on the enormous agro -biodiversity evolved by farmers and communities
around the world, since the beginning of agriculture.
Seeds Of Freedom.info
Seeds of Freedom seeks to challenge the mantra
that large-scale, industrial agriculture is the only means by which we can feed
the world, promoted by the pro-GM lobby. In tracking the story of seed it
becomes clear how corporate agenda has driven the takeover of seed in order to
make vast profit and control of the food global system.
Through interviews
with leading international experts such as Dr Vandana Shiva and Henk Hobbelink, and through the voices of a
number of African farmers, the film highlights how the loss of indigenous seed
goes hand in hand with loss of biodiversity and related knowledge; the loss of
cultural traditions and practices; the loss of livelihoods; and the loss of
food sovereignty. The pressure is
growing to replace the diverse, nutritional, locally adapted and resilient seed
crops which have been bred by small-scale farmers for millennia, by
monocultures of GM seed.
Alongside speakers
from indigenous farming communities, the film features global experts and
activists Dr Vandana Shiva of Navdanya, Henk Hobbelink of GRAIN, Zac Goldsmith
MP (UK Conservative party), Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, Kumi Naidoo of
Greenpeace International, Gathuru Mburu of the African Biodiversity Network,
Liz Hosken of The Gaia Foundation and Caroline Lucas MP (UK Green party).
This film is
co-produced by The Gaia Foundation and
the African Biodiversity Network. In collaboration with GRAIN, Navdanya
International and MELCA Ethiopia .
Scientists to simulate
human brain inside a supercomputer
German cabinet approves
bill allowing circumcision of boys
Are our political
abstractions killing us?
Breaking The Zombie
Programming: We Can Become Conscious!
Leaked Debate Agreement
Shows Both Obama and Romney are Sniveling Cowards
Who is Barack Obama
Really? An Examination of Obama’s Domestic Policies
Darryl Bradford Smith
Interviews John Kaminski
How To Carve Up The
World
Syria, Turkey, Israel
and a Greater Middle East Energy War
By F. William
Engdahl
10 October 2012
STRATFOR
The Election, the
Presidency and Foreign Policy
By George Friedman
The American presidency
is designed to disappoint. Each candidate must promise things that are beyond
his power to deliver. No candidate could expect to be elected by emphasizing
how little power the office actually has and how voters should therefore expect
little from him. So candidates promise great, transformative programs. What the
winner actually can deliver depends upon what other institutions, nations and
reality will allow him. Though the gap between promises and realities destroys
immodest candidates, from the founding fathers' point of view, it protects the
republic. They distrusted government in general and the office of the president
in particular.
Congress, the Supreme
Court and the Federal Reserve Board all circumscribe the president's power over
domestic life. This and the authority of the states greatly limit the
president's power, just as the country's founders intended. To achieve anything
substantial, the president must create a coalition of political interests to
shape decision-making in other branches of the government. Yet at the same time
-- and this is the main paradox of American political culture -- the presidency
is seen as a decisive institution and the person holding that office is seen as
being of overriding importance.
romney exposed
Ron Paul and Ben
Bernanke Debate the Audit the Fed Bill
Daily Paul
Bombshell: Rod Class
gets FOURTH Administrative Ruling "Gov't Offices are Vacant"- All
Gov't Officials are "Private Contractors"
Global Research
Fraudulent Educational
Reform in America
What goes on in America’s schools is
essentially identical to what goes on in the Madrassas of the Muslim world. In
both, orthodox beliefs are taught as truth and critical examination is
discouraged. Two worlds clash in loggerheads.
In the 1960s, I came across a little
book entitled Master Teachers and the Art of Teaching. This unpretentious
little book, written by John E. Colman of St. John’s University, not only
enlightened me as a young university professor but proved to be invaluable. In
it, about a dozen different teaching methods are described along with some
information about the master teachers who designed them. Each of these methods
was used successfully to teach some subjects to some students. None was used
successfully to teach all subjects to all students. Throughout my teaching
career, I found opportunities to utilize many of these methods when the right
situations arose. The lesson I learned from this little book is that there is
no one teaching method that works for teaching all subjects to all students.
Finding the right method for the students at hand is at best an art, never a
science, and is never easy.
Few people understand this. In fact,
teacher training suppresses it. Teaching methods are taught to prospective
teachers as fixed, reliable procedures that never fail when in reality, they
rarely succeed. And although carried out in numerous variations, the
predominant way of teaching in America’s schools at all levels has been the
teacher’s lecture and the student’s need to memorize it. Today the lecture is
often presented in various ways. The student listens to a teacher speak, or
reads a teacher’s words in a textbook, or watches a televised presentation or a
computerized video. And students are asked to memorize some portion of the
presented material. Furthermore, the memorization of presented material is the
most boring way of teaching anyone anything. No one likes having to memorize
stuff. Some teachers, like orators, are better at lecturing than others which
leads many to conclude that the quality of the presentation is what really
matters and that that quality depends on the teacher’s talent. But it doesn’t.
Teaching is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for learning. Human
beings had been teaching themselves and others for millennia before what we
know as a “teacher” ever existed.
The history of education in America
makes this transparently clear. Even the Puritans had ways of teaching their
children, but the first normal school, a school to train students to be
teachers, didn’t come into being until 1839, less than two centuries ago. It
resulted in building a school system modeled on an industrial, manufacturing
model that still controls thinking about education today. Unfortunately it was
faulty then and still is today.
Using this model, our schools are thought
of as factories, the teachers are thought of as factory workers, and students
are thought of as raw material. Each student enters the school system as a
tabula rasa and exits as a book engraved with “knowledge.” The engraver, of
course, is the teacher who is responsible for what is written on the tabulae.
The system is devoted to mass producing educated people, and even anecdotal
observations of people clearly demonstrate that it has never worked. Had it
worked, everyone who attended school would have been equally educated, just
like the buttons produced in a button factory are all alike. Two and a half
centuries of graduate counterexamples absolutely refute the theory.
But so does the experience of most
students. It is the rare graduate of any school on any level who can’t name a
teacher s/he considers exceptionally good. Yet even those teachers never taught
every student in their classes equally well. Some learned a lot, some learned
less, and perhaps some learned nothing. No teacher can be responsible for such
disparate results. Something other than the teacher’s ability must be
accountable for them, because each student in each class was subjected to the
same presentations. Mill’s method of difference must be used to identify the
other, but no reformer is attempting to use it. Blaming the teacher is so much
easier, and putting the blame there proves that the improvement of education is
not the aim of reformers.
Even though we routinely ask children
what they would like to be when they grow up, except in trivial ways, our
schools rarely make attaining their goals possible, because the system is
designed to make products not educated human beings. Prospective college students
are always being told, even by the President, to study subjects that the
commercial community needs to carry out its enterprises. Lindsay Oldenski,
Assistant Professor, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, writes
that the need is to match graduates to the areas where labour demand is
growing. Students are not told to study the subjects needed to become what they
want to be because unless the commercial community wants people who want to be
what they want to be, this society has no place for them in it, which proves
that this society does not exist for people, but that people exist to fulfill
the purposes of the commercial community.
The President says more scientists
are needed. No one asks him why? No one points out that we don’t pay any attention
to those we already have. Why are more scientists who are not going to be paid
attention to needed? What the commercial community wants is not scientists, but
scientists who fulfill the commercial community’s needs. So the schools need
not produce environmentalists or climatologists or anthropologists.
What schools need to produce are
scientists like Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun who was quite
content to use slave labor to produce weapons of mass murder. Our commercial
community needs scientists like that and apparently quite enough of them are
being produced. The educational system exists to produce factory fodder, and
educational reformers are concerned not with improving education but with
producing factory fodder better. But it won’t work! CNN recently released a
list of the 16 colleges in the country that produce the highest paid graduates.
Princeton University was first on the list; yet only 49% of its graduates
considered their jobs to be meaningful. Training for work is not education for
living, not even when highly paid. The average rate of meaningful work for the
16 colleges is a mere 51%. Can you approximate the average for all workers,
especially the lowest paid? What does this say about the quality of life
Americans enjoy?
Our reformers’ love affair with
technology has also shown itself to be ineffective. American love for science
and technology is grounded in religious-like faith, not reality. This love
produces a deeply held belief that science and technology will solve all
problems. That it may not is never even considered, so reformers go from one
technology to another in an endless search for the holy grail of learning.
Television was introduced into college classrooms in the early 1960s. It
enabled one professor to “teach” hundreds of students, but they never learned
very much. A decade later, computers were introduced into the public schools. A
lot of computers were bought; little increase in learning was observed. Now the
classroom is being shifted to the Internet.
But test scores keep dropping.
Despite decades of reforms and billions of dollars spent the American education
system badly needs improvement; yet no relevant improvement is even in sight.
“Most of the nation’s 2012 high school graduates aren’t ready for college, and
their reading skills continue to steadily decline, hitting their lowest level
in four decades, new data show.” In fact, piles of evidence reveal that
Americans are getting dumber. People who have graduated from high school since
the pocket calculator was invented can’t calculate in their heads, not even
simple addition, subtraction, and multiplication. Many people addicted to the
Internet have difficulty reading anything more complicated than a tweet, and
the technical constraints imposed by the internet are making it impossible to
teach spelling and the nuances of grammar. What can seriously be written about
in 140 characters? Articles become mere headlines and headlines become mere
soundbites.
America is, and always has been, an
anti-intellectual society. It is a conservative nation with deeply held
conservative views. This conservatism stems from its widespread fundamentalist
religious values. Numerous progressive attempts to change this have failed and
are failing again. When the Republican Party of Texas recently approved its
1912 Platform, it included the following paragraph:
Knowledge-Based
Education
We oppose the teaching of Higher
Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills
and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education
(OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the
purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental
authority.
And the Alabama Legislature
considered a bill to stop the teaching of evolution as a fact. That even a part
of America’s governing elite tries to enact such reactionary views into law
means that they are attempting to make improving the American schools
impossible. The American elite does not want anyone to improve the American
schools. America’s schools will never be reformed because the culture impedes
it. The reform movements are not about education. They, like everything else in
America, are about money. Both the American political and economic systems rely
on a thoughtless, unintelligent, uneducated populous. Einstein said that it is
a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. In America, it hasn’t. To
become learned, a person, especially a child, must be imbued with curiosity.
But marketing to children and entertaining adults are based on mindless
activities. How does watching a sporting event, a televised situation comedy, a
music-video, a cartoon awaken curiosity? What does any of this make a person
want to learn? The culture doesn’t make Americans want to learn anything about
anything. Such people do not make willing students. Schooling to them is
something being forced upon them; they naturally resist it. Students who don’t
want to learn won’t, and the society has developed no means of awakening
curiosity. For educational purposes, the lack of curiosity is fatal. It cannot
be cured.
A healthy curiosity is the only
weapon against ignorance. Teaching is nothing but the art of awakening the
natural curiosity of students, but learning what is taught is not enough.
Learning whether what is taught makes sense is ultimately essential.
Unfortunately that aspect of educating people is not part of American
education.
So, in a sense, what goes on in
America’s schools is essentially identical to what goes on in the Madrassas of
the Muslim world. In both, orthodox beliefs are taught as truth and critical
examination is discouraged. Two worlds clash in loggerheads. “Where ignorance
is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.”—Dalai Lama
John Kozy is a retired professor of
philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues.
After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a
university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published
a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small
number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials
for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from
that site’s homepage.
Invisible Serfs
Collar
Using Education to Shut
Down Free Choices and then Redefining as Personal Autonomy: Orwell Lives!
IndoctriNation
IndoctriNation Blog
Patton On Communism
And The Khazar Jews
General Patton's Warning
Tikkun olam
The Jewish Approach to Repairing the World (Tikkun Olam)
A Brief Introduction for Christians
By Rabbi Elliott N.
Dorff, PhD, with Reverend Cory Willson
(2008)
A window into the
Jewish idea of responsibility to care for the world—
written especially for
Christians.
The concept of
repairing the world (tikkun olam) is an integral part of Jewish life. It helps
shape Jewish social and family relationships, and even mandates how Jews should
speak to others. But why is it important for Christians to understand this
Jewish approach to life? And what kind of impact can understanding this
fundamental aspect of Judaism have on Christians seeking to develop a deeper
understanding of their own faith?
With insight and
wisdom, award-winning author Rabbi Elliot Dorff provides an accessible, honest
and thorough exploration of this important Jewish concept. With
easy-to-understand explanations of Jewish terms, practices and history, each
chapter explores a different facet touched by the tradition of tikkun olam.
Rabbi Dorff also addresses parallel themes and practices in the Christian
tradition, helping you better understand the roots of Christianity and how the
fundamentals of Judaism relate and reflect your own aspirations to repair the
world.
• Caring for the Poor
• The Power of Words
• The Ministry of Presence
• Duties of Spouses to Each Other
• Children’s Duties to Their Parents
• Parent’s Duties to Their Children
• The Traditional Jewish Vision of the Ideal
World
Birding and Mysticism
Volumes 1 and 2
Glimpse into Illuminati
Sex Practices
"The
investigation into the prostitution ring in Lille ultimately swept up 10
suspects, including [former IMF Chief] Mr. Strauss-Kahn. They knew each other
largely through their membership as French Freemasons."
Jonathan Turley
Barring Bucksom
Beauties: Leading Distributor in England Bars Sale Of Hunting and Shooting Magazines
To Children
Mouse Menudo: Study
Finds Mice Can Sing In Unison
The Next Food Crisis
Will Be Caused By Globalist Land-Grabs and Privatization
Corporate Psychosis:
Are You Exhibiting Symptoms?
A painting of 17th-century Venice, with a view of the banks of the
Grand Canal and the Doge’s Palace, by Leandro Bassano
NY Times
The Self-Destruction of
the 1 Percent
IN the early 14th
century, Venice was one of the richest cities in Europe. At the heart of its
economy was the colleganza, a basic form of joint-stock company created to
finance a single trade expedition. The brilliance of the colleganza was that it
opened the economy to new entrants, allowing risk-taking entrepreneurs to share
in the financial upside with the established businessmen who financed their
merchant voyages.
Venice’s elites were
the chief beneficiaries. Like all open economies, theirs was turbulent. Today,
we think of social mobility as a good thing. But if you are on top, mobility
also means competition. In 1315, when the Venetian city-state was at the height
of its economic powers, the upper class acted to lock in its privileges,
putting a formal stop to social mobility with the publication of the Libro
d’Oro, or Book of Gold, an official register of the nobility. If you weren’t on
it, you couldn’t join the ruling oligarchy.
The political shift,
which had begun nearly two decades earlier, was so striking a change that the
Venetians gave it a name: La Serrata, or the closure. It wasn’t long before the
political Serrata became an economic one, too. Under the control of the
oligarchs, Venice gradually cut off commercial opportunities for new entrants.
Eventually, the colleganza was banned. The reigning elites were acting in their
immediate self-interest, but in the longer term, La Serrata was the beginning
of the end for them, and for Venetian prosperity more generally. By 1500,
Venice’s population was smaller than it had been in 1330. In the 17th and 18th
centuries, as the rest of Europe grew, the city continued to shrink.
The story of Venice’s
rise and fall is told by the scholars Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in
their book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,”
as an illustration of their thesis that what separates successful states from
failed ones is whether their governing institutions are inclusive or
extractive. Extractive states are controlled by ruling elites whose objective
is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of society. Inclusive
states give everyone access to economic opportunity; often, greater
inclusiveness creates more prosperity, which creates an incentive for ever
greater inclusiveness.
The history of the
United States can be read as one such virtuous circle. But as the story of
Venice shows, virtuous circles can be broken. Elites that have prospered from
inclusive systems can be tempted to pull up the ladder they climbed to the top.
Eventually, their societies become extractive and their economies languish.
That was the future
predicted by Karl Marx, who wrote that capitalism contained the seeds of its
own destruction. And it is the danger America faces today, as the 1 percent
pulls away from everyone else and pursues an economic, political and social
agenda that will increase that gap even further — ultimately destroying the
open system that made America rich and allowed its 1 percent to thrive in the
first place.
You can see America’s
creeping Serrata in the growing social and, especially, educational chasm
between those at the top and everyone else. At the bottom and in the middle,
American society is fraying, and the children of these struggling families are
lagging the rest of the world at school.
Economists point out
that the woes of the middle class are in large part a consequence of globalization
and technological change. Culture may also play a role. In his recent book on
the white working class, the libertarian writer Charles Murray blames the
hollowed-out middle for straying from the traditional family values and
old-fashioned work ethic that he says prevail among the rich (whom he
castigates, but only for allowing cultural relativism to prevail).
There is some truth
in both arguments. But the 1 percent cannot evade its share of responsibility
for the growing gulf in American society. Economic forces may be behind the
rising inequality, but as Peter R. Orszag, President Obama’s former budget
chief, told me, public policy has exacerbated rather than mitigated these
trends.
Even as the
winner-take-all economy has enriched those at the very top, their tax burden
has lightened. Tolerance for high executive compensation has increased, even as
the legal powers of unions have been weakened and an intellectual case against
them has been relentlessly advanced by plutocrat-financed think tanks. In the
1950s, the marginal income tax rate for those at the top of the distribution
soared above 90 percent, a figure that today makes even Democrats flinch.
Meanwhile, of the 400 richest taxpayers in 2009, 6 paid no federal income tax
at all, and 27 paid 10 percent or less. None paid more than 35 percent.
Historically, the
United States has enjoyed higher social mobility than Europe, and both left and
right have identified this economic openness as an essential source of the
nation’s economic vigor. But several recent studies have shown that in America
today it is harder to escape the social class of your birth than it is in
Europe. The Canadian economist Miles Corak has found that as income inequality
increases, social mobility falls — a phenomenon Alan B. Krueger, the chairman
of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, has called the Great Gatsby
Curve.
Educational
attainment, which created the American middle class, is no longer rising. The
super-elite lavishes unlimited resources on its children, while public schools
are starved of funding. This is the new Serrata. An elite education is
increasingly available only to those already at the top. Bill Clinton and
Barack Obama enrolled their daughters in an exclusive private school; I’ve done
the same with mine.
At the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year, I interviewed Ruth Simmons,
then the president of Brown. She was the first African-American to lead an Ivy
League university and has served on the board of Goldman Sachs. Dr. Simmons, a
Harvard-trained literature scholar, worked hard to make Brown more accessible
to poor students, but when I asked whether it was time to abolish legacy
admissions, the Ivy League’s own Book of Gold, she shrugged me off with a
laugh: “No, I have a granddaughter. It’s not time yet.”
America’s Serrata
also takes a more explicit form: the tilting of the economic rules in favor of
those at the top. The crony capitalism of today’s oligarchs is far subtler than
Venice’s. It works in two main ways.
The first is to
channel the state’s scarce resources in their own direction. This is the
absurdity of Mitt Romney’s comment about the “47 percent” who are “dependent
upon government.” The reality is that it is those at the top, particularly the
tippy-top, of the economic pyramid who have been most effective at capturing
government support — and at getting others to pay for it.
Exhibit A is the
bipartisan, $700 billion rescue of Wall Street in 2008. Exhibit B is the crony
recovery. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that 93 percent
of the income gains from the 2009-10 recovery went to the top 1 percent of
taxpayers. The top 0.01 percent captured 37 percent of these additional
earnings, gaining an average of $4.2 million per household.
The second manifestation
of crony capitalism is more direct: the tax perks, trade protections and
government subsidies that companies and sectors secure for themselves.
Corporate pork is a truly bipartisan dish: green energy companies and the
health insurers have been winners in this administration, as oil and steel
companies were under George W. Bush’s.
The impulse of the
powerful to make themselves even more so should come as no surprise.
Competition and a level playing field are good for us collectively, but they are
a hardship for individual businesses. Warren E. Buffett knows this. “A truly
great business must have an enduring ‘moat’ that protects excellent returns on
invested capital,” he explained in his 2007 annual letter to investors. “Though
capitalism’s ‘creative destruction’ is highly beneficial for society, it
precludes investment certainty.” Microsoft attempted to dig its own moat by
simply shutting out its competitors, until it was stopped by the courts. Even
Apple, a huge beneficiary of the open-platform economy, couldn’t resist trying
to impose its own inferior map app on buyers of the iPhone 5.
Businessmen like to
style themselves as the defenders of the free market economy, but as Luigi
Zingales, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business,
argued, “Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the
interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering
truly free and open competition.”
IN the early 19th
century, the United States was one of the most egalitarian societies on the
planet. “We have no paupers,” Thomas Jefferson boasted in an 1814 letter. “The
great mass of our population is of laborers; our rich, who can live without
labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate wealth. Most
of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own lands, have
families, and from the demand for their labor are enabled to exact from the
rich and the competent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed
above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families.”
For Jefferson, this
equality was at the heart of American exceptionalism: “Can any condition of
society be more desirable than this?”
That all changed with
industrialization. As Franklin D. Roosevelt argued in a 1932 address to the
Commonwealth Club, the industrial revolution was accomplished thanks to “a
group of financial titans, whose methods were not scrutinized with too much
care, and who were honored in proportion as they produced the results, irrespective
of the means they used.” America may have needed its robber barons; Roosevelt
said the United States was right to accept “the bitter with the sweet.”
But as these titans
amassed wealth and power, and as America ran out of free land on its frontier,
the country faced the threat of a Serrata. As Roosevelt put it, “equality of
opportunity as we have known it no longer exists.” Instead, “we are steering a
steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already.”
It is no accident
that in America today the gap between the very rich and everyone else is wider
than at any time since the Gilded Age. Now, as then, the titans are seeking an
even greater political voice to match their economic power. Now, as then, the
inevitable danger is that they will confuse their own self-interest with the
common good. The irony of the political rise of the plutocrats is that, like
Venice’s oligarchs, they threaten the system that created them.
The editor of Thomson
Reuters Digital and the author of “Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global
Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else,” from which this essay is adapted.
A version of this
op-ed appeared in print on October 14, 2012, on page SR5 of the New York
edition with the headline: The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent.
The Dark Legacy
Texe Marrs
Israel’s Netanyahu and
the Jewish Neocons in America Vow Revenge
Humanity is Rising
(Original Song)
Gilad Atzmon
Stay Human – The
Reading Movie | Thoughts on…
Thunderbolt Project
The
"Impossible" Star
Thunderbolts
The Safire Project –
Testing the Electric Sun
Spirit Science 20 ~
Water
Machines Like Us
Top Stories
Vaccine Rights
Exemptions & Waivers
Run for the Cure
Phoenix Tears: The Rick
Simpson Story
Activist Post
Chinese Plant Compound
Wipes out Cancer in 40 Days, Says New Research
Dissolve Blood Clots
with Nattokinase
Cultured Food Life
SOILTRUST
INSPIRED BY SLOWMONEY
ACRES USA
Acres U.S.A. is North
America's oldest, largest magazine covering commercial-scale organic and
sustainable farming . . .
Modern wheat a
"perfect, chronic poison," doctor says
Wheat Contains Not One,
But 23K Potentially Harmful Proteins
The Price-Pottenger
Story
Nutrition and Physical
Degeneration
A Comparison of Primitive
and Modern Diets and Their Effects
BY
Weston A. Price, MS.,
D.D.S., F.A.G.D.
Member Research
Commission, American Dental Association
Member American
Association of Physical Anthropologists
Author, "Dental
Infections, Oral and Systemic"
Foreword by
Earnest Albert Hooton
Professor of
Anthropology,
Harvard University
With 134 figures
Stone Age Diet - this
is a diet which we all should follow
Our gut evolved in
harmony with the environment
Dimitri Khalezov - WTC
Nuclear Demolition [14/26] - 11. September 2001
erklärt für TV Aussteiger
Dimitri
Khalezov - WTC Nuclear Demolition 1 to 26
a groundbreaking
interview of an ex officer of the Soviet nuclear intelligence
exposing the truth of
the 9/11 events
This Video
series has been censored all through the web.
Why I believe nuclear
demolition fits all the evidence we know about.
They didn't call it
"ground zero" for nothing! Before 911, ground zero only meant the
area below or above a nuclear detonation, after 911, they changed some of the
dictionaries to say it was also the place where terrorists attacked the trade
centers. It's all mind control.
Dimitri Khalezov has
been an expert in nuclear demolition for many years and has an incredible
amount of proof that the buildings were taken down by underground micro nuclear
demolition charges! I've posted some links to other material such as the melted
cars that could have only been done by EMP type effects caused by a nuclear
bomb since there was no jet fuel burning at ground level AND some of these cars
were missing engine blocks! They were totally melted! How do you melt an engine
block when no fire was burning at ground level - many of these cars were 7
blocks away! They were never explained in any way. Also it was never explained
why Tritium levels were 55 times more than normal at ground zero. And of course
we have ALL the strange cancers from first responders and many of them have
died. They were forced to wear "air quality" badges which Dimitri
says were really just radiation detectors in disguise so they could monitor everybody's
exposure and pull people out of the hot zones for a while when their badges
reported higher radiation. Easy to lie to everybody and tell them the badge is
to monitor air quality. That is pure garbage if you think about it. There is
not going to be that much difference in "air quality around such a
relatively small area anyway.
Dimitri even said
that in the 70's he was told that the Americans had authorized the twin towers
to be taken down at the end of their lifetimes with small nuclear demolition
charges! I did some research and it was true! It was determined that only a
nuclear demolition charge could safely bring down both Towers and Building 7
because of their construction. Here's some good information on nuclear
demolition...
Nexus-Magazin
11. September: Die
dritte Wahrheit
Time For Another Look
At WWII
5-7-11
The iconic "Times Square Kiss." If Americans only knew what
they were celebrating!
THE BAD WAR!
The REAL story of World War II that you were never taught!
We all know the story about World War
II. The one about how "The Good Guys" banded together to stop the big
bad Germans (and Japanese) from taking over the world.
.
There is just one problem with this
official version of the history-changing event known as World War II.
. .
It's a LIE!
Nazis Knew About
Normandy
Secret D-Day Disaster
The Real Reason America
Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan
It Was Not To End the
War Or Save Lives
Patton On Communism And
The Khazar Jews
General Patton's
Warning
Edited by Raquel
Baranow
2-18-9
Stop These Wars
By Samisdat14's
channel
The Hidden History of
Jewish Bolshevism & Freemasonry!
How Masonic Wall Street
Banksters Financed The Communist Revolution Which Killed Over 100 Million
People!
THE
NAZI
PRIMER
Official Handbook for
Schooling the Hitler
Youth
Translated from the
Original German 1938
Adolf Hitler’s Struggle
for Peace
Widescreen (full)
J.B. Campbell:
Extremism Online
Behind the Holocaust
By Bruce Campbell
What was Hitler’s
unforgivable sin?
Hitler resisted Judaism. When you’re
a little kid in school or at the movies, resisting Judaism can be made to seem
a very wicked thing. As an adult, you can be made to think that to resist
Judaism is the very worst, the most dangerous thing. When you see what has
happened to people who have resisted Judaism, well – you certainly don’t want
that to happen to you.
Adolf Hitler was, is and will always
be the most dangerous character in history due to his resistance against
Judaism combined with his eloquence in explaining why Judaism must be resisted.
Some of us “Jew-fighters” have a personal motto, delenda est judaica, or
Judaism must be destroyed. Or, Defense Against Jewish Aggression. When we have
studied the history of whatever period you care to name, or just looked at the
news, true humans react with the natural urge to remove this cancer from
society. The most astonishing example of the Jewish mentality was last year’s
murderous assault against the humanitarians attempting to bring food, medicine
and building materials to the people of Gaza. Jewish ways are repellant to the
human mind and are not examined overmuch for that reason.
Judaism can be simply described as
very bad behavior.
Hitler never attempted to destroy
Judaism but rather to isolate it and perhaps remove its adherents from Europe.
This followed attempts to train Jews to be productive human beings in places
such as Dachau and Theresienstadt. As Evelyn Kaye writes in The Hole in the
Sheet, orthodox Jews do not work. They are allergic to work, preferring instead
to occupy themselves by reading the Talmud and arguing endlessly with other
Jews about what they read. So this is a big problem with Jews, their refusal to
work and produce something that is not based on ripping off and confounding
their victims.
Hitler’s attempt to re-train Jews,
which didn’t work, and then to remove Jews from Europe was a work in progress.
Since the Khazars had infiltrated Europe from the east, his plan for relocation
was to put them back in the Pale whence they came. This scheme depended upon
the success of Operation Barbarossa, the great assault against the Soviet Union
which was always the ultimate and stated objective of the National Socialists.
Communism had to be destroyed so that Judaism could be re-confined to its
traditional home in the Pale of Settlement. Hitler’s basic plan for Jews was
somehow to confine and isolate them in a place in which they could be prevented
from doing humanity more harm. This is a very difficult thing to do because
there are so many aspects to Judaism, the most dangerous of which is banking,
which is the main point of this piece.
Because now I’m seeing that the main
purpose of keeping alive the Holocaust is to protect Jewish banking practices.
Before we get to that, let’s examine
the Holocaust briefly. It’s a big subject but the whole subject is demolished
by the videotaped visit to Auschwitz by a young American Jew named David Cole,
which took place back in 1992.
{Read more at the
above link…}
Papal Message to
Berlin's Jewish Leaders
Misuse Of Memory:
Chabad To Decorate Putin With Medal – AT AUSCHWITZ
Pseudo “patriot” Jew
subversives in a panic over ZCF!
http://www.milligazette.com/news/4032-germany-agrees-to-300-million-more-in-restitution-to-survivors
Germany Agrees to $300
Million More in Restitution to Survivors
Holocaust blackmail
continues
Chanukah Journal
Thousands Of
Communities Prepare For Public Chanukah Observance While Russia's PM Embraces
The Holiday's Aspirations
Nov 26, 1999
CHANUKAH
INTERNATIONAL
President Putin Awards
Chabad Rabbi Gold Medal
In Russia, a Top Rabbi
Uses Kremlin Ties to Gain Power
Putin's Support Gives
Clout to Chabad Sect
Alan Cassels
The Ultimate History
Lesson
A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto
Pythagoras – Mad Shaman
or Mathematician?
What is Wisdom?
Consciousness (Kevin Dooley)
Consciousness Is Not In
The Brain
The Quimby Manuscripts
BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCH—Part I
By Horatio Dresser
(1921)
Phineas Parkhurst
Quimby
BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCH—Part II
By Horatio W. Dresser
Free Energy Physics
Explained
Cell Phones are Toxic
to Humans and Earth
Brien Foerster – Lost
Technology of Peru & Bolivia
Hidden Inca Tours
Our most recent and
exciting news is that we are having the DNA of Elongated Skull people of Peru
independently analyzed by 5 laboratories in the US.
Here’s another reason
to drink coffee!
TransCanada’s Police
Abuse Peaceful Blockader
A First Hand Account of
the Arrest (Day 24)
#NoKXL Protesters
Swarm Tar Sands Blockade & Lo…
Monday I was arrested
at the site of Tar Sands Blockade’s tree blockade in Winnsboro, TX. Though some people attend an action of that
size with the intention of being arrested, whether to stop construction
activities or to create media attention, I personally never intended to land
myself in police custody.
As part of the
blockade’s regular ground team, I participate in support operations for those
who spend their days and weeks high above the forest floor. Monday was no different, and I entered the
woods in full camouflage with several tasks in mind, all of which revolved
around resupplying tree sitters with basic necessities: Fresh fruit and
vegetables, vitamins, warm socks, etc.
After a fairly
successful morning of fairly undetected movement, I volunteered to try to draw
the attention of several police – most of whom are off duty officers from other
counties being paid very well to assist in starving out the tree sitters – so
another contingent of ground supporters could send a bag full of materials to
our friends in the canopy.
Theses on Groucho
Marxism
By Bob Black
Ong’s Hat: The
Incunabula Papers
Anarchist News
Black Flame
The Revolutionary Class
Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, Counter-Power Volume 1
By Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt
(AK Books, London)
I came across ‘Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class
Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism’ quite by chance and I’m
so glad I did; it’s one of the best works of non-fiction I’ve read in years.
The authors are a
journalist and an academic, a winning combination because they’ve succeeded in
combining sound scholarship with accessible prose to launch a bold, unflinching
assault on the myth-making, obfuscation, disinformation and downright lies that
have served to distort, discredit and obscure the immense contribution
anarchism and syndicalism have made to the labour movement globally and to
society at large.
Michael Schmidt and
Lucien van der Walt adopt a stance of sympathetic engagement; letting nothing
pass without critical appraisal, yet their approach is nonetheless sympathetic
to the broad anarchist tradition. The result is nothing short of an
exhilarating read. I can’t wait to get my hands on volume two.
Celebrity Net Worth
The Independent
Meet Mansa Musa I of
Mali – the richest human being in all history
A new study has
produced an inflation-adjusted list of the richest people of all time
The 25 Richest People
of All Time
#1 Mansa Musa I – Net Worth $400 Billion
#2
The Rothschild Family – $350 Billion
#3 John D. Rockefeller – Net Worth $340
Billion
#4 Andrew Carnegie – Net Worth $310 Billion
#5 Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov – Net
Worth $300 Billion
#6 Mir Osman Ali Khan – Net Worth $230
billion
#7
William The Conqueror – Net Worth $229.5 Billion
#8 Muammar Gaddafi – Net Worth $200 Billion
#9 Henry Ford – Net Worth $199 Billion
#10 Cornelius Vanderbilt – Net Worth $185
Billion
#11 Alan Rufus – $178.65 billion
#12 Bill Gates – Net Worth $136 Billion
#13 William de Warenne – Net Worth $147.13
Billion
#14 John Jacob Astor – Net Worth $121
Billion
#15 Richard Fitzalan 10th Earl of Arundel –
Net Worth $118.6 Billion
#16 John of Gaunt – Net Worth $110 Billion
#17 Stephen Girard – Net Worth $105 Billion
#18 A.T. Stewart – Net Wort $90 Billion
#19 Henry Duke of Lancaster – Net Worth
$85.1 Billion
#20 Friedrich Weyerhauser – Net Worth $80
Billion
#21 Jay Gould – Net Worth $71 Billion
#22 Carlos Slim Helu – Net Worth $68
Billion
#22 Stephen Van Rensselaer – Net Worth $68
Billion
#23 Marshall Field – Net Worth $66 Billion
#24 Sam Walton – Net Worth $65 Billion
#25 Warren Buffett – Net Worth $64 Billion
