Economic Collapse? We’re Soaking In It!

A rather unobservant or at the very least “unlucky” man strolls across a faulty bridge; weathered, termite ridden, and over-traveled. He hops and skips and jumps about like a brain damaged orangutan without a care in the world. He does this not only because he is oblivious to the fundamental physics behind the workings of the bridge, and the structural signs of a bridge that is on the verge of collapse, but also because numerous highly paid “experts” on bridges have told him it is absolutely safe to do so. The bridge, of course, crumbles right under his feet, and he falls.

Now, if the ground was relatively close to our unfortunate freefalling dupe, the sudden collapse and the painful shock of slapping into the rocky floor would be an understandable surprise.Given only moments between the failure of the bridge and the ultimate conclusion of the spine crunching granite bottom swan dive, one could hardly ponder the situation at all. However, in this event, the ground is not close. In fact, the ravine is dark, and the fall is long. Perhaps three or four years long. In this case, a man has plenty of time to think through the circumstances of his predicament, and realize that eventually, he WILL meet the future like a warm pancake smacking cold linoleum at 200 mph.

If such a man is unable to discern the problems he faces, or to even acknowledge the fact that the ground has given way beneath him, after such a long stretch of time, it becomes very hard to feel sorry for him. But then again, we were all like this man once…

Since the derivatives and housing market implosion of 2008, America and the rest of the world has been spiraling down a chasm some in this country still refuse to take note of. The question has never been whether there “will be” a full scale financial disaster. The end to that chapter of this story was already written years ago. Rather, the real question has been “when” will this inevitable event culminate? Sadly, speculation on the matter has met an irreconcilable road block. The fact is, all the necessary elements are in place to bring down our fiscal shelter not in five years, not in one year, not in six months, but today. That’s right…..the economy as we know it has the potential to derail completely before you wake up for your morning poptart.

Some skeptics might shrug off this statement as mere sensationalism for effect. I wish that were the case. Frankly, I would enjoy writing a little fiction for once. The truth is far too bizarre and disturbing lately.

In the case of economics, traditional views and standards have gone completely out the window in a way that I and probably every other analyst in the field have never heard of or encountered. All expectations are now null and void. Manipulation of the marketplace is no longer a subversive and secretive process, but open government and central banking policy!Who could have guessed five years ago, for instance, that U.S. taxpayers would be saddled with bailouts of the EU? Who could have predicted that global stock market psychology would be dominated for over a year by the debt drama of a country as economically insignificant as Greece? And, who could have foreseen that destructive fiat stimulus policies would soon be common knowledge events amongst the citizens of various faltering nations?

Liberty Movement analysts have been sounding the warning alarm for a long time on the possible consequences of Federal Reserve actions as well as government expansion, but to witness the scale of the fraud being unleashed and the brazen manner in which it is being implemented is something else entirely. Even now, the sheer scope of the systemic collapse is breaking into territory that may not be fully understood for decades to come.

That said, no one with any common sense or eyes to see can deny that the bridge has indeed given way. What awaits us when we finally hit bottom is hard to say, but it doesn’t take a soothsayer to predict an unpleasant outcome.

As the process of destabilization unfolds, the best we can do is stay attuned to political and financial shifts that often go underreported in the mainstream media. This gives us the ability to gauge the nature and speed of the crisis so that we can move to guard ourselves effectively when the time comes. Even the smallest morsel of information can have incredible significance. These holes in the fog are brief, but they reveal much. Some of this data signals a new and powerful wave of change on the horizon, a startling chapter which may be the last for the ailing economy as we know it…

Rise Of The Asian Union

Back at the end of 2008, a China reinventing itself as a consumer hub for the Asian-Pacific region announced a “proposal” to introduce cross border trade of the Yuan. Only a couple Western news sources covered this story, burying the information in their pages on Christmas Day. Now, cross border trade of the Yuan is launching the fiat unit towards reserve status in the Pacific and is hurtling China towards inclusion in the IMF’s new global currency; the SDR.

A recent meeting of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) has led to a predictable clash of philosophies between the U.S. and China. Make no mistake, though, this conflict is a ploy. A soap opera designed to distract us as well as prep us for a trade war to end all trade wars.

The talks focused on progressive trade agreements and multilateral policies designed to shield Pacific nations from the poisonous debt cloud forming over the EU. These agreements rely, of course, on centralization tactics and the removal of protective export and import barriers.Both U.S. officials and Chinese officials WANT more centralization. Do not be fooled. The notion that American people have been fed, however, is that China wants a weak currency and export dominance for selfish ends. The notion the Chinese people have been fed, is that America wants to have its cake and eat it too; demanding a larger piece of the export market while at the same time expecting ultra-cheap goods from overseas. On the surface, they are both right, but go deeper, and you will find the tides of engineered globalism at work.

Ultimately, there is no APEC, at least not one that includes the U.S. There is only the ASEAN trading bloc, which is about to become the Asian Union. That’s right…they are ready. In a barely reported announcement from China, a proposal has been announced for the formation of an ASEAN central bank, designed much like the European Central Bank (ECB), which includes South Korea and Japan as stakeholders. Remember how cross-border trade in the Yuan started as a mostly ignored “proposal” back in 2008? This is not a proposal, this is a promise:

“The bank will also settle China-ASEAN trade in yuan, a step in China’s long campaign to make the yuan, also known as renminbi or people’s currency, a regional currency…”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-china-asean-financial-idUSTRE79Q2F520111027

Its official, folks! The U.S. has just been replaced as China’s go-to trading partner, and a new multinational economic union is about to be formed. There is absolutely no incentive anymore for China to continue investment in U.S. debt or the dollar. Everything between the U.S. and China has been leading to this. All that is left is the spark of trade aggression from either side to seal the deal. This leaves the U.S. to flounder without a life-vest, or to be swallowed by the leviathan otherwise known as the IMF.

Fall Of The European Union

After endless months of hearing about Greece, finally, world markets are starting to realize that there are other more financially important countries to worry about, like Italy, for example. With the replacement of President Silvio Berlusconi, and the budgetary shortfalls of the government in the media view, attentions are beginning to wander over to the EU as a collection of nations all in their own particular brand of trouble, instead of being sidenotes or dominoes in the Greece debacle.

The EU Growth And Stability Pact dictates that EU member states must maintain a national deficit of 3% or less, and a debt to GDP ratio of 60% or less. More than half of EU economies have far exceeded these limitations.

Italy’s “official” debt to GDP ratio stands at around 120%, but the true size of its liabilities may never be known. Greece’s debt to GDP ratio was cited at around 142% by government officials while analysts who use total debt to GDP calculations place it closer to 200%. Germany, France, and the UK all stand at around 80% of GDP (official numbers, again):

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/06/19/europe.debt.explainer/index.html

The situation is so bad in the EU, that some, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, want to end the current EU charter by 2012, and either shrink the number of members drastically, or restructure the agreement to allow more centralized control of member nations and their political policies:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/13/us-germany-eu-charter-idUSTRE7AC0KM20111113

What this means, essentially, is that there will not be a “collapse” of the EU in the traditional sense but, as we discussed here at Alt-Market last year, there will be enough chaos to frighten still sovereign minded Europeans into giving up certain economic and social powers and freedoms. A new EU will form, on the argument that it was “state sovereignty” and a lack of cooperation that caused the crisis to begin with.

This is total nonsense of course. Central banking policies and insane Keynesian borrow and spend strategies around the world are what caused this nightmare, some would say by design (including myself).

So, before the end of 2011, we have seen the formation of an Asian Union, and the first steps towards a more tightly dominated European Union. What’s next?

American Default: One City At A Time

If you thought the derivatives debt game had leveled out in the U.S., and that the worst was over, think again. The bankruptcy of MF Global, a far larger company than Lehman Brothers, has signaled a new resurgence of bank weakness. However, the real danger behind the MF situation is not necessarily its failure, but how it has been hiding its failure.

Not only was MF making risky bets with borrowed money without disclosure, and “window dressing” their quarterly reports to fool investors, but they have also been caught siphoning capital from client accounts to pay off the massive liabilities they have accrued:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/us-mfglobal-exchanges-idUSTRE7A00LG20111102

These kinds of activities are what we usually call “fraud”. But with a company like MF Global, whose reputation was once considered sterling, a much more important and terrifying question arises; how many other banks are doing the same exact thing?

My guess is all of them.

MF Global’s implosion places doubt on all major banking institutions and the legitimacy of their reported health, which means Americans have a lot of soul searching to do as far as where they actually choose to put their savings. But the return of the credit and derivatives specter only hints at the issues ahead…

After the historic credit downgrade of the U.S. by ratings agency S&P, most investors absorbed the shock, then ignored the peril, and began throwing around cash with wild abandon yet again.What many of them have not taken into account, though, is that the downgrade is not over. S&P has stated it will extend the downgrade of the U.S. AAA rating to thousands of municipal bonds after Federal Budgetary issues are decided by the so called “Super Congress”:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-18/municipal-bonds-may-face-downgrades-following-final-u-s-budget-s-p-says.html

These decisions are supposed to be announced by November 23^rd; only weeks away. After the 23^rd, S&P will begin examining state and city debt ratings on a case by case basis. The likelihood of multiple rating downgrades of numerous U.S. cities and counties is very high.These downgrades could lead to explosive levels of municipal bankruptcies. Being that some areas of the country have already filed for bankruptcy without S&P’s help, like Harrisburgh, PA, and Jefferson County, AL, the signs are not encouraging:

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/12/news/economy/harrisburg_bankruptcy/index.htm

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/us-usa-alabama-jeffersoncounty-idUSTRE7A87WW20111110

If you were wondering what the trigger would be for the next round of Federal Reserve quantitative easing, here it is; a combination of bank failure resurgence, along with city and state defaults leading to a clamoring for Federal funds just to stay in operation. Fiat injections in light of this event will dwarf previous measures. In fact, we may long for the days of TARP after the Fed has finished annihilating the dollar in order to plug thousands of ongoing municipal leaks in the hull of our sinking ship.

Make This Time Count

Everyone in the Liberty Movement is tired of dealing with the reality of economic disaster. Hell…I’m tired of writing about it. We know what’s coming. We know each scene of the play as if we had written and performed it before. And yet, we still at times find ourselves surprised, or even staggered, by the violent turning of events. Knowing that a train wreck is coming, and actually seeing it happen, are two very different things. Always keep this in mind…

For many others in this country, there is no frustration, because there is no awareness. This brand of “bliss” carries with it a terrible price; shock and awe at the closing of the curtain. A crushing despair and a haze of financial and emotional trauma. I (and most others) would never wish this feeling on anyone. And so, we continue to point a light upon the dark corners in the hopes that others will see what is there, and in their horror, decide to do something about it.This is the job of every Liberty Movement activist; to share the truth, even if it hurts.

Most will ask for solutions, and there are in fact many, far beyond the scope of this article. But the first and most important is that of dedication, and determination. This time, the time we have from the moment we wake up to the existence of the danger to the moment the danger strikes, is not a time to passively wait, a time to apathetically reflect, or a time to selfishly waste; it is a time to act. Remove your fears and frustrations from the equation and press forward, starting with the people closest to you. If you will not help them to awake to the fast approaching ground below, then who will?

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Time on the Brain

How You Are Always Living In the Past, and Other Quirks of Perception…

I always knew we humans have a rather tenuous grip on the concept of time, but I never realized quite how tenuous it was until a couple of weeks ago, when I attended a conference on the nature of time organized by the Foundational Questions Institute. This meeting, even more than FQXi’s previous efforts, was a mashup of different disciplines: fundamental physics, philosophy, neuroscience, complexity theory. Crossing academic disciplines may be overrated, as physicist-blogger Sabine Hossenfelder has pointed out, but it sure is fun. Like Sabine, I spend my days thinking about planets, dark matter, black holes—they have become mundane to me. But brains—now there’s something exotic. So I sat rapt during the neuroscientists’ talks as they described how our minds perceive the past, present, and future. “Perceive” maybe isn’t strong enough a word: our minds construct the past, present, and future, and sometimes get it badly wrong.

Neuroscientist Kathleen McDermott of Washington University began by quoting famous memory researcher Endel Tulving, who called our ability to remember the past and to anticipate the future “mental time travel.” You don’t use the phrase “time travel” lightly in front of a group of physicists for whom the concept is not a convenient metaphor but a very real possibility. But when you hear about how our minds glide through time—and how our memory provides a link not only to the past but also to the future—you see Tulving’s point.

McDermott outlined the case of Patient K.C., who has even worse amnesia than the better-known H.M. on whom the film Memento was based. K.C. developed both retrograde and anterograde amnesia from a motorcycle crash in 1981. (The literaturedoesn’t say whether he was wearing a helmet, but let this be a lesson.) He can’t remember anything that happened more than a few minutes ago. He retains facts and skills, but can’t remember actually doing anything or being anywhere.

Tellingly, not only can he not recall the past, he can’t envision the future. When researchers ask him to picture himself somewhere he might go, he says that all he sees is “a big blankness.” Another patient McDermott has worked with can explain the future in the abstract, but says he can’t imagine himself in it.

To investigate the perception of past and future in people without brain injuries, McDermott did fMRI brain scans of 21 college students, asking them to recall a specific incident in their past and then envision themselves in a specific future scenario. Subjectively, the two feel very different. Yet the scans showed the same patterns of activity. Areas scattered all over the brain lit up; our temporal perception is distributed. As a control, McDermott also asked the students to remember events involving Bill Clinton (presumably, ones they were not personally involved in), and the patterns were very different. In a follow-up study, McDermott asked 27 students to anticipate an event in both a familiar and an unfamiliar place. The brain scan for the familiar one resembled the one for the act of remembering; the unfamiliar one was the odd man out.

The bottom line is that memory is essential to constructing scenarios for ourselves in the future. Anecdotal evidence backs this up. Our ability to project forward and to recollect the past both develop around age 5, and people who are good at remembering also report having vivid thoughts about the future.

McDermott’s colleague Henry Roediger studies metacognition—thinking about thinking. We express varying degrees of confidence in our memories. How we do this is clearly an issue for the court system. The N.J. Supreme Court recently tightened standards on the consideration of eyewitness testimony, citing the risk of false positives. Roediger pointed out that false negatives get less attention, but are equally bad. The worst eyewitnesses are full of passionate intensity, and the best lack all conviction. In both cases, innocent people can be sent to death row while the guilty walk.

Cognitive psychologists find that confidence sometimes correlates with accuracy, sometimes not. Roediger gave volunteers a memory word test. They had to study a list of words; afterwards, they were presented with a series of words and had to indicate whether each had been on the original list. They also had to say how confident they felt about their answer.

Whenever I hear about such tests, I brace myself for bad news. But Roediger said people actually did pretty well, and their confidence scores tracked the accuracy of their recall. Their blind spots were predictable. They systematically messed up, both in recall accuracy and self-assessment, when presented words that weren’t on the list but were synonyms of ones that were. The findings match what happens with eyewitnesses. We get things broadly right, but are easily confused by similar situations and faces.

It’s not that our memory is a glitchy wetware version of computer flash memory; it’s that the computer metaphor just doesn’t apply. Roediger said we store only bits and pieces of what happened—a smattering of impressions we weave together into feels like a seamless narrative. When we retrieve a memory, we also rewrite it, so that the time next we go to remember it, we don’t retrieve the original memory but the last one we recollected. So, each time we tell a story, we embellish it, while remaining genuinely convinced of the veracity of our memories.

So go easy on your friend who caught the 150-pound catfish. He wasn’t consciously lying, which is why he spoke with conviction, but that still doesn’t mean you should swallow his tale. To confuse is human; to accept we confuse, divine.

Speaking of fish, as neuroscientistMalcolm MacIver of Northwestern once put it to me, electric fish are the fruit flies of neuroscience—model organisms for studying how we sense the world. MacIver told the FQXi conference about his astoundingly comprehensive, leave-no-stone-unturned study of a species of Amazonian electric fish, using everything from supercomputer fluid simulations to an working model of the fish (captured in this video) and even an art installation.

The fish generates an electric field of about 1 millivolt per centimeter at a frequency that ranges from 50 to 2000 hertz. Water fleas, its prey, give themselves away by disrupting the field. (You can build a proximity sensor based on this concept. I use one to control the lights in my study.) What gets ichthyologists flapping is that, when this fish is out hunting, it doesn’t swim straight ahead, but at a 30-degree angle to the axis of its body—a seemingly cuckoo behavior that nearly triples the water drag force.

But MacIver demonstrated that the orientation also increases the effective volume of water sensed by the electric field. The fish strikes a balance between mechanical and sensory efficiency. Generalizing this insight, he distinguished between two distinct volumes around an organism: its sensory volume (the region it can scan for prey) and its motor volume (the region it can directly reach). For this fish and most other aquatic animals, the two are comparable in size—there’d be no point in looking out any farther. A fish’s reach does not exceed its grasp.

For land animals, though, things are quite different: their sensory volume is much bigger than their motor volume, since light travels much farther in air than in seawater. So when our ancestors crawled out of the sea, they gained the opportunity to plan their behavior in advance. No longer restricted to reacting to immediate stimuli, they had time to take in the scene and deliberate before moving. Animals that could arbitrage the difference in sensory and motor volumes gained an evolutionary advantage.

MacIver speculated that this set the stage for the evolution of consciousness. After all, what is consciousness, but the ability to make plans and gain some advantage over our environment, rather than lurching from crisis to crisis? Psychologist Bruce Bridgemanproposed this view of consciousness in the early 1990s. MacIver elaborated in a poston his blog, Science Not Fiction, earlier this year.

The fun thing about neuroscience is that you can do the experiments on yourself.David Eagleman of the Baylor College of Medicine proceeded to treat us as his test subjects. By means of several visual illusions, he demonstrated that we are all living in the past: Our consciousness lags 80 milliseconds behind actual events. “When you think an event occurs it has already happened,” Eagleman said.

In one of these illusions, the flash-lag effect, a light flashes when an object moves past it, but we don’t see the two as coincident; there appears to be a slight offset between them. By varying the parameters of the experiment, Eagleman showed that this occurs because the brain tries to reconstruct events retroactively and occasionally gets it wrong. The reason, he suggested, is that our brains seek to create a cohesive picture of the world from stimuli that arrive at a range of times. If you touch your toe and nose at the same time, you feel them at the same time, even though the signal from your nose reaches your brain first. You hear and see a hand clap at the same time, even though auditory processing is faster than visual processing. Our brains also paper over gaps in information, such as eyeblinks. “Your consciousness goes through all the trouble to synchronize things,” Eagleman said. But that means the slowest signal sets the pace.

The cost of hiding the logistical details of perception is that we are always a beat behind. The brain must strike a balance. Cognitive psychologist Alex Holcombe at Sydney has some clever demonstrations showing that certain forms of motion perception take a second or longer to register, and our brains clearly can’t wait thatlong. Our view of the world takes shape as we watch it.

The 80-millisecond rule plays all sorts of perceptual tricks on us. As long as a hand-clapper is less than 30 meters away, you hear and see the clap happen together. But beyond this distance, the sound arrives more than 80 milliseconds later than the light, and the brain no longer matches sight and sound. What is weird is that the transition is abrupt: by taking a single step away from you, the hand-clapper goes from in sync to out of sync. Similarly, as long as a TV or film soundtrack is synchronized within 80 milliseconds, you won’t notice any lag, but if the delay gets any longer, the two abruptly and maddeningly become disjointed. Events that take place faster than 80 milliseconds fly under the radar of consciousness. A batter swings at a ball before being aware that the pitcher has even throw it.

The cohesiveness of consciousness is essential to our judgments about cause and effect—and, therefore, to our sense of self. In one particularly sneaky experiment, Eagleman and his team asked volunteers to press a button to make a light blink—with a slight delay. After 10 or so presses, people cottoned onto the delay and began to see the blink happen as soon as they pressed the button. Then the experimentersreduced the delay, and people reported that the blink happened before they pressed the button.

Eagleman conjectured that such causal reversals would explain schizophrenia. All of us have an internal monologue, which we safely attribute to ourselves; if we didn’t, we might think of it as an external voice. So Eagleman has begun to run the same button-blink experiment on people diagnosed with schizophrenia. He reported that changing the delay time did not cause them to change their assessment of cause and effect. “They just don’t adjust,” Eagleman said. “They don’t see the illusion. They’re temporally inflexible.” He ventured: “Maybe schizophrenia is fundamentally a disorder of time perception.” If so, it suggests new therapies to cajole the brains of schizophrenic patients into recalibrating their sense of timing.

In the experiment for which Eagleman is best known, he sought to find out why time passes more slowly when we’re scared. Does something really happen in the brain—for instance, the time resolution of perception speeds up—or do we just think it does, in hindsight? After brainstorming scare tactics that probably wouldn’t have passed muster with a university ethics committee, he hit upon asking volunteers to take one of those Freefall or Demon Drop rides you find in amusement parks. They wore a special watch whose digits counted up too quickly for people to register them under normal conditions—thinking that, if perception really did speed up, people would be able to read the digits.

Alas, they couldn’t. Although they consistently reported that the ride took about a third longer than it really did, this must have been a trick of memory; their hyperacuity was a mirage.

Our memory becomes distorted because our brains react more strongly to novelty than to repetition. Eagleman investigated this effect by asking volunteers to estimate the duration of flashes of light; those flashes that were the first in a series, or broke an established pattern, seemed to last longer. This feature of consciousness, like the 80-millisecond rule, explain so much about our daily experience. When we’re sitting through a boring event, it seems to take forever. But when we look back on it, it went by in a flash. Conversely, when you’re doing something exciting, time seems to race by, but when you look back on it, it stretched out. In the first case, there was little to remember, so your brain collapsed the feeling of duration. In the second, there was so much to remember, so the event seemed to expand. Time flies when you’re having fun, but crawls when you recollect in tranquility.

I suspect that this inverse relation in our perception of time also explains how our experiences shift as we age. When you’re a kid, you wake up and say to yourself: “I’ve got a whole day ahead of me. How will I possibly fill it all?” But when you’re an adult, it’s more like: “I’ve got a day ahead of me. How will I possibly get it all done?” And don’t get me started on how people swear that the first year of their baby’s life went by so fast. (A second child is usually enough to disabuse them.)

You can probably tell from my lengthy description of Eagleman’s talk that it seemed to zip by at the time. The physicists in attendance found it one of the highlights of the conference. Not only was it engrossing in its own right, it had some professional interest for them. All theories of physics begin with sense-data. As Eagleman said, “We build our physics on top of our intuitions.”

We also build our physics on a recognition of the limits of perception. The whole point of theories such as relativity is to separate objective features of the world from artifacts of our perspective. One of the most important books of the past two decades on the physics and philosophy of time, Huw Price’s Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point, argues that concepts of cause and effect derive from our experience as agents in the world and may not be a fundamental feature of reality.

Time plays a variety of roles in physics, from defining causal sequences to giving a direction to the unfolding of the universe. How many of these roles are rooted in the contingent ways our brains perceive time? How might an alien being, who perceives time in a radically different way, formulate physics?

 

Source: George Musser | ScientificAmerican.com

Does Superman Really Want To Know Himself?

Transhumanists seek enhancement in all aspects of existence. Or so they say. The average H+ers want better bodies, better and more deeply embedded tools for living, smarter brains and so on. But do the supermen and women want enhanced knowledge or awareness of themselves?

Ibogaine is a hallucinogenic compound containing Iboga, a substance largely found in the African Tabernanthe Iboga root. It’s safe to say it’s the world’s least popular psychedelic substance. An Ibogaine trip lasts 36 hours and is understood to launch the deepest probe into personal psychological material available to humans on planet earth. A couple of hours into the experience, the Ibogaine tripper experiences an irresistible need to lie down and close her eyes. After than, (s)he will usually receive information — often experienced as though watching scenes on a giant screen —about all the accumulated traumatic events and the other types of awkward, uncomfortable, pathetic elements of personality and experience that the vulnerable human organism represses — partially or entirely — in order to “grow up” and maintain the socialized ego required by a complicated and competitive civilization.

What seems to emerge from these experiences is not a shipwrecked husk of a human being (as occasionally happened with LSD). It’s more like the tripper has undergone a very positive “extreme makeover” — but not one of a superficial sort. Indeed, many of those in the West who have had the opportunity (and need) to experience Ibogaine arrived at the experience as shipwrecked husks — they were drug addicts.

In 1962, Howard Lotsof was a 19-year-old heroin addict who also enjoyed experimenting with a variety of mind-altering drugs. Knowing only that it was another exotic psychedelic to add to his list of heady adventures, he bought some Ibogaine from a dealer. A friend of his tried some and reported back enthusiastically, “That’s not a drug. It’s a food!” So Lotsof decided to take a dose. He underwent the sort of experience I described above. Then he slept. When he woke up, he no longer had a craving for heroin. In other words, aside from having an illuminating self-examination, somehow his body reset itself so that it would not experience a very difficult and very physical period of sickness.

From that day forward, Lotsof dedicated his life to organizing and legalizing experiments with this substance as a possible cure for addiction. Years of experimentation yielded positive results. The drug didn’t work for everybody, but it worked for most. It wasn’t always a permanent cure, but it stopped or lessened the pains of withdrawal for most — and usually kept the opiate lover away from his or her favorite kick for at least a few years without the usual need for a replacement opiate like Methadone. And it turned out to not just be a cure for heroin withdrawal. Similar results were observed in experiments with habitual cocaine and methamphetamine users. One guy even used it because he was tired of feeling like he needed to smoke pot every day. It worked for him too.

My own fascination with Ibogaine came about as the result of picking up a book called The Ibogaine Story: Report of the Staten Island Project, written by Paul De Rienzo and Dana Beal. It was like the book was written just for me, since Beal was a NYC Yippie leader, and a narrative about underground life in the East Village and other parts of Gotham was woven throughout the book, which was organized much like a scrapbook. So it had Yippies and Black Panthers and High Times magazine and New York Dolls and Warhol acolytes — a variety of touchstones of my early adulthood. You might say I was hooked.

But once my curiosity about the in the ins and outs of these movements and social scenes was sated, something else emerged that has been with me ever since. In gathering together the reports of the experiences shared by the trippers (and aside from psychological content, most of the trips also seem to involve lessons from a severe African god), Beal found himself compelled to reread Valis by Philip K. Dick. And through the book, he weaved various threads about Ibogaine research, the psychedelic movement, the NYC counterculture with Dick’s strangest and most amazing exploration into Gnosticism and — if that wasn’t enough — a smattering of experiential and scientific discourses on the nature of reality (quantum physics, neurology…).

As I explored this brilliant mess, a promise beyond even the deepest psychological self-exploration and the cure for drug addiction began to emerge. It seemed that Ibogaine might not just be a cure — or at least a tool — against drug addiction. It may be a tool against addiction itself. In other words, it may be a cure — or at least a tool — for resolving overconsumption, neediness, and habitual behavior. It may be a counteragent against what William Burroughs (yet another reference point in the book) — in explaining how he saw heroin addiction as a metaphor for the functioning of our entire civilization — labeled “the geometry of need.”

So, superman… can you pass the Ibogaine test? I’ve trembled before it in trepidation myself for the last 14 years and haven’t yet worked up the nerve. But surely, some of you stout rugged individualists amongst us who insist on a relentless dispassionate pursuit of objective reality however harsh or cruel… certainly you will want to chance a plunge into deeply buried psychological materials and know thyself. Or maybe not. My sense is that most people would rather “work on themselves” for 40 years than be dragged in front of stark actuality — a terrifying something that we have no control over.

So… will you take the red pill? Or will you take the blue pill… “you wake up in bed and believe whatever you want to believe”… for a long, extended time?

Source:  R.U. Sirius | HPlusMagazine.com

Where Have Libya’s Children Gone?

Dispatch From Tripoli…

The quality of life continues to degrade in certain areas of western Libya while public anxiety noticeably rises over missing Libyan children as the first week of an unusually stressful Ramadan passes.

The shortage of gasoline has become acute and despite government efforts to curtail price gouging, one taxi driver told this observer yesterday that while the usual price of ‘benzene’ was 3.75 liters (one gallon) for $.40 (forty US cents) he is now having to pay as much as ” 4 dinars for one liter of petrol!” That is roughly the equivalent of 13 US dollars for a gallon of gasoline, a huge price surge in a country long accustomed to cheap, heavily subsidized fuel. “Informal economy” (black market) fuel arrives in car trunks from the Tunisian border and its increasingly common to see fellows with a make shift funnel trying to get more benzene into their vehicle tanks than they splash and spill on neighborhood streets.

NATO’s war on Libya’s civilian population includes its targeting of electric power producing turbines, preventing the international banking system from accepting Libyan letters of credit for payment of petroleum products, and interdicting ships destined for Western Libyan ports.  As if in coordination with NATO, Eastern Libyan rebel militias regularly sabotage fuel lines and depots.

Walking around the “medina” off Omar Muktar Street near my hotel yesterday afternoon, the angst over deteriorating conditions is apparent. Shops, like homes, are now subject to rolling blackouts and quickly become hot and stuffy, discouraging would be customers from entering. Some food stores have to discard milk and other perishable items given the up to 11 hour power cuts that send temperatures above 100F. One gentleman on Rashid Street in downtown Tripoli said his family had not had power for five days and the pump that supplies water to his apartment building stopped working so they lack two essential utilities.

NATO’s arguable act of piracy earlier this week in commandeering the fuel tanker ship Cartagena off the coast of Malta that was bringing gasoline to Tripoli and sending it instead to rebel militia based close to Benghazi is yet again explained from NATO HQ as necessary for “protecting the civilian population of Libya.”

According to Libya’s Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim, “The age of piracy is coming back to the Mediterranean because of NATO.”

Some frustrated shop keepers just shutter their shops and seek relief at the beach or take a nap waiting for sundown and their Ramadan Iftar (feast) to begin. But lack of electricity even affects its preparation. (note: 15 minutes ago NATO bombed the public beach near my hotel as three other bombs landed nearby—targets unknown)

Every time a bomb blast is heard, a chorus of passersby and kids invariably point toward the bomb site and watch the rising white or black smoke (the color depending on the type of bomb or missile) and some shout, “F— NATO! F—Obama!” Etc.

If a foreigner is confronted by angry citizens who may blame Americans for NATO’s bombing, a sure fire way to quickly reduce crowd tension is for the foreigner to make the peace sign and make a fist with his other hand and chant a few times: “Allah! Mohammad! Muammar! Libye! Abass!” (God!, Mohammad!, Qadaffi!, Libya!, that’s all we need!”) The locals appreciate the sentiment and pre-teens often join the popular chant and dance.

As of the morning of 8/7/11 NATO statistics show that since 3/31/11, NATO forces have launched 18,270 sorties, mainly against Western Libya, including 6,932 bomb/missile strike sorties. Last night (8/6/11) there were 115 sorties including 45 bombings of which 12 were in central Tripoli starting a 10 p.m.

To their great credit, some Congressional staffers on the US Senate Armed Services Committee who liaise with the Pentagon, have acted on constituent complaints and have criticized NATO’s incomplete description of its bombing of Libyan civilians.

For example earlier this week NATO reported its bombing of the village on Zlitan, about 160 miles east of Tripoli in the Western Mountains as follows: “In the vicinity of Zlitan:1 Ammunition Storage Facility, 1 Military Facility, 2 Multiple Rocket Launchers.”

However, still absent from this particular NATO report on its website is the fact that its bombing attack killed the wife and two children of Mustafa Naji, a local Zlitan physics teacher. Mustafa’s wife Ibtisam, and their two children, Mohammad 5 and Muttasim, were pulverized. Once again, NATO said it could not confirm the “accidental killings” but would investigate.

Where are the children?

Also of growing public and government concern in Western Libya is the whereabouts of 53 female and 52 male children aged one to 12 years and another group ranging from 12 to 18 years, both part of a government-run home for orphans and abused children that until February was operating in Misrata, now under rebel control. According to several reports over the past three months and testimony presented last Thursday evening to the international media gathered at the Tripoli Rexis Hotel, by the General Union for Civil Society Organizations:

The 105 children, part of more than 1000 missing, were “kidnapped” by rebel forces as they entered Misrata and went on a killing spree, some of which has been documented by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International among other groups. There is no question that the children are no longer in their sheltered facility. But from there what became of them remains a mystery.

The Libyan government claims the youngsters were kidnapped by rebels who went on a rampage in late February. Several reports from eyewitnesses claim that the children were last seen being put onto either a Turkish, Italian, or French boat. More than one witness claimed to have witnessed some of the children being sold in Tunisia. On his tweeter page, the local Russian Telesur reporter said that “several sources have affirmed that the 105 children were taken out of the country in a ship that could be Turkish, French or Italian.”

Libyan Social Affairs Minister Ibrahim Sharif told reporters in Tripoli this week that, “We want the truth and we hold those countries responsible for the well-being of these children who are neither soldiers nor combatants.” Sharif added that a rebel doctor captured by government troops testified that some of the orphans had been taken to France and Italy.
Given Misrata’s history as a main North African slave trading port, a fact that today partially explains tensions among the one third of Libya’s population that is black and who are descendants of slaves and many of whom live in western Libya in villages now fighting the Misrata and Benghazi based rebels, concern is acute.

While Libya has had perhaps the most strictly enforced child protection laws in the Middle East and Africa, people here remember clearly that France was at the center of a scandal in 2007 when aid workers from the Zoe’s Ark charity attempted to fly 103 children out of Chad, to the south of Libya, who they said were orphans from neighboring Sudan. International aid staff later found that the children were in fact Chadian and had at least one living parent. People here fear a similar fate for the Libyan youngsters.

Also on people’s minds in Libya is what happened two years ago in Haiti when “orphans,” according to local authorities, were kidnapped. Given the epidemic of human trafficking in this region, especially of children, fears are well founded.

NATO has not replied to inquiries demanding information about the disappeared children nor has UNICEF, Save the Children or Secretary of State Clinton’s office. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has agreed to demand that the White House order an immediate investigation and of course any human rights advocate could raise this issue in the West and demand an urgent inquiry from her/his government.

The Libyan government as well as both the Roman Catholic Papal representative Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, and Father Daoud of the Anglican Church of Christ the King, in Tripoli have demanded that the UN investigate and find the children.

As for the National Transition Council, its spokesman denied charges that they have sold the children and claim that the Libyan government in Tripoli have all the children and that they are using them as human shields at the now five times bombed Bab al Azizya complex in central Tripoli. No known human rights organization or journalist who has investigated this claim has reported seeing any sign of the children at Bab al Azizya. The General Union, noted above, has photos and names and ages of all the missing children and have widely publicized them.

More than a dozen social welfare organizations, women’s groups and Libya’s Lawyer syndicates have launched an intensive media and public involvement campaign to find the children who have now been missing for nearly six months.

Swedish man arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen

A Swedish man who was arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen said Wednesday he was only doing it as a hobby.

Richard Handl told The Associated Press that he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment in southern Sweden when police showed up and arrested him on charges of unauthorized possession of nuclear material.

The 31-year-old Handl said he had tried for months to set up a nuclear reactor at home and kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove.

Only later did he realize it might not be legal and sent a question to Sweden’s Radiation Authority, which answered by sending the police.

“I have always been interested in physics and chemistry,” Handl said, adding he just wanted to “see if it’s possible to split atoms at home.”

The police raid took place in late July, but police have refused to comment. If convicted, Handl could face fines or up to two years in prison.

Although he says police didn’t detect dangerous levels of radiation in his apartment, he now acknowledges the project wasn’t such a good idea.
“From now on, I will stick to the theory,” he said.

Source: 

Christians Flee Holy Land in Mass Modern Exodus

Dateline Jerusalem:  Christian Trail of Tears on the Move While Archbishop of Canterbury Plays Blame Game…

In a recent BBC radio interview for the program “”World at One” the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed concerns about Christian minority populations all across the Middle East where life for Christians was “becoming unsustainable.”

The Archbishop is also organizing a conference to raise awareness of the “hemorrhaging of Christian populations from the Holy Land. The fact that Bethlehem, a majority Christian city just a couple of decades ago, is now very definitely a place where Christians are a marginalized minority. We want that to be a little bit higher on people’s radar. We want the public profile of the situation of Christians there to be better known. And we see that as of course part of a general hope to raise the profile of Christians in the region.”

The Archbishop noted that in the Little Town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, Christians are now the “marginalized minority…It’s not ethnic cleansing exactly because it’s been far less deliberate than that I think. What we’ve seen though is a kind of Newtonian passing on of energy or force from one body to another so that some Muslim populations in the West Bank, under pressure, move away from certain areas like Hebron, move into other areas like Bethlehem. And there’s nowhere much else for Christian populations to go except away from Palestine.” [1]

In 1947, 20% of the total population of the Holy Land was Christian. Today, less than 1.3% of the total population of that troubled piece of real estate is Christian.  Unless things change very soon, Holy Land churches will soon be nothing more than museums for the Christian Exodus coupled with their low birth rates may be the end of Christianity in the Holy Land.

In response to the Archbishops’ omissions, Rifat Odeh Kassis, Kairos Palestine Coordinator wrote:

“Your inaccurate and erroneous remarks cite Muslim extremism as the greatest threat facing Christians in Palestine and the primary reason for our emigration. Your statements about Bethlehem are particularly faulty and offensive especially when you say that the movement of Muslims into the Bethlehem area, where space is limited, is forcing Christians to leave.

“Equally shocking is how Your Grace managed, diplomatically –instead of being prophetic, as one would expect you to be, not to mention the Israeli occupation, the separation wall, Israel  confiscation of Palestinian land, its policies that violate freedom of movement and worship (Palestinians in Bethlehem cannot, for instance, go to Jerusalem), or its brutal crackdowns on nonviolent protests as one of the major reasons that push not only Christians to emigrate, but also many other Palestinians.

“We were hoping that Your Grace would have a different voice than the one in mass media and other right wing political parties, which exploit our sufferings to fuel some islamophobic tendencies and negative images about Islam. Indeed, this is what the Israeli occupation persistently tries to do. It demonizes Islam in a way that deflects blame from the repression levied by the state itself…in the Bethlehem area alone there are 19 illegal Israeli settlements (such as nearby Har Homa built on Jabal Abu Ghneim) and the wall that have devoured Christian lands and put Bethlehem in a chokehold…

“Since Your Grace did not meet or consult with any Palestinian Christians during your recent visit here, we are wondering why would you be suddenly interested to speak on our behalf? This troubles us…Finally, we would like to remind Your Grace that Christian Palestinians need advocates for the truth. It is the truth, and only the truth, that will lead to peace and justice in our home.” [2]

On my third of seven trips to Israel and Palestine since 2005, Hind Khoury, who was the delegate general of the Palestine Liberation Organization in France from 2006 through 2010, informed this reporter:

“The truth has been hidden, and it has been maneuvered by an oppressive and violent occupation.

“This occupation violates every single human right imaginable. Governments today are getting their own way to serve their own interests which are: money and power.

“It is ethnic cleansing that is happening in Jerusalem. Bethlehem is a ghetto, an island, an open-air prison! When the gate in Beit Jala is done, it will completely isolate Bethlehem from her sister city Jerusalem which is only three miles away.

“Before Hamas won the elections there were 370 checkpoints. There are now 25% more. Because of the moral bankruptcy of the PA, Hamas won the elections and they should not be feared. They have an open mind and open heart and many of them say: ‘Fight them with love.’

“The International community put conditions on Hamas, but it is not about Israel’s existence we are speaking of, it is the existence of Palestine and Human Rights that must be addressed! The world is unbalanced and the polarization just increases the violence. Civil society must become responsible.”

In 2006, Reverend Chris Ferguson, Representative for the World Council of Churches said:

“I go to Bethlehem because of the Biblical injunction to visit the prisoners. In 2001, the World Council of Churches, the Middle East Council of Churches and others decided that the world ecumenical community was not doing enough about this conflict. Now, we have joined hands and are working together globally to mobilize the international society to demand policy change. The absence of settlers does not mean there is freedom in Gaza.”

He spoke those words seven months after the “Disengagement” in Gaza, which was nothing more than redeployment, for Israel has maintained total control and all access to Gaza by land, sea and air.

During the “disengagement” 25 of over 150 settlements were dismantled, and 8,475 of over 436,000 settlers [less than 2% of settlers] were evacuated.

As of October 2005, 12,800 new settlers had moved into the West Bank, which are 50% more settlers than were evacuated! Gaza is less than 6% of the Occupied Territories and that leaves 94% of Palestinian territories under the boot of the IDF.

During my 2006 visit to the Little Town of Bethlehem which is Occupied Territory, I met four of the newly elected members of Hamas, and for the fourth time I met the Mayor of Bethlehem, Victor Batarseh.

Mayor Batarseh spoke about the dire need for tourists and pilgrims to sleep and eat in Bethlehem for unemployment was well over 50% and the Bethlehem Municipality was borrowing money to pay its own employees.

The first time I met Mayer Batarseh was when he traveled to Orlando Florida, to meet with Mayor Buddy Dyer, with the hope to re-ignite The Twinning Agreement that was signed in May 2001 by the then Mayors of Bethlehem and Orlando.

The Twinning Agreement is a sister-pact that affirmed Orlando and Bethlehem would encourage tourism to the other and promote a global community.

I followed up on Mayor Batarseh’s visit with my own visit to Mayor Buddy Dyer’s office one week after the Mayors had met and I informed the Orlando Mayor’s public relations representative about an opportunity to help the city of Bethlehem.  I was seeking the Mayors support in getting the word out about two events that were already scheduled and my involvement with Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund which imported goods crafted by the artisans in Bethlehem that volunteers sold throughout the world and returned 100% of all proceeds back to the crafts people and helped support the children who endure in the refugee camps of the Holy Land.

Mayor Buddy Dyer did not even have the common courtesy to respond to any of my three follow up emails. I also informed The Orlando Sentinel about the opportunity for the Central Florida community to do something to make true the words of the Twinning Agreement without traveling all the way to the Little Town of Bethlehem in occupied territory. I got nowhere then, but I persist to be a voice of conscience.

During my March, 2006 trip to Bethlehem, Mayor Batarseh informed me:

“When the occupation is ended there will be peace. If the world boycotted Israel for six months they would comply with the UN Resolutions, which is all we want! There is state terrorism and Israel must be forced to recognize our right to exist. For the past ten years Hamas has worked with and helped the poorest of people, they have built schools and orphanages. The PA took the money but Hamas was providing the social services!

“Israel is a state built on religious beliefs. The US and EU and all the free world are against theocracies. But Israel has the right to do anything! The world needs to WAKE UP! If there is no peace in the Holy Land there can be no peace anywhere. End the occupation and there will be peace the very next day. All the terrorism in the world can be traced back to the Palestinian situation. All the money spent on weapons and war could eliminate world poverty.”

In 2006, I also met with four newly elected Hamas members but I still haven’t met any terrorists. Two had been elected to the Palestinian Parliament/PLC and two to the Municipality/local government. PLC Representative, Anwer M. Zboun, lives in the Abiet refugee camp and has a Masters Degree in Physics.

Zboun began with a smile and said, “We welcome you to our home and the Holy City of Bethlehem. We are suppose to be terrorists, are you afraid?

“We are a Palestinian resistance movement and we are not against any people. We are against the occupation. We want to rebuild what the occupation has destroyed. Hamas was born from the suffering of the Palestinian people and we belong to the global Muslim movement. It was on December 14, 1987 after an Israeli driver killed nine Palestinians that the first Intifada [uprising] began and the Islamic Resistance movement in Palestine was renamed Hamas.

“Hamas is a national liberation movement based on Sharia; Islamic Laws and Orders. Hamas is not against any religion. We are not a terrorist movement, but we resist the occupation. Christians voted for us for many reasons and they know we are faithful to this cause: that God knows better than we ourselves know what is for our benefit. We do not force anyone to believe as we do. The public and private schools both teach Islam and Christianity.

“In November 1988 Arafat issued a birth certificate for the Palestinian State and under religion he stated: ‘None.’ This is because we are a secular state. As Muslims and Christians we live together peacefully and our attitude is citizenship is for everyone. Everybody should have freedom of belief, traditions and a personal life. Hamas does not propose anything that contradicts Christianity.

“Our slogan is: Remove Suffering for everyone. The issue of Israel is about the occupation. We have no problems with religious beliefs; our problem is that Israel is illegally occupying our land. Since March 2005, we have honored a unilateral cease-fire. But Israel martyred 200 Palestinians, injured 1,200 and has detained 3,500. Many are under the age of sixteen. In the last two weeks Israel has killed twenty-five Palestinian and yet we have maintained the cease-fire. Israel does not recognize us and recognition takes both sides.

“Abbas has stated that we do recognize Israel, but there must be clear borders and Israel does not yet have them. The PA recognized Israel ten years ago but we Palestinians are detained in an open air prison. We resist the occupation, which is our right guaranteed under International Law. International Law demands Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders, release the prisoners, and stop the assassinations, illegal wall and home demolitions.

“Hamas defines terrorism as a violation of the rights of others and their property. Bush defined terrorism as evil. We are weak with resources and our voice is not heard in the West, only the voice of America and Israel gets press. America asked us to hold democratic elections and we did. We thank everyone who was involved in our transparent and democratic elections. We did what the USA asked and now they are punishing our people. Democracies are supposed to respect and not intervene in what others want.

“We had democratic and transparent elections and how are we rewarded? By the EU and the USA who have cut funds to the poorest of people who live under occupation. Hamas suggested that the International community monitor all the financial aid to assure that it went to the people and not to Hamas. We offered this suggestion to the world and we have been ignored.

“So now we look to the Arab and Muslim world to strengthen our local infrastructure and economy and hope to bring back investors. We know there are people in Europe and America who will not allow us to go hungry. We believe aid and support are in Gods hands and not governments.”

On 15 March 2006, I was in Nazareth and learned from Fuad Farah, Board member of Sabeel and the Chairman of the Orthodox National Council in Israel, that “90% of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, never even meet any Palestinian Christians!

“No Christians can live here anymore. They fled in ‘48 and their homes were destroyed in the ‘50’s for the settlers. Christians once were 20% of the total population of the Holy land, today we are less than 2% and maybe in thirty years there will be no Christians here if things do not change soon. There are more Christians in India and Syria than there are in the Holy Land!

“The reasons are many and include our low birth rate, migration due to lack of economic opportunities especially for the most highly educated, Muslim and Jewish fundamentalism, land confiscation and now Nazareth has become a retirement community because our young people all leave!”

I imagine if I were a young Palestinian with an opportunity to leave that troubled land; I would too and Palestinians all tell me that is exactly what the Israeli government hopes for!

In 2006, I also met BADIL [Arabic for Alternative] Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights.

The Founder, Muhammed Jaradat, grinned as he said, “I learned to speak English in prison, I was arrested first at 13 years old and spent a total of 5 ½ years in prison because I was a peace activist. I was arrested for winning a high school student union election in my village and charged with terrorism!”

“They said I was a gangster that I was against Israeli rights, but justice for Palestinians means justice for Israelis too! The issue of the right to return is the ultimate issue. The refugee issue is the core issue and since 1948, 800,000 Palestinians have been evicted from their homes and their families land.

“Two-thirds of Palestinian people are refugees. A democracy is supposed to be that the majority rules. But we have been told to SHUT UP about the refugee issue. If you really want to solve a problem you must attack the roots and that leads to the refugee issue.

“International Law, the Declaration of Human Rights and UN Resolutions all affirm the rights of refugees. For 57 years and 157 times the UN General Assembly has affirmed the right for refugees to return home, resettle with compensation or to choose a new country.

“The Israelis claim there is not enough room in the Holy Land but according to their own documentation in 2000, 86% of Israeli Jews live on 15% of Israel proper. 90% of state land is Palestinian land! The problem is not that there is not enough room, the problem is racism. I was born here but I am not a citizen of any country. They can revoke my residency at any moment.

“From 1989 to 1993 Israel absorbed 1.1 million new immigrants from the former Soviet Union who have illegally settled in the West Bank and Gaza. Historic Palestine is 26,000 square kilometers, about the size of Texas. The separation mentality has been at work since the 1930’s. Uniting this country with universal and basic human rights is the only way to success in the future. Israel has built the facts on the ground to not have two states. We are not stupid, we live under the harshest of conditions and we have survived. We have been divided into 28 different countries but we are united on the goal to achieve our human rights.

“The future depends on what happens to Palestinians and we are the legal owners of this land and Israel needs to get its nose down and realize they are living in the Arab world. Christian Zionists are the most destructive group of all and they want Israel to use their bomb. Who will they destroy? They will destroy themselves. The Dimona reactor is leaking and will cost more to remove than it did to build.” [3]

But that is another story that I told in BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010

• Christians in the middle east archbishop on world at one
• Kairos Palestine letter to Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of canterbury-London
• “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory” by Eileen Fleming

Our Pending Economic Train Wreck Made By Congress

“No fewer than 44 states are bleeding serious red ink, while unprecedented costs of social programs, unemployment claims and natural disasters are draining their remaining coffers along with the reserves of the insurance companies. This is the same story; exponential growth and exponential decline.” Mike Folkerth

In this ongoing series with my friend and economist Mike Folkerth, www.kingofsimple.com , and author of The Biggest Lie Ever Believed, he writes, “No other mathematical possibility remaining than for the US to pitch into a full blown depression.”

Today, the U.S. languishes with a $14.2 trillion debt.  Our Congress has dug our hole so deep, that when we look up, we cannot see the bottom.  Give us an idea of what we face and why Mr. Folkerth:

“I was recently asked by a friend why I have predicted the time frame of 18 to 22 months for a failure of America’s current economic system,” said Folkerth. “I thought I would share my response. Those who disagree should respond accordingly with their reasoning and rebuttal. If you agree; today is a good day to begin adjusting.

“Before I continue, I should interpret my meaning of failure. In this instance, failure should be considered that point and time when the vast majority of American’s realize that our mathematically flawed underpinnings of debt-based-growth-capitalism has failed. And, the point in which radical change is evident and being openly aired, even by our dimwitted leadership. It will suffice to say that the trip back down our mountain of debt won’t be pretty.

“So why 18 to 22 months as a time frame for a meltdown or our current economic structure? It’s a complex multifaceted calculation, but in short, the exponential mathematical function will play out in several key areas simultaneously. Once the U.S. got behind the power curve in several critical areas that had formerly grown exponentially, the time before reaching mathematical impasse is not only short, but much easier to calculate.

“The backside of any exponential curve that represents total consumption of any finite physical supply, or the exponential growth of debt, looks exactly like the front side of that growth curve, except in reverse.

“The trip up and down an exponential curve can be likened to a speeding car going uphill with no brakes and limited fuel. Everything goes just ducky so long as the engine is propelling us ever upward. Once the fuel runs out, the trip back down is similar to the trip up with the exciting addition of the ever increasing speed of decline.

“That brings up oil consumption as a perfect real life example of that speedy decline. Over the period of a short 120 years, world oil consumption has gone from zip to 84 MBD (million barrels per day). Once the maximum supply reaches balance with consumption, the shortages and rising costs will become monumental within months, rather than years.

“As an aside, those who continue to believe that we are awash in oil in the United States should seriously consider the hard cold facts that provide indisputable evidence to the contrary.

“The U.S. National Debt has reached the vertical stage of the exponential curve to the tune of currently growing at $2 TRILLION per annum. In 1980, the 204 year accumulated National Debt was $907.7 BILLION. The fight occurring in this year of 2011 over raising the debt ceiling by another $2 Trillion, may well represent the last time that any compromise is possible, as this proposed one year deficit has now reached approximately 2000 times the total National Debt of our first 204 years of existence!

“The last remaining argument for raising the debt level is one in which the United States will increase GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to a level where income and debt are once again in balance. The former supposition is both physically and mathematically impossible. The flawed assumption is two-fold in supposing that GDP can be forever exponentially increased and that such increases of GDP are unconstrained by physical inputs (hard limits).

“Some two years past, I predicted that U.S. GDP had hit zenith if corrected for per capita share, inflation, and debt accumulation. In fact, GDP has fallen when the proper accounting is applied. GDP is constrained by the available matter and energy while debt is merely a paper agreement between delusional humans that has no constraints whatsoever with the possible exception of running out of trees and cotton from which to produce paper. Let there be no gray area; the United States is broke.

“Real unemployment is not improving and won’t improve, due to an imbalance of labor required verses labor available. The U.S. now has an endless oversupply of labor that is growing by millions…yes, millions.

“This very week in May, 2011, some 5.3 MILLION students will graduate or will have dropped out of high school and college. During the entire year, approximately 1 Million legal immigrants will join our ranks and there is currently a bill being discussed to allow some 12 Million illegal immigrants to receive amnesty and citizenship. They all have one thing in common; they’re looking for work.

“When I state “labor,” it should be considered to include brawn or brains. It should also be considered that real wages for the Middle Class has been stagnant for years and is now in steady decline.

“Student debt has grown exponentially and has now eclipsed the total credit card debt in America. The only possible way out of this conundrum would be immediate, tremendous job growth and unprecedented wage increases, which are both physically impossible for the U.S. under a globalized economy, and it is now far, far too late to correct our past errors even if our leadership were so inclined…and they aren’t.

“Education costs in general and the highly successful propaganda of “I need to pay for my kid’s college regardless of cost,” have transferred the last bastion of wealth from Middle America’s families to the institutions of higher learning. This total breadth of this wealth transfer could easily represent the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time.

“A recent report has concluded that 2011 will represent the fewest summer jobs for students in our nation’s history and fewer job prospects for graduates. All that, while at the same time setting a record level for graduating student debt at an average of $22,900.

“The false and fleeting wealth of personal housing has been lost. Housing will not recover in any meaningful way and foreclosures will remain quite high for the remaining period of time prior to the failure of our debt culture.  Housing may be seen as a micro-view of the nature of our future decline. Personal housing values grew and fell in an exponential manner.

“The first class of baby boomers did in fact arrive as scheduled this past January 2011, and that first wave of 3.4 million has 16 years of relentlessly marching reinforcements arriving behind them, with each class growing in number. Millions upon millions of Americans will now claim Medicare and Social Security while they simultaneously draw down their investments. Once again, this is a real life example of exponential growth and exponential decline.

“The only possibility of these states pulling out of this exponential decline would be for tax revenues to surpass all time previous highs…by a bunch. The states will soon reach the point of having no further areas from which to cut. The maintenance of our massive aging infrastructure has become impossible to fund. Without the offsetting phenomena of exponential growth, the game ends quite suddenly.

“The positive feedback loop that is being created by above subjects and many other examples that I won’t take the time to delve into, will culminate in an event that will be similar to that of the Great Depression. I see little evidence that points to the possibility of putting off that event beyond an 18 to 22 month time frame.

“In the mean time, most Americans will busy themselves with accusing one political party or the other for the failures. Nothing could be further from the truth. The culprits are mathematics and natural physics; subjects that our elected officials on both sides of the aisle are totally ignorant of.

“The fuel that fed our exponential rise was provided by two rarely reported, but essential elements; new frontiers to settle and vast undiscovered resources. The license plate motto of our 49^th state of Alaska says it all; The Last Frontier. And by the way, Captain Kirk was fiction; there is no final frontier that will save our collective bacon.”

“”The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” – Dr. Albert Bartlett, Professor of Physics, University of Colorado.

Out of the Belly of AIPAC and Why I am too RED to be Pink!

AIPAC/American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference brought together over 11,000 sisters, brothers and cousins in the Family of Father Abraham-including 1,500 youth representing 400 schools and 215 universities, 500 journalists from 2 dozen countries and representatives of over 100 endorsing organizations to Move AIPAC Over: http://www.moveoveraipac.org/

On 22 May 2011, inside the Washington Convention Center, Lee Rosenberg, the President of AIPAC greeted that crowd by saying:

“We are here because we care and decided to do something.”

Do Something has been a mantra of mine ever since my first of 7 trips to Israel and Occupied Palestine: Read more…

Because I care so much and love America and the promises and spirit of Israel’s Declaration of Independence:

“On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.” – May 14, 1948, The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel

I recently decided to live out a dream I began dreaming after my first trip to occupied territory in 2005, which is to run for U.S. House of Representatives as the first candidate for the

Because it is no longer enough to just write my broken heart out over the 44 years of military occupation of the indigenous people of the so called Holy Land-which is in pieces; disconnected enclaves that in no way can become a sustainable Palestinian state if this map remains the same:

And because “Everywhere except in America, the Palestinian narrative is well known.“-Rashid Khaladi Read more… my conscience compelled me to attend AIPAC’s annual conference to listen, learn and discern;

And also so I could introduce myself as a reporter who has been to Israel 7 times since 2005 [I did not mention I spent most all my time in occupied Palestine] because knowledge brings responsibilities, so I am looking for a district in Florida to represent in the US House of Representatives.

[Everyone I told that I was on staff with Salem-news.com which is based in Oregon assumed it was based in Connecticut and all were impressed that I was a columnist for the Military and Foreign Affairs Journal Veteranstoday.com ]

Everyone responded to me warmly and I felt a kinship with all, but the rebel in me rejoiced that if and when any click onto my website I may blow many minds.

As PRESS I could have been in the audience for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address at Monday night’s gala, but I chose to remain outside the door greeting all with “Shalom, I love America and Israel so much that I am running for Congress.”

Many accepted my business card, some ignored me and one young man hit the card out of my hand. No doubt he acted out as a reaction to the vocal activists affiliated with Move AIPAC Over [as the founder of We Are Wide Awake I am an endorser] who seized their right to free speech to demand an end to the occupation and oppression of Gaza Palestine.

During Monday night’s gala while Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the crowd, about a dozen courageous activists for justice and peace rose up vocally to Move AIPAC Over and one was tackled and injured by AIPAC participants.

During Netanyahu’s address to Congress on Tuesday morning, just after the Prime Minister spoke about the youth around the world rising up for more democracy, 28 year old CODEPINK activist Rae Abileah was assaulted and forced to the ground by AIPAC members in the House Gallery as she stood up with a banner that read “Occupying Land Is Indefensible” while shouting, “No more occupation, stop Israel war crimes, equal rights for Palestinians, occupation is indefensible.”

Rae was arrested by D.C. police for disturbing the peace at George Washington University Hospital where she was being treated for neck and shoulder injuries. Rae had no regrets for her physical pain and said she stands in solidarity with the Palestinian and Israeli activists who are routinely jailed and beaten for speaking out for democracy.

This reporter applauds the commitment and chutzpah of all the stand up and vocal activists; but I choose a different way to rise up for it has been understood for millennium that if you want to change the world: WRITE!

“I understand the need to engage in a peaceful and civilized conversation.”-Sasha Matthews, AIPAC Campus Activist from Florida A&M University.

Sasha spoke those words and shared her story during a Sunday AIPAC break-out group, “From Campus to Congress: Deflecting Detractors and Exerting Real Influence.”

Sasha also explained, “I am a baby in this movement and I am not Jewish or political. As a Christian I learned about the historical ties to the Jewish State in church, but I had only a lukewarm interest.”

America and Israel partner closely in the field of science and technology and as a physics student Sasha, “became engaged” and was then “bombarded” with information from AIPAC.

Sasha said, “My issue is getting students involved and the focus of my action is to attract students in general with balloons, music and food and then bombard them with all the information-ammo that AIPAC provides.

“I have partnered with FSU’s Hillel [The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life] as I understand the need to engage in a peaceful and civilized discussion.”

Before Sasha spoke, the facilitator brought up –and demeaned the work of Mearsheimer and Walt, and chances are that most of the AIPAC campus activists have not yet read: The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt Read more…

Mearsheimer and Walt were keynote speakers on 21 May 2011 for Move AIPAC Over

President Obama’s Sunday morning address to AIPAC was met with energetic applause and a few standing ovations.

Obama spoke about the dangers of the spread of nuclear weapons but not a word about Israel’s still un-inspected WMD facility-which everyone in the world, except most Americans learned about in 1987, when Mordechai Vanunu’s photos and testimony made front page news in London’s The Sunday Times.

Obama told of his experience at the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem and how he reflected upon the modern day fear of nuclear war.

As it is human nature to desire what the other has, only a Nuclear Weapons Free Middle East-and World-can obliterate that potential!

Obama also mentioned his visit to the Wailing Wall and how he thought about the generations who have wanted a homeland; but not a word was uttered about the generations of indigenous Palestinians who are still denied their inalienable right to return home or about the 21st century Wailing Wall, as nailed by Vanunu Mordechai:

Obama told of his visit to Sderot and the struggles of those residents, but he neglected to travel five minutes away into the open air prison of Gaza where 1.5 million human beings-800,000 are under the age of 16-struggle every moment of the day just to survive under a brutal siege aided and abetted by USA policy!

I spent an evening in Sderot in 2009 and learned that most everyone there would be just as happy to migrate to Las Vegas than live in Israel: Read more…

Israel’s existence is a fact of life, but what can never be accepted is Israel’s ‘right’ to steal land and resources of the indigenous people of Palestine!

All through the AIPAC conference I heard the incessant drumbeat of Israel’s rights, about the “special relationship” “shared values” “common Interests” the “Jewish State” and claims that Israel is a democracy, but Israel is not-and never has been a Democracy!

In the May 28, 1993 edition of Yedioth Ahronoth, Ariel Sharon explained:

“The terms ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ are totally absent from the Declaration of Independence. This is not an accident. The intention of Zionism was not to bring democracy, needless to say. It was solely motivated by the creation in Eretz-Isrel of a Jewish state belonging to all the Jewish people and to the Jewish people alone. This is why any Jew of the Diaspora has the right to immigrate to Israel and to become a citizen of Israel.”

Jeff Halper, American Israeli, co-founder and coordinator of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and Professor of Anthropology wrote:

“An ethnocracy is the opposite of a democracy, although it might incorporate some elements of democracy such as universal citizenship and elections. It arises when one particular group-the Jews in Israel, the Russians in Russia, the Protestants in pre-1972 Northern Ireland, the whites in apartheid South Africa, the Shi’ite Muslims in Iran, the Malay in Malaysia and, if they had their way, the white Christian fundamentalists in the US-seize control of the government and armed forces in order to enforce a regime of exclusive privilege over other groups in what is in fact a multi-ethnic or multi-religious society. Ethnocracy, or ethno-nationalism, privileges ethnos over demos, whereby one’s ethnic affiliation, be it defined by race, descent, religion, language or national origin, takes precedence over citizenship in determining to whom a county actually ‘belongs.'”[1]

In his Farewell Address, President George Washington warned US:

“Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all…and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave…a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils.”

It was President Harry Truman who crossed out the word “Jewish state” on the draft of the Establishment of Israel that was cabled him and substituted “State of Israel” which he affirmed was contingent upon Israel upholding the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Read more…

Obama admitted that true friends speak open and honestly and that “the current situation does not allow procrastination. The world is moving too fast [and] the Talmud teaches as long as one has life do not abandon faith. We will never abandon universal human rights.”

All this American dissident writer has been saying since I went online in 2005 after my first of 7 trips to Israel and Occupied Palestine is that when Israel honors its founding promises and America upholds its obligation as a Member State of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, then YES WE CAN and YES WE WILL begin this world again.

Godspeed on it!

1. Jeff Halper, An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, Page 74

Nobel Peace Prize for AWOL War President

William Jefferson Clinton was called the first black president. Now it can be said that Barry Soetoro is the first female president. What justifies such a label? Clearly, Barack Hussein Obama has nocojones. The Ipanema vacationer practices his African samba carnival dance while carnage rains from tomahawk missiles. Humanitarian altruism acts as cover for a remote controlled marionette doing the bidding in the Soros world of his sorcerer mentors. This commander in chief runs from his own shadow.

Do you recall when media outlets with calls of “the wimp factor” bedeviled George Herbert Walker Bush? Or do you remember when a national magazine emblazoned, Jr – George Walker Bush with the wrong “W.” He is not a wimp? Well, what name do you use when a lily-livered mistake of a president needs to interrupt another holiday to push the war buttons, while his girls, Sasha and Malia await more spring break entertainment? Obama shed his coat and tie, rolled up his sleeves and dribbled one-on-one soccer with one surprised boy from a Rio slum. What a do-gooder.

Sorry, folks this excuse for a leader exemplifies the feminization of a pussy-whipped upbringing. His need to use the singular I in every other sentence and the delusional claim that he speaks for all Americans is characteristic of an insecure crybaby who cannot handle criticism or reasoned refrains. A mammy’s boy of untold pansy traits, is a sissy POTUS. His mental instability is similar to a man hating feminist, feeling perpetual menstrual cycle urges of self-destruction. Such a whiner induces a cognitive dissonance administration that has small testicles with the swagger of a bully’s bravado. Ordering others to do the dirty deeds is the disgraceful profile in courage of a coward.

The Orwellian newspeak coming out of the military permanent security empire was almost too much for Defense Secretary Robert Gate. Yet, his gut objections against another foreign incursion were overridden by the culture of compliance. Any strong leader and person of conscience would have resigned his post before unleashing the dogs of war.

Such a president, is commendable of a second courtier award, the first War is Peace medal. The standards to qualify require the killing of thousands to take out one bad man whose successor will be interchanged from among scores of replacement despots waiting in line for empire approval. Serenity reestablished for the New World Order gets another noble prize. Ignorance of the masses = the strength of the system.

The time is ripe for the next substitute clone president. Obama’s claim for party re-nomination as the leader of the free world has evaporated. His minions distance themselves as the house of cards collapses. Barry is a joke and his handlers know he has done enough, if not all the damage envisioned, in this stage of completing the Totalitarian Collectivismmodel.The neocons have an ideal loyal opposition dummy in Obama. The progressive left twist in the wind as they bite their tongues to stop their criticism of their inept underdog hero. The disarray in policy has the appearance of weakness, while still pursuing the same aggressive destruction of the Middle East region to secure control over the oil and protect the Zionist lust for a greater Israel.

Kathleen Parker, of the Washington Post makes these points. “Women tend to be coalition builders rather than mavericks (with the occasional rogue exception). While men seek ways to measure themselves against others, for reasons requiring no elaboration, women form circles and talk it out.”

The ADR Prof Blog reflects up this viewpoint.

“Additionally, women are generally viewed as effective communicators　while employing “feminine” communication styles, but have been chastised for taking on styles normally attributed to men. For example, Hillary Clinton has received continual criticism for talking too assertively.

Would you agree that Obama’s style, in comparison to past presidents and to the stereotypical male politician, is “feminine” and that he is suffering as a result of that adoption? Is this sentiment true of other men who adopt the “listener” style?”

This Ms. President is over her head. All the more reason to defer to foreign policy experts like Clinton and Biden. What a crew. Absent-minded Joe is so far out of the loop that the “village idiot” is still looking for the train to get back to . As for HilLAIRy, she swings her woody stick with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader at a Vince Foster wake. Who better to dictate the internment over the Siege of Tobruk? It takes a Nazi to raise a comrade and a spy to sell out their country.

Before anyone misunderstands the true nature of a strong American leader, the best war president is one who never takes the nation into harm’s way for imperialistic motives. The war that needs waging is the one against the real enemy, the globalist international community of elite’s.

Obama’s willingness to continue the Afghanistan adventure to make the world safe for poppy seed distribution brings anopium habit of collateral damage to a higher level. The ongoing evil empire continues under a different name and another administration. The only message that changes is the “PC” wordsmith distortions of the face of war.Writing in Slate, Timothy Noah nails it with a hammer of dynamic precision in When warfare gets “kinetic”. The Rumsfeld tradition continues under Madam President Obama.

“The recent war in Afghanistan demonstrates that when the chips are down, we still find it necessary to go kinetic. Indeed, for all its novel methods of non-kinetic warfare, today’s military is much more deadly than it ever was before. For the foreseeable future, civilians and at least a few soldiers will continue to be killed in war. “Kinetic” seems an objectionable way to describe this reality from the point of view of both doves and hawks. To those who deplore or resist going to war, “kinetic” is unconscionably euphemistic, with antiseptic connotations derived from high-school physics and aesthetic ones traceable to the word’s frequent use by connoisseurs of modern dance. To those who celebrate war (or at least find it grimly necessary), “kinetic” fails to evoke the manly virtues of strength, fierceness, and bravery. Imagine Rudyard Kipling penning the lines, “For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’/ But it’s ‘Saviour of ‘is country’ when the U.K goes kinetic.” Is it too late to remove this word from the Washington lexicon?”

The mad rush to occupy the lands of Northern Africa, the Middle East and central Asia is all about the elimination of the nation state and the merging of strong-arm dictator regimes or tribal feuding factions, into a worldwide synthetic kingdom of top down global authoritarianism.

In order to deserve a peace prize a recipient needs to demonstrate leadership in the cause of the sacred nature and sanctity of human life. The bogus claim that the Libyan attack is based upon humanitarian motives ignores the last forty years of crony capitalism with Colonel Gaddafi. What changed now and just who are these phantom rebels?

Obama deserves the Gideon Pillow medal of dishonor for consistent incompetency and cowardice for firing the first shoot. Another failed president and coldblooded wartime general, Ulysses S. Grant sets the qualifications. “I had known General Pillow in Mexico, and judged that with any force, no matter how small, I could march up to within gunshot of any entrenchments he was given to hold.”Just think about it. This libber president holds the nuclear football codes. America needs a divorce from this attention seeking personality. With no prenuptial, the keys to the oval office need to be retrieved. Keeping the doors locked is a good start.

Interview with Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton is a Swiss public intellectual, author, philosopher, television presenter and entrepreneur living in the United Kingdom. He has written several books on literature, philosophy, art, travel and architecture. In August 2008, he established a new educational enterprise in London called “The School of Life”. Among his prominent books are “How Proust Can Change Your Life”, “The Consolations of Philosophy” and “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”.

De Botton is an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The title was awarded to him in recognition of his services to art and architecture. His books are translated into several languages and are among the best-selling works of literature in so many countries, including Iran. What follows is the complete text of an in-depth interview with Alain de Botton where we discussed a variety of topics and issues concerning philosophy, art, literature, travel and architecture.

Kourosh Ziabari: Dear Alain; I’m the second Iranian journalist who conducts an interview with you. How’s your feeling about that?

Alain de Botton: I’m delighted to hear from Iranian journalists and readers. In most countries, one signs an agreement with a publisher to sell a book and therefore there is an immediate and direct connection with a country and its readers. However, with Iran, it didn’t happen like this for me. One day, from the blue, I received an email from my translator and she offered to send me a few copies of my books in Persian. This felt like a great surprise and honor. I know a lot about Iran, Its architecture, its history, its landscape, but I have never visited, so knowing that my books are read in the country helped to solidify a connection which is very vivid in my imagination already.

KZ: “How Proust Can Change Your Life” is your most widely-read book in Iran. Many Iranian booklovers with an inclination toward philosophy have read both Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” and your book on Proust’s work, as well. You published this book 13 years ago. If you had to rewrite or revise your book, what would you change, append or remove? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this book in your own view?

AB: I continue to be rather happy with this book. It is short, so it doesn’t say everything one could say about Proust, but it tries to say what is most important. I imagine it like a conversation with an imaginary friend who asks me ‘Why should this book matter? Why should I bother with it when life is short and I am so busy?’ So my book is my answer. It attempts in clear and non-academic language to convey the importance of one of the most intelligent and sensitive writers in the history of humanity. A man like Marcel Proust comes along once every 300 years or so… not more.

KZ: You admire Marcel Proust for what is believed to be his “simple and straightforward” language. What are the features of such a language? What makes a piece of writing simple and appealing to an ordinary reader? According to your response to one of Mr. Kamali Dehghan’s questions, they’re only the idiots and stupid people who seem complicated; the genius, intelligent man is simple and straightforward. Why do you think so?

AB: There can of course be pleasure in complex pieces of language: some very beautiful poetry is very complicated. Nevertheless, I especially admire clarity and logic, where one feels that a very complex thought has been understood so profoundly that it has been distilled into a perfect clear jewel. For example, consider this aphorism by La Rochefoucauld: ‘We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others’. This thought contains years of experience, one could write an entire book on this, and yet he has condensed it into one beautiful, brilliant sentence. Marcel Proust does this too – one finds one’s own thoughts in his work, but in a way that teaches us more about ourselves than we ever knew on our own.

KZ: You started your literary career at a young age and published your first book when you were 23. How did writing in the youth days contribute to your future career as a professional writer?

AB: Sometimes I wish I had started writing later, but I felt ready at 23, and I wrote the book that I still perhaps love best, Essays in Love. I felt so unhappy about love; it was as if I had no choice but to write. I felt the full agony of late adolescent unrequited love. Many works of literature have arisen from such feelings. They are among the most powerful we have.

KZ: Tell us a little about your School of Life. How did the idea of establishing this enterprise come about? What activities are usually carried out in the school? How and for what purposes do you connect people together in this school?

AB: If you went to any university in the modern world and said that you had come to study ‘how to live’, you would be politely shown the door, if not the way to an asylum. Universities see it as their job to train you either in a specific career, e.g. law, medicine, or to give you a grounding in ‘the humanities’, but for no identifiable reason, beyond the vague and unexamined notion that three years studying the classics or reading Middlemarch may be a good idea.

The contemporary university is an uncomfortable amalgamation of ambitions once held by a variety of educational institutions. It owes debts to the philosophical schools of Ancient Greece and Rome, to the monasteries of the Middle Ages, to the theological colleges of Paris, Padua and Bologna and to the research laboratories of early modern science. One of the legacies of this heterogeneous background is that academics in the humanities have been forced to disguise, both from themselves and their students, why their subjects really matter, for the sake of attracting money and prestige in a world obsessed by the achievements of science and unable to find a sensible way of assessing the value of a novel or a history book.

The chief problem for anyone in a history or an English department today is that science has been too successful. Science can make your car work, fix your liver, send spaceships to Mars and turn sunlight into electricity. In other words, science is to be valued because it gives us control over our fate, whereas in W. H. Auden’s defiant words, “poetry makes nothing happen”. Auden’s stance may be a heroic rallying cry for the freelance poet, but it becomes more alarming as a job description for a young academic who has just completed a doctorate on Biblical references in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s later verse.

The response of humanities departments to their status anxiety has been to mimic their colleagues in physics or astronomy, in a move that has had short-term gains, but is in danger of asphyxiating their subjects in the long run. Academics in the arts have decided that they, too, should be viewed as ‘researchers’ and that their principal value should come from their capacity to discover new things, like chemists might uncover new molecular structures. There are clearly occasions when scholars do make genuine discoveries which can be compared to breakthroughs in science, but it surely represents a distortion of the value of the arts as a whole to make their value entirely dependent on factual, verifiable criteria.

To do so is to behave like a man who has fallen deeply in love and asks his companion if he might act on his emotions by measuring the distance between her elbow and her shoulder blade. In the modern academy, an art historian, on being stirred to tears by the tenderness and serenity he detects in a work by a 14th-century Florentine painter, typically ends up answering his emotions by writing a monograph, as irreproachable as it is bloodless, on the history of paint manufacture in the age of Giotto.

It was in the 16th century that the greatest anti-academic scholar of the West launched his attack on the bias of universities. Michel de Montaigne, who had an encyclopedic knowledge of all the great texts, nevertheless deplored the way in which academics tended to privilege learning over wisdom. “I gladly come back to the theme of the absurdity of our education: its end has not been to make us good and wise, but learned. It has not taught us to seek virtue and to embrace wisdom: it has impressed upon us their derivation and their etymology. We readily inquire, ‘Does he know Greek or Latin?’ ‘Can he write poetry and prose?’ But what matters most is what we put last: ‘Has he become better and wiser?’”

It was because of my time at Cambridge that I started to dream of an ideal new sort of institution which could welcome Montaigne, or indeed Nietzsche, Goethe or Kierkegaard, a University of Life that would give students the tools to master their lives through the study of culture rather than using culture for the sake of passing an exam.

This ideal University of Life would draw on traditional areas of knowledge (history, art, literature) but would angle its material towards active concerns, how to choose a career, conduct a relationship, sack someone and get ready to die. The university would never take the importance of culture for granted. It would be calculatedly vulgar. Rather than leaving it hanging why one was reading Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, an ideal course covering 19th-century literature would ask plainly “What is it that adultery ruins in a marriage?” Students would end up knowing much the same material as their colleagues in other institutions, but they would have learnt it under a very different set of headings.

On the menu of my ideal university, you wouldn’t find subjects like ‘philosophy’ and ‘history’. Instead, you would find courses in ‘death’, ‘marriage’, ‘choosing a career’, ‘ambition’, and ‘child rearing’. Too often, these head-on assaults on the great questions are abandoned to the second-rate efforts of gurus and motivational speakers.

So I came to feel it was high time for serious culture to reappropriate them and to consider them with all the rigour and seriousness currently too often lavished on topics of minor relevance.

That’s why, in early 2009, some colleagues and I came together to start a little educational institution in London that we’ve called The School of Life (www.theschooloflife.com). The idea was to offer instruction in the great questions of life in a way that would be intelligent, imaginative, revolutionary and playful. At the school, you can sign up for courses in politics, work, family, love – or indeed, talk to a therapist, learn how to garden in the city or go on a communal meal for strangers. The spirit of the place is anarchic and yet serious at heart. We’re throwing down a gauntlet to traditional education, trying to reinvent how learning gets done. There are similarities with what I have tried to do in some of my books, though here we’re attempting to demonstrate, rather than simply describe, the advantages of the examined life.

We have had a very successful first year, which suggests to me the depth of frustration that many ordinary people feel for the pedagogic approach of traditional universities.

KZ: You serve in the Living Architecture organization as the Creative Director. You’ve also been appointed the honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in recognition of your services to architecture. How is your professional career as a literary author related to your admiration for sublime, transcendent architecture? How do you make a connection between architecture and literature?

AB: Is it serious to worry about design and architecture? To think hard about the shape of the bathroom taps, the color of the bedspread and the dimensions of the window frames?

A long intellectual tradition suggests it isn’t quite. A whiff of trivia and self-indulgence floats over the topic. It seems like something best handled by the flamboyant presenters of early evening TV shows. A thought-provoking number of the world’s most intelligent people have always disdained any interest in the appearance of buildings, equating contentment with discarnate and invisible matters instead. The Ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus is said to have demanded of a heart-broken friend whose house had burnt to the ground, ‘If you really understand what governs the universe, how can you yearn for bits of stone and pretty rock?’ It is unclear how much longer the friendship lasted.

And yet determined efforts to scorn design have also long been matched by equally persistent attempts to mould the material world to graceful ends. People have strained their backs carving flowers into their roof beams and their eyesight embroidering animals onto their tablecloths. They have given up weekends to hide unsightly cables behind ledges. They have thought carefully about appropriate kitchen work-surfaces. They have imagined living in unattainably expensive houses pictured in magazines and then felt sad, as one does on passing an attractive stranger in a crowded street.

We seem divided between an urge to override our senses and numb ourselves to the appearance of houses and a contradictory impulse to acknowledge the extent to which our identities are indelibly connected to, and will shift along with, our locations. I personally side with the view that it does (unfortunately as it’s expensive) matter what things look like: an ugly room can coagulate any loose suspicions as to the incompleteness of life, while a sun-lit one set with honey-coloured limestone tiles can lend support to whatever is most hopeful within us. Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion that we are, for better and for worse, different people in different places – and on the conviction that it is architecture’s task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be.

Our sensitivity to our surroundings can be traced back to a troubling feature of human psychology: to the way we harbour within us many different selves, not all of which feel equally like ‘us’, so much so that in certain moods, we can complain of having come adrift from what we judge to be our true selves.

Unfortunately, the self we miss at such moments, the elusively authentic, creative and spontaneous side of our character, is not ours to summon at will. Our access to it is, to a humbling extent, determined by the places we happen to be in, by the colour of the bricks, the height of the ceilings and the layout of the streets. In a house strangled by three motorways, or in a wasteland of rundown tower blocks, our optimism and sense of purpose are liable to drain away, like water from a punctured container. We may start to forget that we ever had ambitions or reasons to feel spirited and hopeful.

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need – but are at constant risk of forgetting we need – within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.

In turn, those places whose outlook match and legitimate our own, we tend to honor with the term ‘home’. Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognize its harmony with our own prized internal song. As the French writer Stendhal put it, ‘What we find beautiful is the promise of happiness’.

It is the world’s great religions that have perhaps given most thought to the role played by our environment in determining our identity and so – while seldom constructing places where we might fall asleep – have shown the greatest sympathy for our need for a home. The very principle of religious architecture has its origins in the notion that where we are critically determines what we are able to believe in. To defenders of religious architecture, however convinced we are at an intellectual level of our commitments to a creed, we will only remain reliably devoted to it when it is continually affirmed by our buildings. We may be nearer or further away from God on account of whether we’re in a church, a mosque – or a supermarket. We can’t be good, faithful people anywhere.

Ordinary, domestic architecture can be said to have just as much of an influence on our characters as religious buildings. What we call a beautiful house is one that rebalances our misshapen natures and encourages emotions which we are in danger of losing sight of. For example, an anxious person may be deeply moved by a white empty minimalist house. Or a business executive who spends her life shuttling between airports and steel and glass conference centers may feel an intense attraction to a simple rustic cottage – which can put her in touch with sides of her personality that are denied to her in the ordinary press of her days. We call something beautiful whenever we detect that it contains in a concentrated form those qualities in which we personally, or our societies more generally, are deficient. We respect a style which can move us away from what we fear and towards what we crave: a style which carries the correct dosage of our missing virtues.

It is sometimes thought exaggerated to judge people on their tastes in design. It can hardly seem appropriate to pass judgment on the basis of a choice of wallpaper. But the more seriously we take architecture, the more we can come to argue that it is in fact logical to base sympathy for someone on their visual tastes. For visual taste is never just simply a visual matter. It’s indicative of a view of life. Any object of design will give off an impression of the psychological and moral attitudes it supports. We can, for example, feel two distinct conceptions of fulfillment emanating from a plain crockery set on the one hand and an ornate flower-encrusted one on the other – an invitation to a democratic graceful sensibility in the former case, to a more nostalgic, country-bound disposition in the latter.

In essence, what works of design and architecture talk to us about is the kind of life that would most appropriately unfold within and around them. They tell us of certain moods that they seek to encourage and sustain in their inhabitants. While keeping us warm and helping us in mechanical ways, they simultaneously hold out an invitation for us to be specific sorts of people. They speak of particular visions of happiness.

To describe a building as beautiful therefore suggests more than a mere aesthetic fondness; it implies an attraction to the particular way of life this structure is promoting through its roof, door handles, window frames, staircase and furnishings. A feeling of beauty is a sign that we have come upon a material articulation of certain of our ideas of a good life. Similarly, buildings will strike us as offensive not because they violate a private and mysterious visual preference but because they conflict with our understanding of the rightful sense of existence.

No wonder then that our discussions of architecture and design have a tendency to be so heated. Arguments about what is beautiful are at heart arguments about the values we want to live by; rather than merely struggling about how we want things to look.

Because of my feelings towards architecture, last year, I began a new organization called Living Architecture; we build beautiful modern houses around Britain that people can rent for a holiday. It is a combination of an artistic firm and a holiday company. I love to combine business and art in this way. It is an immensely fulfilling project. www.living-architecture.co.uk

KZ: As you know, ancient Persian architecture and Islamic architecture are two of the most prominent schools of architecture in the world. In Iran, you can find the most glorious and magnificent instances of inspirational architecture. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve dedicated one part of your documentary film “The Architecture of Happiness” to the Islamic architecture. Tell us about your familiarity with the Persian and Islamic architecture. Which elements are the most striking and eminent features of Persian and Islamic architecture in your view?

For the modern world, what Persian architecture shows most of all are the possibilities of decoration. For 100 years, decoration became taboo in the secular west. All buildings had to be plain, white or grey – but with nothing on them. Persian architecture reminds us that a building can also be a jewel, or as something as bright and intricate as a piece of lace. This kind of architecture speaks of delight, of transcending the ordinary, of touching something that makes us awed and humble. All this we need to relearn and remember – and buildings should help us to do this.

KZ: In your book “The Art of Travel”, you’ve elaborately discussed the delicacies and subtleties of traveling and presented guidelines on how to make one’s travels more enjoyable and fruitful. How may countries have you traveled to? How do you make a travel enjoyable for yourself? May I ask you to give us some clues on how to employ the “art of travel” in order to turn our exhausting, arduous voyages into pleasurable and interesting trips?

I think we need to recognize that traveling is not only difficult practically; it is also a psychological experience. At its best, travel should change our souls, should make us into better, wiser people. However, only too often, it is ruined by our lack of expectation. Religious pilgrimages show the way: pilgrims use travel for inner transformation. This is always the way one should do it.

KZ: You spent one week at the Heathrow Airport and talked to the airline staff, senior executives and travelers about their attitudes and viewpoints about the time which they spend there. The result of this one-week research became your instructive book “A Week At The Airport: A Heathrow Diary”. Unquestionably, Heathrow Airport is a unique and unrivaled venue in Europe. What did you extract from your researches, interviews and observations there?

AB: There are not too many books about airports in the world, given how central airports are to our experiences. Very often, when airports are written about, they are covered in the context of disasters. The airport becomes significant when there is a tragedy, a plane crashes, or else when there is an appalling strike, a snowstorm, some kind of disruption. I was resolutely against focusing on these extraordinary events. What interested me was to describe the ordinary, precisely because it is so very unusual and special.

The real problem with airports is that we tend to go there when we need to catch a plane and because it’s so difficult to find the way to the gate, we tend not to look around at our surroundings. And yet airports definitely reward a second look. They are the imaginative centers of the modern world. It’s here you should go to find, in a concrete form, all the themes of modernity that one otherwise finds only in an abstract forms in the media. Here you see globalization, environmental destruction, runaway consumerism, family breakdown, the modern sublime etc. in action.

Airports are so fascinating because they are places where high technology meets consumer culture, where we feel in the presence of the giant collective mind of the modern world. So often, we are in environments which haven’t changed much since the 19th century; suddenly at the airport, we see the promises of modernity: the promise of speed, transformation, infernal bureaucracy and nightmarish loss of individuality. It is a mixture of horror and beauty, which as an artist one can celebrate and lament.

Airports are a mixture of horror and beauty. The sight of an aircraft taking off to the skies is an intensely moving and amazing scene, not only for small boys, but for grown ups too. Boy’s dreams are often the right ones. The question is why men are not allowed to exploit the dreams of boys, why we have to put those dreams away. As I get older, I try more and more to do the sort of things I liked when I was 8. Boys are quite right to be excited by technology, like the Airbus A380 or the new Rolls Royce Trent engine, which is as fine a human document of human creativity as a cathedral.

Airports help to put us in touch with the idea of alternatives, they relativize us. They make us think that right now, be it at 10am or 3pm, somewhere on the other side of the globe, very different things are happening. They do that very basic task of the places of travel; jolt us into remembering that the world is stranger, more exciting, more various than we imagine it when we are in familiar surroundings, and in danger of boredom and routine.

KZ: While looking through your books, I came across to an interesting point and that was the diversity and variability of your works. You have not limited yourself to a certain dogma in writing. You have produced works on philosophy, literature, architecture, travel, social class etc. We don’t have so many notable authors with such a diverse background. It might be an attractive mission to be able to explore so many fields of study simultaneously. Isn’t it?

AB: We live in a very specialized the world: the engineer must only do engineering etc. The same has become true of writing. Yet I am a naturally restless soul, always curious about things, and the questions that haunt me exist in so many different spheres. The question of meaning, happiness, fulfillment, love… these topics are everywhere, in airports, in love stories, in architecture…

KZ: As a Western author, what are in your view, the most challenging predicaments of the Western society? In the oriental communities, especially in Iran, there’s a common perception that the foundations of morality are becoming shaky in the West. As evidence, we can cite the dissolution of the foundation of traditional family in the West. Do you agree with me that at the same as experiencing technological, industrial, political and economic advancements, the Western societies are undergoing a cultural, moral setback?

AB: It is certainly true that the West is experiencing some very serious problems in the area of morality and community. We are having a hard time finding replacement for a religious structure. The rational Enlightenment thought that guides the West has paid too little attention to the emotional needs of man. It has always called for freedom, very important, but we also need guidance and a sense of belonging. I have just finished a book about religion, arguing that even atheists need to learn things from religion, and in it, I make many of the points you hint at.

KZ: In your “The Consolations of Philosophy”, you’ve tried to reconcile philosophy with the daily life. Your effort has been focused on employing philosophy to appease the pains of mankind. How is it possible for the intricate, complex concepts of philosophy to find solutions for the daily problems of the humankind? Does the philosophy of the six philosophers which you’ve presented in your book address the problems of humanity in one way or the other?

AB: Philosophy is something that, alongside religion, should guide us in our everyday lives. At many moments of our lives, we need assistance of a psychological kind, either someone to explain what we are feeling, or to put a feeling in context, to make us feel less strange to ourselves.

KZ: Our world is witness to a growing wave of violence, inhumanity and atrocity absorbing different countries. Discrimination against the minorities, repressive regimes which violate the human rights and restrict the natural freedoms of their own citizens, bloody wars and battles which are fought in the four corners of the world and the imperialistic powers which are looking to expand their dominance over the subjugated nations constitute the major concerns of the international community today. Are these problems solvable in short run? Does philosophy provide solutions to these problems?

AB: I very much believe that writers should be engaged in the problems of our world. They should not retreat into the domestic, or only consider abstract intellectual questions. Of course, it is easy to despair, to feel that one person can never do very much. But history shows a number of writers in every age who manage subtly to influence things, who awaken their countrymen, who frighten those who are corrupt, who say things that need to be said, who do with words what could not be done with guns and prisons. So yes, I remain hopeful that writing can in its own small way alleviate the human condition.

KZ: For my final question, let me ask you about your general perception of Iran. Although the country which you reside in and the country which I belong to are at odds, literature can bridge the gaps between us. What is your special message for the Iranian readers of this interview?

AB: I would like to say to them firstly how very honored I feel that they read my work. I know that it is a great commitment and investment, and I am deeply grateful. Also, I would like to say that though our two countries are at odds, the ordinary people of the UK, like the ordinary people of Iran, have no dispute with one another at all – we are all at heart vulnerable creatures in need of forgiveness and understanding. In a modest way, books can help to build bridges, and I would be greatly pleased if my own books  helped Iranian readers to feel that there is someone a little like them living in another country far away. I sincerely believe in the international family of mankind, and that literature has a role to play in reminding us of it.

Setting the stage for America’s degradation—anachronistic thinking

Part 2…

“The problems in the world today cannot be solved with the level of thinking that created them.” Einstein

How can America entertain, feed, water, house and warm another 100 million people added by 2035—a scant 25 years from now?  Answer: it can’t and it won’t!

When Einstein’s quote hits home, it allows you to step out of third world and 20th century thinking by advancing toward a 21^st century paradigm shift. Once you connect the dots, you will not be able to go back to old thinking or ancient solutions. Why? Because they guarantee failure!

Therefore, such terms as ‘sustainable growth’ and ‘economic growth’ prove oxymorons that bring our “Population Katrina” ashore much faster. If we continue on our current disastrous path, our country will reach China’s one billion by the end of this century, or within the lifetime of your grandchildren. Have you ever asked yourself why there is no Chinese Dream or why no one wants to emigrate to China or why millions of Chinese risk life and limb to reach America and Canada? Why do Indians rush to our shores but no one rushes to India? What about Bangladesh with 157 million people in a landmass the size of Ohio? Would you like to move to that hellhole? In other words, how would you like to live in California when it doubles from 38 million to 76 million? The prevailing question will be, “Hey buddy, do you have a drink of water you can spare me?”

One way or the other, if we maintain this unrestricted immigration path, we will manifest what immigrants from the third world flee. Would you call China, India, Japan or Bangladesh racists, xenophobic or other names because they don’t allow immigration?  Why don’t they?  Too many people already!

“The modern plague of overpopulation is solvable by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not the sufficient knowledge of the solution, but the universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem for billions of people who are its victims.” Dr. Martin Luther King

Think what you will of King, but he hit target with his speech when he received the Human Rights Award in 1966.

“Each person in the USA has an impact on the environment equal to as low as 10 and as high as 33 in a third world nation. Therefore, the US population as 295 million is equal in many ways to a minimum of 2.9 billion people in environmental impact.” National Academy of Sciences

If you can’t or won’t see that impending reality, you imitate the ones looking out to sea in New Orleans in 2005 and you hoped the winds would die down or Katrina would change course. I am here to tell you that this population storm will not change course. We must change direction if we are to save ourselves.

“Sustainable growth is a self-contradictory concept beloved by those who want to continue the same old stands—growth as a solution to all problems—very few people grasp the simple fact—demographic or economic growth is unsustainable.” Lindsey Grant, author of TOO MANY PEOPLE

“Climate change will have a devastating effect on the availability of water in the Western United States. Even as best-case scenario, it forecasts a virtual train wreck, with supplies falling far short of the projected future demands for water by cities, farms and wildlife.” Andrew Bridges, Science Writer for AP

You may argue Malthus’ theme all you want, but the facts demand your attention that we don’t have enough water to keep growing in the West. Arizona’s aquifers suffer horrific drainage and it’s so dry you can’t spit. California offers bottled water because tap water is unsafe and it is fast becoming as expensive as gasoline. Any fool can see it coming, but most governors refuse to look at or deal with the reality of limits. It is Hurricane Katrina-like thinking, i.e., maybe if we ignore it—IT will go away.

“If we don’t persuade Congress to lower immigration to traditional levels of 175,000 per year, we’ll condemn Americans to lives of increasing sprawl, congestion and economic failure.” Roy Beck, author of “IMMIGRATION BY THE NUMBERS” In a five minute astoundingly simple yet brilliant video, “Immigration, Poverty, and Gum Balls”, Roy Beck, director of www.numbersusa.ORG, graphically illustrates the impact of overpopulation.  Take five minutes to see for yourself

I know and respect Roy Beck to the highest degree. I urge every American to join www.NumbersUSA.org and become a weekly faxer of prewritten letters. What can you argue about his quote? Absolutely nothing! These people have connected the dots and we must join them for the future of our country, our children and the world.

“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from the microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?” Dr. Albert Bartlett, Professor of Physics, Colorado University

Go ahead, name one! If you do come up with one, make your point with reason knowing that 6.8 billion humans already wreak havoc already and over 18 million deaths from starvation annually already occur. I’d welcome your email giving me a good reason for more population growth after you’ve read this two part series. In the meantime, I know Dr. Bartlett and he is on par with Einstein in intellect.

Mental Ghettos Weaken the US

So many intelligent Americans believe, say and do stupid things. When a large fraction of the population is like this, a nation rots from the inside and succumbs to external forces.

I have always searched for the simplest yet best ways to explain what I see as a multi-decade decline of every aspect of the United States, especially its political system and government. I keep coming back to the inescapable logic that a large fraction of Americans, regardless of their education, economic status and political alignment, must suffer from delusion. This delusion produces denial about hugely important subjects and issues.

Like a law of physics, this combination makes people seem incredibly stupid to others disagreeing with their positions. Stupid, because they are unable to accept facts and truths that conflict with their views.

This special kind of stupidity is independent of inherent intelligence. In this case brain power is overpowered by psychological deficiency, namely self-delusion.

This delusion is not genetically produced, but is a result of external influences, notably political, government, media and corporate propaganda intentionally designed to produce delusional beliefs and thinking. Who does this? All sorts of commercial and political interests. The result is a series of biases and blocks, such as cognitive dissonance, to objective facts and information that creates denial about very important conditions affecting the planet, the nation and individuals. People afflicted with this deadly combination appear stupid to those outside their mental ghetto that they gladly inhabit, along with similarly afflicted people.

National unity breaks down with countless mental ghettos that span economic, political and geographic boundaries.

Conservatives see liberals as stupid and vice versa. Democrats see Tea Party adherents (who only support Republican candidates) as stupid and vice versa. Those seeing climate change and global warming as serious phenomena posing real threats see deniers as stupid. People who give a high priority to tax cuts that mainly benefit the rich and superrich seem stupid to those who recognize that the wealthiest Americans have hijacked the US economy, as shown by endless statistics that reveal their preferential financial benefits. Those who reject religions think the religious stupid. People who shun social networking sites see those addicted to them as stupid. Growing numbers of obese people seem stupid to those eating healthy and exercising regularly to maintain healthy weights.

A prime example of a mental ghetto is the collection of radical, terrorist Muslims sharing hate and violence and blocking out teachings from authentic Muslims about peace and love.

You surely can think of classes of people who seem stupid, because of a particular belief or viewpoint rather than across-the-board limited intelligence. With conversations that have nothing to do with their position (or maybe several), you would likely think of them as reasonably intelligent and smart, not stupid. In other words, stupidity is often topic or issue specific.

Here are two examples of what I call psychological stupidity with their powerful implications for understanding why the nation is seen on the wrong track by so many Americans who cannot unite behind solutions.

There is no mystery why the top 20 percent of the population in terms of wealth votes for Republicans, but they are not enough to win elections. What makes far less sense is why many more middle class Americans vote for Republicans. They seem stupid in voting against their own economic interests because Republicans pursue policies that preferentially reward the richest Americans. This behavior can only be explained by the success of Republican propaganda (mainly trickle down prosperity), lies and deceptions that instill a set of biases and beliefs that enable Republicans to win elections. A prime example is obtaining broad support for keeping taxes on really rich people low.

On the other side, are millions of people who vote for Democrats because they have been sold rhetoric about reforming the government system, as if Democrats are not also in the pockets of a number of special interests that will not accept truly needed deep reforms. Why have we not seen President Obama pursue punishment of many people and companies in the banking, mortgage and financial sectors that caused the economic meltdown? He had received huge campaign contributions from them and then surrounded himself with cabinet officials and advisors from them. Otherwise intelligent people vote for Democrats because of their psychological stupidity based on false promises of change and reform that they have succumbed to.

Psychological stupidity has become a kind of cultural epidemic that no one is addressing, so it just gets worse. It invites manipulation and the continuing corrosion and corruption of government. The rich and powerful know how to take advantage of this stupidity, obtaining government policies and programs they want, selling products and services that consumers do not really benefit from, and grabbing more of the nation’s wealth.

Those afflicted with psychological stupidity are also likely to exhibit moral superiority, making it even more difficult to have intelligent and productive conversations with them. Such arrogance strengthens their defenses against facts and information that conflicts with their cherished views. The answer: Associate with others having exactly the same views and only get information from like-minded media sources, creating mental ghettos (such as the Tea Party and Fox News) that others can take political or commercial advantage of (Republicans and companies selling gold).

Self-deception is the widespread legal narcotic lubricating the slide of American society into the toilet that other once great nations ended up in. Maybe this old Arab proverb warrants respect: People who lie to others have merely hidden away the truth, but people who lie to themselves have forgotten where they put it.

Which mental ghettos do you belong to?

Low Dose Arsenic for a Cyanide Society

Many believe that an 81 mg aspirin a day will help prevent a heart attack. Yet even greater numbers voluntarily absorb regular doses of poison with their daily diet. Start with the mass media. If you watch network programming, you are being programmed. Doubt this conclusion and you prove just how well the brainwashing has taken hold. The nightly news is a prime example of shaping a view of the world according to the script that keeps you dumb and stupid.

To prove this point, just watch any news broadcast from an international newscast source. The difference from NBC, CBS or ABC is stark. Now read a newspaper from overseas and compare the editorial selection from the New York Times, Washington Post or USA Today. The lack of professional journalistic standards is obvious in the fish wrapper version from establishment publications. The theme in both broadcast and print media is the same. View the world with blinders, from a superficial microcosm.

When the New York Times claims the motto: “All the News That’s Fit to Print”, they are boldly telling you that you do not need to think for yourself or search out alternative information. The NYT is the paper of record. Take your dose of ratsbane from the snobs that deem you a dullard, who needs to be browbeaten into accepting your inferiority.

Now go to a movie multiplex and subjugate yourself to a sophisticated mind warp of cultural delusion. The film experience dispenses with entertainment and concentrates its artistic techniques upon molding Frankenstein monsters for assimilation into a slasher society. Flicks for Andy Hardy offspring’s are not made; since modern moralism is so advanced from, the 30’s to the 50’s, that family values are no longer relevant, according to the new MGM movie moguls.

Government schools teach this enlightened, non judgmental value, ethic for it is their mission to educate the next generation to use people as Twi’lek slave Oola was treated, for the amusement of Jabba the Hutt. In order to become a star in Hollywood and win the war of survival any means necessary, especially the dark side, is the lesson to learn.

Public official propaganda becomes the playbook to follow for gaining the easy life. A drop of daily toxicant is the formula for garnering you a badge of dishonor as a servant of the state. The reward for blind obedience is a life of anxious desperation. A lust for a pension becomes the substitute when retiring from active duty and the loss of bulling authority over government subjects.

These mind bending pressures could blow any mind. To the rescue comes Big Pharma. Drop a pill and all is well. A little help from your friends is the way to get through the day. If the pressures of listening to managed news and the escapism of dark movies cannot snap you back to reality, try the medication of Merck and Pfizer. Zoloft, Selectra, and Eleva are household drugs for the mentally-ill adjusted or the emotionally challenged. Of course, you are immunized from such a fate with your own balanced lifestyle. Or are you?

CNBC (if you can trust the coverage of an establishment media) reports that, “More than 45 million Americans, or 20 percent of U.S. adults, had some form of mental illness last year, and 11 million had a serious illness . . . Young adults aged 18 to 25 had the highest level of mental illness at 30 percent”. Could General Electric’s medical division see an opportunity by jumping into the drug business? Or is CNBC just looking for additional medical coverage in their employment coverage when Obamacare hits home? Surely, the on air talent at the business channel qualify as maladjusted scherzos’ trained as word prompter readers!

Who is more disturbed, the person listening to the news report or the individual reading the lies? At least the TV personality is being paid, while the viewer has to pay a cable or satellite bill.

The arsenic treatment might seem humorous if done by Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha in a Frank Capra movie, but the way it is applied today, the outcome will not have a happy ending. Each small drop of a poisonous substance just adds to the aggregate lunacy of the society. Cyanide ingestion guarantees immediate termination. But when the process is incremental, the danger seems less acute.

Government hates to be outdone. The well-published latest outrage is with the TSA Gestapo “just following orders” tactics. TSA Stasi stooges are the real terrorists. The illicit Security Complex has the mentality that demeaning every innocent citizen is the true motive for each escalated level of personal assaults. Acting as profaned individuals and enjoying their violations of civil liberties, these disturbed thugs are prime mental patients for insane asylums. Do you have doubts that government TSA lackeys come from the same genetic strain as those who dropped Zyklon B in the defense of the homeland?

If you think this assessment goes too far, than face the facts about the radiation danger from airport body scanners. Becky Akers writes,

“Perhaps the TSA’s biggest whoppers whitewash the hazards to our health from the two technologies with which it strips us. Experts in medicine, biochemistry, and biophysics warn that one, backscatter X-ray, concentrates in the skin rather than diffusing through the body as medical radiation does; therefore, the dose you receive is shockingly high — far higher than the government admits. Dr. Jeff Zervas, a surgeon in Montevideo, Minnesota, told me, “As far as living tissue is concerned, the less exposure to ionizing radiation, the better. Zero is best.” Dr. Zervas also worried about the TSA’s legendary incompetence: “What happens, for example, if some clown leaves the machine on, and a passenger’s standing in the field? And who calibrates these things? I wouldn’t trust a bureaucrat or anyone else without a stake in its safety to do it properly.

Dr. David Caskey, a cardiologist who was also teaching at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans when we spoke, seconded that: “In the medical industry we try as hard as possible to avoid even the smallest dose of radiation. Here you will be subjected to a rather significant amount. The result can and will be an increase in cataract formation, thyroid cancer, bone marrow suppression, etc.” He was especially concerned for female passengers. “Even low level radiation can adversely affect a woman’s ovaries. There’s the potential for later birth defects. That risk increases if the woman is pregnant in the first trimester when she would likely be unaware of the pregnancy.”

Millimeter waves may be even worse. No one knows their exact effects on human flesh, but one study concludes that they “unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. … a new generation of cameras are set to appear that not only record [millimeter] waves but also bombard us with them…”

This TSA dose of arsenic inevitably produces the cyanide society. For those who say; NO, this cannot be true! Just review the CBS poll – 4 in 5 Support Full-Body Airport Scanners “Americans overwhelmingly approve of the use of full-body digital x-ray machines – a new technology in use at some airports in the U.S.” Whom will you believe? CBS that famous network of the most trusted man in America, Walter Cronkite or your own common sense . . .

Now you say there is a difference in wanting to be safe, but approving the use of full-body scanners and accepting the radiation risk of going through one yourself, does not fulfill that objective. Nevertheless, the notion that people are willingly to accept forced irradiation as part of the conditions in buying a ticket to ride the friendly skies of Amerika is a sign that the slow poison has already diminished the mental capacity of the branded cattle that stand in a queue.

Quick, take an additional dose of feel good drugs from Big Pharma. They will soon have a medicine to save your life from frequent trips through the airport scanners.

Where are the heroes that will storm the citadel and fight off the government child molesters? Is there a contemporary Leonidas that will lead 300 Spartans against the threat of total annihilation at the hands of government shock troops? Do you have the independence to refuse the hemlock? Or do you have the genius to engineer a total resistance to the cyanide society?

Socrates was dangerous because he exhorted defiance to oppression and maintained fidelity to the search for the truth. The extermination of dissonant individuals is the objective of nitrile order. Combat these government goons on every level and stratum of resistance. Tune out the mainstream media, boycott the dream works machine of disturbed fantasy, take your children out of government schools, and deprogram the mass onslaught from destructive socialization.

A quick demise is preferable to a slow torment. The point of the Strappado Wrack is to keep you off the torture rack. If that is not possible, die at your own Thermopylae, as a hero and a defender of Western Civilization.

Technology Addiction and Virtual Reality

It will be difficult, if not impossible, to bring the U.S. back from the brink of social and economic collapse upon which it is so precariously perched. Our collective inertia is carrying us to the edge of the abyss. Changing course will require a change of consciousness, an awakening. Critical mass must be reached, but we have not even begun contemplating making that immense journey. We should have started long ago. Now it may be too late for us.

The American people are brainwashed by prolonged exposure to the corporate media, particularly television, which has a financial stake in keeping them propagandized and in a stupor. The religion of America is buying and selling. Capital is God and everyone and everything is subservient to it. Corporations are people. Money is free speech. Virtual reality has replaced actual reality.

With the proliferation of technological devices and the widespread use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, people are receding deeper into catacombs of fantasy. Irreplaceable social skills are being lost in the process. Text messaging is no substitute for physical human contact. The touching of human lips and a furtive glance is more pregnant with possibility than a series of x’s and o’s sent over an IPhone. The psychological development of a healthy human being requires personal contact and social interaction.

Despite its potential use as a tool for social networking, the collective use of technology has had the opposite effect by trivializing conversation and by diminishing social interaction. People are more enamored with the technology than the quality of the communication. They are spending huge sums of money on the latest technology in order to avoid the stigma of “phone shame,” when older technology will suffice or personal contact is required. Monotonous chit chat is no substitute for real conversation about the important issues that affect us all.

As technology gains primacy, people are forgetting how to communicate with one another. We no longer know how to live in the natural world. The spiritual umbilical that connects us to the earth and promotes a sense of belonging to the greater biological community was severed by technology. As a result, technological Homo sapiens are careening out of control; they are spiritually and psychologically isolated from one another and from universal consciousness.

Due in part to our fascination with technological innovation, our perception of reality is either distorted or lost. We are wandering aimlessly toward oblivion, text messaging and chit-chatting like mechanical drones seeking to extract meaning from a world where the laws of physics do not apply and anything is possible, up to and including the impossible. That is the appeal of virtual reality: you can believe anything you want and pretend that it is true. We are attempting to suck nutriment from a block of styrofoam. We are dying inside.

Cell phones, IPods, Blackberries, Androids, high definition television, and computer games are little more than expensive toys that distract us from living authentic lives. Like pornography, electronic devices isolate people and prevent them from forming meaningful social networks that might promote revolutionary ideas.

Globally, perhaps more than a billion people are disconnected from one another by their addiction to technologies that keep them subservient to corporate power. The manner in which these ubiquitous devices are used tends to divide rather than unite people. Their use has done little to raise public consciousness or to produce better, more engaged citizens. Our infatuation with technology is working against collective awakening and the long term survival of the species. As Thoreau lamented long ago, “men have become the tools of their tools.” But who reads Thoreau nowadays? Reading great literature is such a quaint idea, a remnant of a bygone era. Who needs literacy when you can buy an IPhone or a really cool MP3 player? We do.

Technological innovation and capitalism go hand in hand. Capitalism fosters the conquest of nature and stimulates superfluous consumption and waste. The raw materials of industry and technology are taken from the earth, annihilating indigenous populations and promoting colonization. Driven by a philosophy of endless expansion, the ideology of the cancer cell, population growth is encouraged in order to increase the supply of consumers, as well as provide cannon fodder for the frequent military incursions that are inherent to capitalism.

Saturation advertising creates artificial wants and promotes usury lending. It leads to debt peonage that diminishes personal sovereignty while simultaneously promoting dependency on gratuitous goods and services. Militarism and occupation is a prominent feature of capitalism, as well as the dehumanization of the work force. These activities have enormous impact on the biosphere and on human relations.

The pervasive addiction to complex technology has led to the evolution of a passive consumer culture that is incapable of acting in its own self-interest. It has rewired the human brain and significantly reduced attention spans. As a result, skills such as reading and writing are diminishing. Intricate social interaction is on the wane. People are becoming increasingly withdrawn and isolated from their neighbors and from their communities. They are alienated from nature. People inhabit virtual worlds because they no longer possess the psychological capacity, spiritual fortitude, and social skills required to live authentically in the actual world.

We Americans are being entertained to death. Having lost our visceral connection to nature, we can no longer differentiate between the real and the artificial. We think that we can believe whatever we want, regardless of the facts, and that ignorance will somehow protect us from the consequences of false consciousness. We ignore the exponential effect of witlessness at our own peril.

Behaving as if the laws of physics do not apply to the actual world does not bode well for our long term survival. We choose to live with our heads up our asses rejecting reality because it is too complex for us to comprehend. Being informed makes us too uncomfortable. Knowledge and understanding are too burdensome. Possessing them would require us to live better and simpler lives, and that requires too much effort. We do not crave a life of meaning and purpose but a life of ease stretched out on the sofa drinking beer, eating cheese and watching TV.

Thus we choose entertainment to blunt our senses and to suppress true consciousness from awakening. Our lives are predicated upon speed and laced with anxiety. Life is a blur mimicking the speed of electrons around a nucleus. The computer microchip and the motherboard is a microcosm of our cities and our harried lives of not so quiet desperation.

Life passes with little awareness. Everyone is in a hurry but no one is going anywhere. We are speeding up when we should be slowing down to notice the world around and within us. We vainly attempt to fill our empty lives with toys and electronic contraptions in an attempt to find a semblance of meaning in our hollowed-out existence.

The technological age has created a race of human beings that are no longer equipped to live in nature. Thus we destroy the very biosphere that is the source of all life. We exist as if there are no consequences to what we do. Cause and effect may not apply in the virtual worlds we create for ourselves, but it is a governing principle in nature. Technology is no substitute for carrying capacity.

Unable or unwilling to comprehend the implication of events such as the false flag operations of 9-11 or the problematic issue of global climate change, we retreat deeper into fantasy. Electronic technology is the opiate of the masses. Taken to excess, technology is a form of escapism no less destructive than the hallucinatory world created by heavy-duty recreational drugs or by hardcore pornography. Fantasy does not provide us the means of living an authentic life in the midst of nature. Moreover, it has not produced a worthwhile culture of close-knit communities based upon common need with high regard for the public welfare and planetary health.

We cannot confront the injustice of social and economic disparity, militarism, colonialism, gluttonous consumption, or the mass extinction of flora and fauna, until we acknowledge their existence. This requires that we live in the actual world with its stupendous biodiversity and complexity. It requires us to open our eyes and our minds to the possibilities of the actual world. We must strive to raise our own true consciousness and that of the people around us. This requires real contact between real people, and it entails initiating meaningful dialog. We must learn to be fully present in our own lives.

All Things Nuclear Must Pass: US, Israel and Iran

Dr. Avner Cohen, is an Israeli-born philosopher, historical researcher and a leading expert in Israel’s nuclear policy of deception, which is spun as ‘Ambiguity’ and his latest release is The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb.

In an interview with Haaretz, Cohen stated, “There was a secret even before there was anything to hide. Some students were sent overseas to study nuclear physics, and a group started to look for uranium in the Negev. There was none. Nonetheless, this small group, which merely had a vision, already maintained a cult of secrecy. In those years, there was not yet an international regime against nuclear proliferation – this was a decade before the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But even then, when theoretically anything was allowed, there was a sense of taboo. That the subject could not be discussed. David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres understood that in this sphere you don’t really want to state your objectives precisely. The sense was that designating goals would, in itself, stir an argument, and that it was better to avoid such debates, both internal and external. The idea was that it was crucial not to raise these questions. I read materials that are kept in archives around the world or are in memoirs. In particular, I carried out a large number of interviews and conversations with people. In my opinion, I have not written anything that harms the State of Israel; perhaps some things will help it.” [1]

An American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, also researched archives and memoirs and wrote in The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s secret alliance with Apartheid South Africa that Israeli officials “formally offered to sell South Africa some of the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal” and that PW Botha, South Africa’s defense minister asked Shimon Peres-who was then Israel’s defense minister-for nuclear warheads.

Peres offered them “in three sizes” which are understood as conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons.

The two signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that “the very existence of this agreement” was to remain secret.

On 4 June 1975, Peres and Botha met in Zurich and by then, the Jericho project had been renamed Chalet. The top-secret minutes of that meeting recorded that:

“Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available…Minister Peres said the correct payload was available in three sizes. Minister Botha expressed his appreciation.” [2]

Botha did not go ahead with the deal because of the cost and the fact that final approval was dependent on Israel’s prime minister. South Africa did build its own nuclear bombs and also provided much of the yellowcake uranium that Israel required to develop its nuclear arsenal.

The documents confirm also that former South African naval commander, Dieter Gerhardt admitted there was an agreement between Israel and South Africa called “Chalet” that involved an offer by the Jewish state to arm eight Jericho missiles with “special warheads” understood as atomic bombs.

“Some weeks before Peres made his offer of nuclear warheads to Botha, the two defence ministers signed a covert agreement governing the military alliance known as Secment. It was so secret that it included a denial of its own existence: ‘It is hereby expressly agreed that the very existence of this agreement… shall be secret and shall not be disclosed by either party.'” [Ibid]

The secret military agreement signed by Shimon Peres and P W Botha of South Africa. Photograph: Copyright Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons

Haartez reported:

“From 1963 onward, Ben-Gurion and Peres directed [Israel’s nuclear weapons] project under a thick cloud of secrecy, Cohen says. Even senior figures involved in it did not know whether Israel was in fact determined to attain nuclear weapons, or whether it wanted to simply move closer to that watershed. Cohen’s book includes a historic anecdote that shows how even at crucial phases in the project’s development, Israel’s decision-makers refrained from specifying, even in their own internal discussions, its genuine objectives.

“In the days of high anxiety prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, researchers around the world have claimed that Israel passed the nuclear threshold…In the few days before the war, Israel did something it had never done before. In an intensive crash effort, Israeli teams improvised the assembly of the nation’s first nuclear explosive devices.

“As Israeli scientists and technicians were ‘tickling the dragon’s tail,’ meaning assembling the first nuclear cores for those devices, only a few of them were even aware that there was a military contingency plan in the works. As Israeli leaders contemplated the worst scenarios – in particular, the failure of the Israeli air force to destroy the Arab air forces, and/or the extensive use by Egypt of chemical weapons against Israeli cities – authority was given for preliminary contingency planning for ‘demonstrating’ Israel’s nuclear capability.”

Cohen claims that “like John Kennedy’s government before it, the Johnson administration believed that it would be a mistake to allow Israel to develop nuclear weapons, and thus tried to keep Israel at the ‘threshold’ status” but LBJ’s failure to protect and honor the lives that were on board the USS LIBERTY, reflect a moral, ethical and political failure, for he refused to allow the assassinations of “a few sailors to embarrass an ally.”

Journalist and author, James Scott wrote in The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship:

“More than twenty minutes before the fatal torpedo strike killed twenty-five sailors; Israel’s chief air controller conclusively identified the Liberty as an American ship” and many years after the attack, Lieutenant Colonel Shmuel Kislev, the chief air controller at general headquarters in Tel Aviv, confessed that he knew the U.S.S. LIBERTY was an American ship as soon as an Israeli pilot radioed in its hull numbers.

“Two months before the sailor’s mass burial at Arlington Cemetery, Navy analysis also uncovered that the Israeli torpedo boat gunners had targeted the spy ship with 40-mm tracer rounds made in the United States. In 1967, the Republican representative from Iowa, H.R. Gross asked questions that still demand an answer today:

“Is this Government now, directly or indirectly, subsidizing Israel in the payment of full compensation for the lives that were destroyed, the suffering of the wounded, and the damage from this wanton attack? It can well be asked whether these Americans were the victims of bombs, machine gun bullets and torpedoes manufactured in the United States and dished out as military assistance under foreign aid.”

By November 1967, lawmakers were willing to spend six million USA tax dollars to build schools in Israel but during the debate, Representative Gross spoke with the voice of conscience and  introduced an amendment that “not one dollar of U.S. credit or aid of any kind [should] go to Israel until there is a firm settlement with regard to the attack and full reparations have been made [and Israel] provides full and complete reparations for the killing and wounding of more than 100 United States citizens in the wanton, unprovoked attack…I wonder how you would feel if you were the father of one of the boys who was killed in that connection-or perhaps you do not have any feelings with respect to these young men who were killed, wounded and maimed, or their families.” [3]

Cohen also told Haaretz, that in a late-1969 meeting between Golda Meir and Nixon, “the United States and most of the Western world agreed to accept Israel’s special nuclear status. In other words, Israel did not join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but it received special status, and pressure was not exerted on it with regard to this topic. Ambiguity is the Israeli-American policy. Without the West’s agreement, there would be no ambiguity.

“I’m often asked why I don’t drop this topic of ambiguity. I refer to historic and geopolitical circumstances, but I mainly believe that on the most basic and deepest level, ambiguity is simply not enlightened behavior, not in terms of the state’s citizens, and not in foreign relations.

“The bitter irony is that right now, ambiguity serves the interests of Israel’s rival in the Middle East. Iran is creating its own version of ambiguity: not the concealment of its project, but rather ambiguity with regard to the distinction separating possession and non-possession of nuclear weapons. It reiterates that it has no intention of building a bomb, but that it has the right to enrich uranium, and even come close to developing [nuclear] weapons – while still remaining true to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is straddling the line, and in my opinion, Iran wants to, and can, remain for some time with the status of a state that might or might not have the bomb. Iran is a state of ambiguity.”

In 2006, Virginia Tilley, Professor of political science wrote:

“In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word ‘map’ or the term ‘wiped off.’ According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was ‘this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.’

“In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s-a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then.

“Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah’s regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison.

“So, too, the ‘occupying regime’ in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence: ‘This too shall pass.'” [4]

In 1963, Shimon Peres, was Israel’s Deputy Minister of Defense and he met with President John Kennedy, at the White House.

Kennedy told Peres, “You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?”

Peres replied, “I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first.”

By September of 1986, Peres was convulsing over Mordechai Vanunu, who had been employed as a lowly tech in his progeny; Israel’s clandestine underground nuclear weapons centre in the Negev called the Dimona.

Peres ordered the Mossad, to “Bring the son of a bitch back here.”

Peres ordered Vanunu’s kidnapping that included a clubbing, drugging and being flung upon an Israeli cargo boat back to Israel for a closed-door trial.

In 1985, before quitting the Dimona, Vanunu shot 56 photos of the top-secret labs and production processes that proved Israel had become a major nuclear power by stockpiling between 100 and 200 atomic bombs within the six underground levels where plutonium production, and secret nuclear weapons were assembled without any knowledge, debate or authorization from its own citizens. Israel has yet to allow International Inspectors into the aged Dimona plant, which is leaking and endangering the health of its own citizens.

In 2005, Vanunu told me:

“President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them. Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.” [5]

Cohen also wrote about Yechiel Horev, who was the official responsible for security in the Defense Ministry and Cohen claims that Horev, “personally” hounded him in the early 2000s, and would have “been happy to see [him] put on trial.”

In 2004, Harretz journalist Yossi Melman wrote regarding Vanunu and Horev:

“This is the secret that hasn’t yet been told in the affair: the story of the security fiasco that made it possible for Vanunu to do what he did, and the story of the subsequent attempts at cover-up, whitewashing and protection of senior figures in the defense establishment, who were bent on divesting themselves of responsibility for the failure.

“The 18-year prison term to which Vanunu was sentenced is almost exactly the same period as that in which Yehiel Horev has served as chief of internal security in the defense establishment [who has been] involved in the affair as deputy chief of security at the Defense Ministry, and also after Vanunu’s abduction and arrest, as a member of an investigative commission.”

Melman describes Horev as devoted to duty and bland, petty and acutely suspicious, but also a man of personal integrity with a desire to expose corruption and failures coupled with a penchant for vengefulness.

“The affairs of the secrets that leaked from the two places considered Horev’s holiest sites – the Biological Institute, which produced a senior spy in the person of Prof. Marcus Klingberg, and the Dimona nuclear plant, about which secret information was revealed through Mordechai Vanunu – were formative events in the development of his world view. Shortly after taking office as chief of security at the Defense Ministry, Horev began to take punitive measures to hobble Vanunu. He is responsible for the harsh conditions in which Vanunu was held, which included years in solitary confinement, and the sharp limitations on the number of visitors he could have…[and has fought] a rearguard battle to prevent Vanunu from leaving Israel and to place him under supervision and restrictions that will be tantamount to house arrest. Horev has always been considered the strictest of all the security chiefs in Israel, especially in regard to the protection of institutions such as the Dimona facility and the Biological Institute. He is apprehensive that if Vanunu goes abroad, he will continue to be a nuisance by stimulating the public debate over Israel’s nuclear policy and the nuclear weapons he says Israel possesses…all the hyperactivity being displayed by Horev and those who support his approach is intended only to divert attention from what has not yet been revealed: the security blunders and their cover-ups.” [IBID]

On April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage in Prague and admitted, “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act…When we fail to pursue peace, then it stays forever beyond our grasp. We know the path when we choose fear over hope. To denounce or shrug off a call for cooperation is an easy but also cowardly thing to do. That’s how wars begin. That’s where human progress ends…the voices of peace and progress must be raised together…Human destiny will be what we make of it…Words must mean something.”

In 1987, from Ashkelon prison, Mordechai Vanunu wrote:

“The passive acceptance and complacency with regard to the existence of nuclear weapons anywhere on earth is the disease of society today…This struggle is not only a legitimate one – it is a moral, inescapable struggle…no government, not even the most democratic, can force us to live under this threat. No state in the world can offer any kind of security against this menace of a nuclear holocaust, or guarantee to prevent it.

“Already now there are enough nuclear missiles to destroy the world many times over…This issue should unite us all, because that is our real enemy…Any country, which manufactures and stocks nuclear weapons, is first of all endangering its own citizens. This is why the citizens must confront their government and warn it that it has no right to expose them to this danger.

“Because, in effect, the citizens are being held hostage by their own government, just as if they have been hijacked and deprived of their freedom and threatened…Indeed, when governments develop nuclear weapons without the consent of their citizens – and this is true in most cases – they are violating the basic rights of their citizens, the basic right not to live under constant threat of annihilation.

“Is any government qualified and authorized to produce such weapons.” [IBID]

“All things must pass, all things must pass away. Sunset doesn’t last all evening. A mind can blow those clouds away. Now the darkness only stays the nighttime; in the morning it will fade away. It’s not always going to be this grey; all things must pass, all things must pass away.” -

1. http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/clear-and-present-danger-1.321772

2. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1733&Itemid=233

3. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1289&Itemid=220

4. http://www.counterpunch.org/tilley08282006.html

5. BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010

Welcome to Oz

Being comfortable with what is most familiar to them, people are slow to realize that things are no longer what they used to be. In America, the Democratic Party has failed to offer working people an alternative to the Republicans. The only way democrats can win elections is to be more republican than the republicans. Few liberals have drawn a line in the sand and fought vehemently for the ideals they espouse.

It was not this way when the specter of socialism posed a credible threat to capitalism in America less than a century ago. But now the people are no longer permitted to speak of such things in public. Organized labor is dead as a revolutionary force in this country. The red menace was replaced by the ghost of Bin Laden, national security, and irrational fear of Islam. Thank god we have George Bush, Barack Obama, and the military industrial complex to protect us from democracy.

While voting is hailed as the cornerstone of American democracy, it is useless as a vehicle of change. American democracy does not exist. It never has. Nevertheless, millions of people will go to the polls next week and deceive themselves into believing that meaningful change is possible within the established order. They naively believe that the corporations that are running the country permit them to decide how trillions of tax dollars are spent. Like innocent children in the presence of a pedophile, they believe that those in power give a rat’s ass about what we the people think.

We live in a bizarre country where incredibly irrational events are a daily occurrence. These events would astonish visitors coming from a planet where justice and reason prevail, where the laws of physics and thermodynamics apply. But not here where the legal fiction known as corporations have the same rights as people but none of the responsibility of citizenship. Corporations and their CEOs routinely murder people en mass in the name of profits, but when has a corporation ever been executed by the state? When has a corporation ever served a prison term? Have you ever read about a corporate charter being revoked?

This year’s West Virginia coal mine disaster and BP oil spill provide recent examples of systemic corporate mayhem and murder. But who cares? It is business as usual. The oil and coal must be kept flowing. The money must keep flowing into the coffers of corporate CEOs. The lives of the miners and oil roughnecks are as replaceable as cogs in a machine. The system rolls on. Markets, not justice, or ethical systems of conduct define value and thus behavior in capitalist cultures.

The supreme court, like all of the other branches of government that are supposed to provide checks and balances to limit abuses of power, is awash in corporate money. It, too, is owned and operated by the wealthy and their multi-national corporations. In its infinite wisdom the Supreme Court has declared that corporate donors may now purchase outright the candidates of their choice and that money is free speech. There will be no paper trail to trace which corporation bought which public servant. We the people are irrelevant. We are not part of the equation anymore, if we ever were.

Those in power permit us to vote in elections that provide nothing more substantive than the illusion of choice. The people are allowed to choose from a small field of war-mongering corporate fascists and capitalists whose sole purpose is to increase the wealth and power of the ruling elite at the expense of the working class. It is a game of predator and prey designed and operated by sociopaths. The super-rich have no empathy for the people whose lives they destroy. Annihilation is a sadistic form of amusement to them. Do the bankers lay awake nights worrying about those who homes they foreclosed this morning? Not a chance. They are too busy counting their money and dreaming about who and what they can buy with it within the confines of their gated communities.

Capitalism is a game that only the privileged are permitted to play. Workers are no more than plastic chips in a game of chance. The people are never permitted to deal the cards.

We are told that voting is democracy in action, that it is our patriotic duty as citizens to elect politicians to office, our duty to choose between the pro-business men and women that were pre-selected for us by multi-national corporations. This is our role in the political apparatus of America: to sanctify the choices that have been made for us by those in power, to give the substance of reality to the illusion of participation. It is we who give it the appearance of legitimacy by participating in a system that does not permit real change.

Without thinking, millions will do their duty and then return to the safety of the TVs’ tiny light to vegetate and marinade, their minds benumbed with entertainment, advertisements, and outlandish propaganda. Unwilling to make trouble, they will do whatever the oracle tells them to do; they will believe whatever it tells them to believe. They will become all that it tells them to be, nothing more, nothing less.

The inert masses will continue to go wherever the herd goes, following the prompts given them by the men with the electronic cattle prods: the makers of video games, cell phones, Fox News, iPods and SUVs. Mystified by how bad things are, the people expect change from a system that does not permit transformation. Capitalism empowers money and those who have it, not people like us. We aren’t in Kansas anymore, Dorothy. Welcome to oz.

The only way out, if there is one, is organized and sustained class struggle against capitalism.

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