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November 17, 2011

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How to Survive the Second Depression

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I don’t think that there is any denial from the working class that we are still in the throes of a recession. And many also believe that if we are not in an actual depression now, we will be soon. The rising cost of food and health care, the elimination of the single-family home from the American Dream, the lack of jobs for the unemployed, and the wholesale underemployment of many with jobs . . . well even an economics dunce like me can see the writing of the wall.

Luckily, I am prepared. And even though some of my peers get tired of my continued emphasis on preparing for an uncertain future, the reality is that the door on the old way of life is closing and families of all types need to be ready. But my intent here is not to preach.

Instead, I have a special treat. My longtime friend George Ure has given me permission to repost his muse on the Perfect Modern Depression Family that was previously shared only with his $40 per year subscribers at Peoplenomics.

A Perfect Modern Depression Family

Don’t know as I’ve ever given you a sketch of where I’d be if I could design a perfect family situation for weathering a Great Depression, but it might be a family set up something like this:

• Dad works as a lineman for a utility company. He’s going to have a fairly steady job because people will want their lights on, but with people getting lights turned on and off, as they pay their bills, or not, he’d have lots to do pulling meters and so forth. Since climate change means more violent weather, lots of potential for pick-up hours, too. And at double time in some cases. Or, maybe dad is an x-ray tech, or runs an ultrasound or MRI machine in medicine. Lights and meds will still be around.

• Mom works as a grocery checker, or works as a meat cutter in the local store. Many still have meat cutters and they make good money, get good vacations and, yep, have an inside line on food stocks even when things start to run short.

• Johnny, their boy, has a paper route. He’s going to have a hot business on his hands because as people drop Internet connectivity, the small local newspaper could make a big come back, especially because people will be looking for local deals on everything. He wants to be a doctor when he grows up and since he’s on the honor role, he has a good chance of making it.

• Suzy, the daughter, has been really active in 4-H – so much so that she’s been getting hints from the teacher that she might get a full-ride scholarship to a state Ag school. She seems set for a good career and she’s thinking about becoming a veterinarian.

• The family house was purchased 19 years ago and has been refinanced recently, not to pull out equity, but to reduce the monthly payment to the smallest possible amount since the family knows tough times are coming. Resetting at 20 years, even though they had only 10 years to go, helps. I might not do it, but I don’t have to pay for kids, except for the ongoing school taxes.

• The family has slowly acquired about 100 ounces of silver and 10 ounces of gold.

• Did I mention Suzy has been doing a backyard garden and that Mom has been canning the past couple of years? Nothing fancy; some dill pickles, a few fruits and beans and tomatoes from the garden. These past few weeks, she’s been blanching and freezing other varieties.

• Dad’s gone off the deep end, putting a solar cooking rig in the back yard – sun-driven BBQ and oven while Mom’s order of a year’s worth of grains in nitrogen-packed containers came in a few weeks back.

• Uncle Bob is a dentist, and everything in the mouth is done and paid for with cash. The family’s 3 cars are all in good repair and in the area of 50,000 miles each, including the subcompact the kids share. Fresh tires on them all, too, since overseas sources may dry up in the Depression.

• The family all have library cards and have rediscovered reading. As a result, family dinners are lively and thought provoking conversation gatherings which build the family bond. Neighborhood kids come over, too, since the food is so good and it’s not like their homes at all.

The Worst Family Profile

If you think the first family has it made, you got it right! Contrast how an adverse time is going to work out for this family:

• Dad works for a financial services company selling annuities. He’s on the verge of losing his job because people aren’t buying that kind of financial product anymore.

• Mom was selling real estate, but since she just got into that in the fall of 2008, she hasn’t made hardly any money at it, and though she keeps hoping to get a few sales, like most agents, she’s only able to make $23,000 per year because of the downturn.

• Billy, their son, is totally immersed in video games and Goth. He’s on expensive ADHD medication and has a 2-second attention span on a good day. He’s eating almost exclusively a high-fructose corn syrup laced diet which has made him fat and his attitude is horrible. His grades are failing and he’s talk about dropping out in his junior year of high school. He spends a lot of time on the cell phone running up his phone tab alone north of $100 per month.

• Christy, the daughter, has turned into a drug-smoking slut, popular with gang-types, and lately with mom and dad at work, several items around the home have turned up missing, including Billy’s last cell phone which cost $350 to replace because he threw fits about needing a stylish phone.

• The family home is one payment from foreclosure most of the time. Dad hasn’t been able to bring down credit card debt, and with all seven cards the total is more than $60,000.

• They refinanced the house at the peak in 2008 and pulled out money for a new SUV, but that was wrecked the month after they bought it and the insurance didn’t pay off well, so they drive a four-year-old SUV with high miles. It’s going to need tires soon, but there’s no money for them, since they put custom 24″ wheels on it for appearances and those tires are $350 each now.

• At the end of each month, they are about $300 cash negative, but the bank cards have “helped”. The parents are praying for better jobs and sending resumes everywhere.

• Dad got called into the office next Thursday to meet with HR. He’s one step from fiscal disaster.

• The family doesn’t eat together, no one reads, and meals are expensive as a result with a high ‘fast food’ cost. Neighborhood kids come over to smoke dope, make a run at Christy, and see if Billy’s checked out so they can swipe some of his game cartridges.

Given a choice, I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out which family is going to survive a further 50% reduction of income. One is actually a family team, while the other is a haphazard collection of social ills residing under a common roof that may be ‘called’ any time.

. . . George Ure, August 2011

Now I am sure that many families fall somewhere in between the “perfect” family and the “worst” family. The point, though, is to figure out where you are in this continuum and to begin taking the steps to move closer to a perfect family dynamic.

So what are some of the decision and choices?

One that sure comes to mind has to do with housing. Depending on your financial condition, age, and employment status, where you live may indeed become one of the most significant changes you can make to ensure your security in the second depression. Should you live in a single-family home, or a multi-generation shared residence? Should you move to a “cheap” state where property taxes are low and the cost of living is reasonable? How about moving to the country where you can grow your own food and raise chickens? Or, what about being geographically independent by living in a large motor home (dirt cheap right now) and roaming from one Wal-Mart parking lot to another?

Okay, I admit the latter option is a bit extreme but still, if all of your money is presently going toward housing, you need to rethink your situation and come up with alternatives, even if it means finding housemates or becoming creative in some other manner.

With the goal of becoming the Perfect Modern Family, I heartily endorse learning as much as you can about personal survival skills. Learn to cook, learn to sew, learn to build a fire and learn to fix stuff.

The other thing? Learn to become self-entertaining, and by that I mean learn to be happy with books, walks in the woods or the park, and the company of others who share like-minded and spirited conversations about things that matter.

Gut feelings are a funny thing – sometimes right and sometimes wrong – but as you age, you begin to trust those instincts more and more. There is no doubt in my mind that the old ways of doing things are long gone, and if you are “old as dirt” as I am, you just know that old ways will never return.

Enjoy your next adventure through common sense and thoughtful preparation!
Filed Under: America, An Alternative World, Banks, Campaigning, Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Earth, Economy, Education, Energy, Environment, Family, Food, Health, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Politics, Population, Poverty, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, Science, Self-Sustainability, Spirituality, Truth

22 SIGNS THAT THE THIN VENEER OF CIVILIZATION THAT WE ALL TAKE FOR GRANTED IS STARTING TO DISAPPEAR

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In order for a society to function, there has to be a certain level of trust. Each day when we leave our homes, we take for granted that most people are not going to attack us for no reason, that there will only be isolated incidents of theft in our community and that rioting and violence are not going to erupt in the streets. Whether we realize it or not, we depend on the fact that the vast majority of the people around us are going to act in a civilized manner.

Unfortunately, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear. When I was growing up, I was taught that challenging times reveal our true character. There are many that believe that the declining economy is causing a lot of the chaos that we are now witnessing, but perhaps what is going on is that these challenging economic times are simply revealing the character that has been there all along.

For decades, a “false prosperity” that was fueled by unprecedented amounts of debt has masked a lot of the internal rot that has taken hold in America. But now that our prosperity is crumbling, our lack of values is becoming startlingly clear.

Greed, corruption and extreme self-centeredness have deeply infected our society. We see this on Wall Street and in Congress, and we see this among those that are trying to survive on the mean streets of our largest cities.

Our nation is breaking down on every level. If by some miracle we were able to fix our economy, that would mask our problems for a while, but it would not solve them.

Unfortunately, as I write about nearly every day, there are a whole host of indications that our economy is about to get even worse. When it does, millions of Americans will become even more desperate, and as we are now seeing all over this country, desperate people do desperate things.

The following are 22 signs that the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear….

#1 In Detroit, 100 bus drivers recently refused to drive their routes out of fear for their own personal safety. An article posted on the website of the CBS affiliate in Detroit is quoting the head of the bus drivers union, Henry Gaffney, as saying that the drivers are “scared for their lives”….

“Our drivers are scared, they’re scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit,” said Gaffney.

#2 In Wilmington, Delaware recently, a man offered to help someone carry a television down the street, but quickly realized that it was his own television which had just been stolen out of his house….

A Wilmington resident who stopped home for lunch about noon today saw a man carrying a flat screen TV down the street and asked the man if he needed help.

He then recognized the television as his own, looked up and saw the door to his home ajar, said Master Sgt. Adam Ringle.

#3 Shocking video has surfaced of a young thug walking up to a defenseless elderly man in a Chicago subway station and knocking him out cold. In the video, the friends of the young man are cheering him on and laughing at how easy it was to knock the old man out cold.

#4 Beating up old people for no reason seems to be catching on all over the country. Just check out the following report from a recent article posted on philly.com….

AN 84-YEAR-OLD ex-university official savagely attacked by four young punks during a walk in Wissahickon Valley Park earlier this week theorizes that the beating he endured was a cruel game of “get the old geezer.”

Jim Shea, a former vice president of university relations for Temple, from 1968 to 1983, walks up to five miles on Forbidden Drive, in Fairmount Park, three times a week, but that type of stamina wasn’t enough to stave off the lowlifes who not only beat him bloody, but dealt a blow to one of the things he holds most dear - his pride.

#5 All over the United States, police are wailing on Occupy Wall Street protesters with clubs and liberally using pepper spray on them. Whatever you may think of the Occupy Wall Street protests, the reality is that this is not a sign that things are becoming “more stable” in America. You can see video of one very disturbing confrontation right here.

#6 Clashes between police and protesters in Oakland, California recently became so violent that at one point the streets of Oakland resembled a war zone.

#7 Unfortunately, as the American people become increasingly frustrated with out system many of them are actually starting to consider violence as a solution. According to one recent survey, 31 percent of all Occupy Wall Street protesters “would support violence to advance their agenda”.

#8 In New York recently, a confrontation between two female customers and a frustrated cashier ended with the cashier beating the living daylights out of them with a metal rod. The following is howa local CBS affiliate in New York described this incident….

It appeared to have started when two female customers argued and yelled obscenities at the cashier when he questioned a $50 bill they gave him.

One of the female customers then slapped the cashier. A woman is then seen jumping over the counter while the other woman goes behind the register.

That’s when the cashier can be seen on the video disappearing into the back of the fast-food restaurant. He comes back with a metal rod and begins hitting the women.

You can see video of this violent confrontation right here.

#9 These days, many Americans are so “on edge” that just about anything will make them snap. For example, a 60-year-old woman in New Mexico recently repeatedly stabbed her boyfriend because she thought that he was cheating during a game of Monopoly.

#10 If you thought that the above example was crazy, just check out what one man down in Georgia did recently. He actually firebombed a Taco Bell because they did not put enough meat in his Chalupa.

#11 In Cleveland last week, a 49-year-old man was sent to the hospital after a poll monitor working for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections tried to bite his nose off.

#12 Not only do TSA agents make us feel like dehumanized cattle as we go through airport security, some of them are evening making fun of us at the same time. For example, one TSA agent recently scribbled “GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL” on a TSA inspection notice after discovering a sex toy in the luggage of one female traveler.

#13 Identity theft is rising to very alarming levels all over the United States. For example, a recent article in the Palm Beach Post described what has been going on down in Florida this year….

In the first half of this year, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 20,000 complaints from Floridians whose identities had been stolen — nearly as many as in all of 2010. More than half of those reporting their Social Security numbers or other personal information had been ripped off and used to commit fraud or theft were in South Florida, with heavy concentrations in parts of Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.

“That kind of increase is really shocking,” said Vance Luce, deputy special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service in South Florida, which investigates identity theft and financial crimes. “The fact that it’s on the upturn doesn’t surprise me at all, but that’s pretty alarming.”

#14 In the Seattle area, an elderly couple in their eighties was recently brutally attacked by a 31-year-old man armed with a crossbow and a hatchet. The following description of this brutal crime comes from King 5 News….

Prosecutors say 31-year-old John Chase was walking down the highway when he saw Ralph Aldrich, 88, in his back yard. Detectives say Chase shot and killed Aldrich with a crossbow and then went inside the home and repeatedly hit 83-year-old June Aldrich with a hatchet.

#15 As America falls apart, more of us than ever are taking medication for depression. At this point,more than 1 out of every 10 Americans over the age of 12 is taking prescription antidepressants.

#16 In some areas of the country, people have been literally tearing apart their own cities in an attempt to find things to sell. I recently discussed this phenomenon on The American Dream Blog….

In Fresno, California the damage caused by thieves stealing copper wire from city street lights is costing the city about $50,000 a month. So far, about 2,500 street lights have been stripped of their wiring.

#17 As people become more desperate, we are starting to see some truly bizarre crimes in many parts of the nation. In northern Alabama, one team of crooks has been using a forklift to pull entire ATM machines out of the ground.

#18 Most Americans don’t realize this, but all over the U.S. livestock is being stolen from ranchers in unprecedented numbers. The following is from a recent Associated Press article….

While the brazenness may be unusual, the theft isn’t. High beef prices have made cattle attractive as a quick score for people struggling in the sluggish economy, and other livestock are being taken too. Six thousand lambs were stolen from a feedlot in Texas, and nearly 1,000 hogs have been stolen in recent weeks from farms in Iowa and Minnesota. The thefts add up to millions of dollars in losses for U.S. ranches.

Authorities say today’s thieves are sophisticated compared to the horseback bandits of the rugged Old West. They pull up livestock trailers in the middle of the night and know how to coax the animals inside. Investigators suspect it’s then a quick trip across state lines to sell the animals at auction barns.

#19 At this point, thieves are becoming so bold that they will steal literally anything that they are able to cart away. For example, in the San Francisco area a while back thieves actually stole a copper bellthat weighs 2.7 tons.

#20 According to the FBI, the number of gang members in the United States has increased by a staggering 40 percent since 2009. Right now, there are 1.4 million gang members terrorizing citizens on the streets of America.

#21 Down in Miami, thieves have become so bold that they have actually been breaking into parked police cruisers and stealing guns and ammo out of them. Many of those guns undoubtedly are ending up in the hands of gangs members.

#22 Be careful who you befriend online. They might just hold you captive and use you as part of a Satanic sex ritual. The following description of an incident that recently happened in Milwaukee comes from thesmokinggun.com….

Two young Milwaukee women were arrested this week after an 18-year-old Arizona man-who traveled to Wisconsin by bus after meeting one of the suspects online-told cops that he was held captive in the duo’s apartment for two days and slashed and stabbed more than 300 times as part of an apparent satanic sex ritual.

Anger and frustration are growing to unprecedented levels in this country, and all of this anger and frustration is manifesting in thousands of different ways.

As I have written about previously, the rioting, the crime and the violence that we are seeing now is only just the beginning of what is coming.

Unless a miracle happens, our country is going to keep heading down the road toward societal collapse. For even more examples that show that our country is starting to come apart at the seams, please see the following articles that I have authored previously….

-”18 Signs The Collapse Of Society Is Accelerating”

-”12 More Signs That Society Is Collapsing”

It won’t happen all at once, but unless our nation changes direction dramatically, we will see things get progressively worse and worse.

Instead of teaching our children to love and care for one another, we have taught them to be incredibly self-involved. Today, way too many Americans deeply love themselves, deeply love money and are deeply addicted to entertainment. Each new generation seems to be even more prideful, even more arrogant and even more violent. As a nation, we are losing our empathy for others, our compassion for the needy and our respect for the elderly. Our family units are breaking down and thousands of our communities are being transformed into hellholes.

What in the world is happening to America?

 

Source: https://beforeitsnews.com/story/1363/063/22_Signs_That_The_Thin_Veneer_Of_Civilization_That_We_All_Take_For_Granted_Is_Starting_To_Disappear.html?currentSplittedPage=0

Filed Under: America, Banks, Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Earth, Economy, Education, Employment, Environment, Family, Food, Health, Income Inequality, Law, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Police, Politicians, Politics, Pollution, Population, Poverty, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, Science, Truth, War

It Does Not Require Many Words To Speak The Truth.

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

At last I was granted permission to come to Washington and bring my friend Yellow Bull and our interpreter with me. I am glad I came. I have shaken hands with a good many friends, but there are some things I want to know which, no one seems able to explain.

I cannot understand how the Government sends a man out to fight us, as it did General Miles, and then breaks his word. Such a government has something wrong about it.

I cannot understand why so many chiefs are allowed to talk so many different ways, and promise so many different things. I have seen the Great Father Chief [President Hayes]; the Next Great Chief [Secretary of the Interior]; the Commissioner Chief; the Law Chief; and many other law chiefs [Congressmen] and they all say they are my friends, and that I shall have justice, but while all their mouths talk right, I do not understand why nothing is done for my people.

I have heard talk and talk but nothing is done.

Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father’s grave. They do not pay for my horses and cattle. Good words do not give me back my children. Good words will not make good the promise of your war chief, General Miles. Good words will not give my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves.

I am tired of talk that comes to nothing.

It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk. Too many misinterpretations have been made; too many misunderstandings have come up between the white men and the Indians. If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no trouble.

Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.

If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat?

If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented nor will he grow and prosper.

I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please.

They cannot tell me.

Chief Joseph (Hinmaton Yalatkit)

I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how the Indians see things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth.

Chief Joseph

Real Name: Hinmaton Yalatkit

Profile: Hinmaton Yalatkit (pronounced: Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht) “Thunder Rolling in the Heights”, (1840? - 1904), Cheif of the Nez Percé Indians. He was a peace-minded, eloquent political leader and acclaimed military genius. His humane conduct won the admiration of many.

In 1877 the U.S. attempted to force the Nez Percé to move to a reservation in Idaho. Chief Joseph at first agreed but later decided instead to lead 750 of his followers on a trek to Canada. During the three-month, 1,300-mile journey, he brilliantly outmaneuvered and outfought federal troops. He defeated the U.S. Army in 7 major battles before being surrounded and surrendering within 40 miles of sanctuary, the Canadian border. Subsequently the Nez Percé were moved to Indian Territory (Oklahoma). In 1885 they were relocated to the Colville Reservation in Washington state where Cheif Joseph lived for the remainder of his life.

“We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets; that hereafter he will give every man a spirit-home according to his deserts. This I believe, and all my people believe the same.” - Joseph Hinmaton Yalatkit, Nez Perce’ Chief

Suppose a white man should come to me and say, “Joseph, I like your horses. I want to buy them.” I say to him, “No, my horses suit me; I will not sell them.” Then he goes to my neighbor and says to him, “Joseph has some good horses, I want to buy them, but he refuses to sell.” My neighbor answers, “Pay me the money and I will sell Joseph’s horses. The white man returns to me as says, “Joseph, I have bought your horses and you must let me have them.”

If we sold our lands to the government, this is the way they bought them.

 

Source: https://people.tribe.net/dancepanther/blog/93a51179-7ff3-4089-9818-8a2a47f81b45

Filed Under: America, Civil Liberties, Corruption, Democracy, Earth, Environment, Family, Genocide, Money, Native American Indians, Politics, Poverty, Propaganda, Revolution, Rights, Self-Sustainability, Spirituality, Truth, War

“Experts” Push For Lithium To Be Added To Our Drinking Water

November 14, 2011 By 4 Comments

Apparently there are not enough chemicals already added to our drinking water, as there is now a call by “experts” to further poison our water supplies by adding Lithium.

Their main reason is to decrease suicide and violent crime rates.

So it this how we wish to function as a society? Instead of dealing with our issues at hand, let’s drug ourselves so that we don’t have to deal with personal subjects that may be perceived as hard, negative or scary. This is not a time for putting our heads in the sand and pretending or even hoping that an issue will just resolve itself. Where is the personal growth in that? Don’t you feel elated when you resolve a personal issue that no longer hangs over your head or weights on your mind? It is more important than ever to clear ourselves of past issues that we have held onto and allow more room for the new energies coming to earth to take its place within our being.

What is Lithium usually prescribed for?

  • Bi polar disorder
  • Agitation not associated with bipolar disorder
  • Depression and to boost the effect of antidepressants
  • As a mood stabiliser
  • Sever Migraine Headaches

“Much like fluoride, lithium alters the brain’s normal production of serotonin and norepinephrine, which in turn artificially alters the way an individual thinks and how he or she feels about a given situation. Lithium is literally a mind-altering, antidepressant chemical substance that those promoting it openly admit modifies brain function. And yet they purport that forcibly inducing these chemical changes on the unwitting populations of the world is a good and acceptable idea.”

“Lithium has been heralded by some experts as the next potential flouride, after scientists found suicide rates were lower in areas where the drinking water had higher concentrations of the element, reports the Daily Mail”

“Time to supplement? Some scientists believe lithium could reduce suicide rates if traces were added to drinking water. The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, analysed a sample of 6,460 lithium measurements and then compared suicide rates across 99 districts.”

If anyone still believes that adding fluoride into our drinking water is a good idea.

What are some side effects of Lithium?

  • weakness, fever, feeling restless or confused, eye pain and vision problems;
  • restless muscle movements in your eyes, tongue, jaw, or neck;
  • pain, cold feeling, or discolorations in your fingers or toes;
  • feeling light-headed, fainting, slow heart rate;
  • hallucinations, seizure (blackout or convulsions);
  • fever with muscle stiffness, sweating, fast or uneven heartbeats; or
  • early signs of lithium toxicity, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, drowsiness, muscle weakness, tremor, lack of coordination, blurred vision, or ringing in your ears.

Less serious side effects may include:

  • mild tremor of the hands;
  • weakness, lack of coordination;
  • mild nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, stomach pain or upset;
  • thinning or drying of the hair; or
  • itching skin.

Adding Lithium appears to be yet another way that our population can be “dumbed down”.

Why would governments want to turn our drinking water into a chemical cocktail?

Perhaps this way society we will be more malleable and less people will be concerned about what is really going on in this world.

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/experts-push-for-lithium-to-be-added-to.html

Filed Under: America, Big Pharma, Campaigning, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Environment, Family, Health, Law, Lobbying, Money, New World Order, Politics, Population, Propaganda, Protests, Psychology, Rights, Surveillance, Water

US Supreme Court to Hear Challenges to Obama Health Care

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take up cases challenging the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s landmark health care reform.

The court’s decision will likely come in 2012, in the thick of the US presidential campaign in which Obama is seeking re-election, with his health care reform under attack from rival Republicans.

The court said they would consider a request by the Obama administration to declare the measure constitutional, as well as two cases challenging the law, including one case presented by 26 US states.

Opponents say that the most controversial element of the law — mandating that people buy health insurance or face a tax — violates individual rights as set out under the US Constitution.

But the White House said it was satisfied that the issue was being taken up by the nation’s top nine justices.

“We are pleased the court has agreed to hear this case,” said a White House spokesman, Dan Pfeiffer, of the law which extended coverage to an extra 32 million people and was a long-held dream of Democrats.

“We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional and are confident the Supreme Court will agree.”

Republican presidential hopefuls have derided the sweeping reforms as “Obamacare” and have vowed to repeal them if elected to office.

The justices are expected to rule by the end of their term in June 2012, in a judgment likely to reverberate before the November 2012 general election.

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/us-supreme-court-to-hear-challenges-to.html

 

Filed Under: America, Banks, Big Pharma, Campaigning, Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, Family, Health, Income Inequality, Law, Lobbying, Media, Medical Industry, Money, New World Order, Politics, Poverty, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Wealthy Elite

Aspartame has been Renamed and is Now Being Marketed as a Natural Sweetener

November 14, 2011 By 2 Comments

Artificial sweeteners especially aspartame has gotten a bad rap over the years, most likely due to studies showing they cause cancer.

But not to worry Ajinomoto the company that makes Aspartame has changed the name to AminoSweet. It has the same toxic ingredients but a nice new sounding name.

And if you or your child happens to be allergic to Aspartame, well don’t take it personally. It’s just business.

Despite the evidence gained over the years showing that aspartame is a dangerous toxin, it has remained on the global market . In continues to gain approval for use in new types of food despite evidence showing that it causes neurological brain damage, cancerous tumors, and endocrine disruption, among other things.

Most consumers are oblivious to the fact that Aspartame was invented as a drug but upon discovery of its’ sweet taste was magically transformed from a drug to a food additive. HFA wants to warn our readers to beware of a wolf dressed up in sheep’s clothing or in this case Aspartame dressed up as Aminosweet.

Over 25 years ago, aspartame was first introduced into the European food supply. Today, it is an everyday component of most diet beverages, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gums in countries worldwide. But the tides have been turning as the general public is waking up to the truth about artificial sweeteners like aspartame and the harm they cause to health. The latest aspartame marketing scheme is a desperate effort to indoctrinate the public into accepting the chemical sweetener as natural and safe, despite evidence to the contrary.

Aspartame was an accidental discovery by James Schlatter, a chemist who had been trying to produce an anti-ulcer pharmaceutical drug for G.D. Searle & Company back in 1965. Upon mixing aspartic acid and phenylalanine, two naturally-occurring amino acids, he discovered that the new compound had a sweet taste. The company merely changed its FDA approval application from drug to food additive and, voila, aspartame was born.

G.D. Searle & Company first patented aspartame in 1970. An internal memo released in the same year urged company executives to work on getting the FDA into the “habit of saying yes” and of encouraging a “subconscious spirit of participation” in getting the chemical approved.

G.D. Searle & Company submitted its first petition to the FDA in 1973 and fought for years to gain FDA approval, submitting its own safety studies that many believed were inadequate and deceptive. Despite numerous objections, including one from its own scientists, the company was able to convince the FDA to approve aspartame for commercial use in a few products in 1974, igniting a blaze of controversy.

In 1976, then FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt wrote a letter to Sen. Ted Kennedy expressing concern over the “questionable integrity of the basic safety data submitted for aspartame safety”. FDA Chief Counsel Richard Merrill believed that a grand jury should investigate G.D. Searle & Company for lying about the safety of aspartame in its reports and for concealing evidence proving the chemical is unsafe for consumption.

The details of aspartame’s history are lengthy, but the point remains that the carcinogen was illegitimately approved as a food additive through heavy-handed prodding by a powerful corporation with its own interests in mind. Practically all drugs and food additives are approved by the FDA not because science shows they are safe but because companies essentially lobby the FDA with monetary payoffs and complete the agency’s multi-million dollar approval process.

Changing aspartame’s name to something that is “appealing and memorable”, in Ajinomoto’s own words, may hoodwink some but hopefully most will reject this clever marketing tactic as nothing more than a desperate attempt to preserve the company’s multi-billion dollar cash cow. Do not be deceived.

 

Source: https://healthfreedoms.org/2010/02/15/aspartame-has-been-renamed-and-is-now-being-marketed-as-a-natural-sweetener/

Filed Under: Cancer, child, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Education, Family, Food, Food, Health, Lobbying, Medical Industry, Money, New World Order, Politics, Population, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Science

Torture - From Guantanamo to Bahrain

November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

“But the one person from Bahrain who fought for our freedom till the end was Nabeel Rajab from the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.”

This was part of an interview with Juma Mohammed Al Dossary, a former Guantanamo prisoner from Bahrain, after his release in 2007.

Mohammed Khalid, a pro-gov and Salafist MP, who campaigned for release of the detainees and compensating them, asked in 2005: “What about the Guantanamo prison, which is out of the sight of all rights and humanitarian organizations, where the matter could be worse than Abu Ghraib or Afghanistan?”. He said that many released prisoners “had talked about being submitted to human suffering and sexual abuse during interrogation”.

Some of the torture and abuse described by AlDossary through his lawyer included: religious abuse like cursing and insulting beliefs, being urinated on and spat on by GI’s, being burnt by cigarettes, severe beating while in extreme positions, and being sexually assaulted by female interrogators. The sexual assault was mainly to offend the men or lure them to talk.

Fast forwarding and on the other side of the Atlantic in another island hosting a US base. This is basically some of what’s happening and has been happening in Bahrain for the past 30 years. Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer and consultant with HRW, worked with Rajab to secure the release of Bahraini Guantanamo prisoners.

He describes how the same Bahraini MPs who gave him a standing ovation rejected HRW’s findings when it came to their citizens’ claims and evidence of torture in Bahraini jails.

MP Mohammed Khalid, who stood firmly with Guantanamo’s detainees on the basis of universality of human rights, was instrumental in igniting sectarian hatred against Shia when protests erupted, and is now in the front-line campaign supporting government’s measures of mass detentions and military courts calling the protesters traitors and Iranian agents and using the most offensive anti-Shia language.

Nabeel Rajab, on the other hand, is facing a fierce propaganda campaign in an attempt to discredit him and assassinate his character accusing him of being an Iranian agent.

From a 1997 special report on torture in Bahrain to the UN Human Rights Commission:

“The methods of torture reported include: falaqa (beatings on the soles of the feet); severe beatings, sometimes with hose-pipes; suspension of the limbs in contorted positions accompanied by blows to the body; enforced prolonged standing; sleep deprivation; preventing victims from relieving themselves; immersion in water to the point of near drowning; burnings with cigarettes; piercing the skin with a drill; sexual assault, including the insertion of objects into the penis or anus; threats of execution or of harm to family members; and placing detainees suffering from sickle cell anemia (said to be prevalent in the country) in air-conditioned rooms in the winter, which can lead to injury to internal organs.”

These exact methods are being used now. Since Feb 14, 2011, four people have died in Bahraini prisons as a result of torture. The total number is more than 20 since 1971. Those recently killed in prison were: Hassan Maki, Ali Saqer, Zakaria Al-Asheeri (Journalist), & Kareem Fakhrawi (Businessman). Among the hundreds of prisoners are politicians, MPs, human rights activists, doctors, nurses, students, lawyers, journalists, news photographers, and bloggers. Severe torture and sexual abuse have been widely reported.

In an April 14 Time’s article, Joe Stork, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch, expressed his concern: ”I very much fear there will be more death because there is no transparency in all this,”. He adds: “We’re not seeing where they’re being held, or their names, and it’s these kinds of conditions that make for torture and brutality and death.”

Bush’s administration was in a “war against terrorism”, in which alleged foreign fighters were flown to Guantanamo; the Bahraini Government on the other hand is in a war against its unarmed population. The situation in Bahraini prisons might be way worse than Guantanamo as Obama announced an end to torture. However, as the information in the previous report suggests or rather proves, the US government, along with that of the UK and other countries, is morally and historically responsible for what happened and what’s happening in Bahraini prisons.

On May 16th, NY Times reporter Nick Kristof tweeted: “Our close ally, Bahrain, has a consistent record of using sexual abuse of male and female detainees as a form of torture.”

The next report will deal in more detail with Sexual Abuse in Bahraini prisons. Testimonies of tens of prisoners and detainees will be presented. This is what lies beneath the fake and promoted liberal posture of Bahrain.

Bahrain: The Systematic Use of Sexual Abuse

Bahrain’s security apparatus and secret police were established by the British, and were headed by Ian Henderson, “The Butcher of Bahrain” for 30 years. The rationale is that the people of Bahrain are basically the subjects of their (the British’s) subjects (the Khalifas). Add to that, the mentality of the ruling “conquering” family who believe Bahrain is their private property (owning 30% of its land) and its people are their slaves. With naturalization of foreigners to work in the security forces, things became messier for Bahrainis. The people were not only subjected to a colonial power, and a non-compromising ruling family; but also subjected to an uneducated and ruthless foreign mercenary force.

Since Shiites are generally not allowed into security forces, the animosity they are faced with has an ugly anti-Shia and sectarian nature. The police and security forces feel no shame destroying their mosques, wrecking their cars, stealing their possessions, verbally abusing them and their beliefs, humiliating them, and even sexually molesting and abusing their children, men, and women. The systematic nature of such behavior means that it’s not just an anti-Shia sentiment that drives them, but a well-designed policy dictated from the high chair of the decision maker down the ladder to the recently shipped Pakistani mercenary.

Sexual Abuse is used and has been used systematically in Bahrain. The same methods used in the 80s, were used in the 90s, and are being used now. The main aim are to extract confessions and to crush the prisoner’s will and dignity. Of course, with time, it becomes just a normal perverted behavior of a sadistic security force. In a conservative society like that of Bahrain, a rape victim can face a multitude of psychological and social problems and in many instances refrain from speaking out. In recent events, the government is accusing protesters with all kinds of bogus charges, and most of the time these charges are baseless. Following an old protocol, interrogators force detainees to sign confessions after severely torturing them and sexually assaulting them, or threatening them with rape.

Below cases were documented after the latest uprising that started with protests on Feb 14. They are testimonies of people brutalized or detained by security forces. The below accusations and the nature of the subject and the crackdown suggest that there are many untold stories.

Post February 14, 2011:

1) In a short documentary “Bahrain’s Dark Secret” about recent events by SBS Australia, Nabeel Rajab describes a midnight raid on his house followed by his arrest. They used anti-Shia language with him, and threatened to rape him.

2) In the same documentary, a woman named Fatima expressed her sorrow over her husband’s arrest by 50 masked security personnel. She finds trouble describing how 5 men hit her, used profane-insulting language against her, and sexually harassed her. One of the men put his penis in front of her face.

3) Abdulhadi AlKhawaja, a prominent human rights activist, who’s in jail and facing charges, was threatened with rape. His torturers wanted to videotape him confessing and appologizing to the King; when he refused, he was taken to another room, where they used ”foul language and threatened him with rape,” “they also threatened to rape his activist daughter.”

“At this point the men started undressing and showing their private parts after which they started touching (Khawaja) inappropriately,”

“When they tried to take off his pants, he threw himself down and started hitting his head on the ground continuously until he almost passed out. Seeing this they returned him to his prison cell.”

4) In a report in the Herald Sun titled ” Men raped, tortured in Bahrain”, interviews were conducted with 6 Bahraini men on how they were tortured. A 20 year-old named Mohammed, who claimed he had nothing to do with the protests, was detained, tortured and raped!

5) A female doctor was tortured by a female interrogator. The next day, a male interrogator threatened her with rape:

He told her: “You must have had Mutah with demonstrators at the (Pearl) roundabout,” “I will have Mutah with you,”

Another interrogator threatened her: “I will hang you from your breasts and rape you,”

She later signed the confession.

6) Ayat AlQurmuzi, a student who read a poem critical of the royal family was imprisoned. Her family said she was severely tortured and abused. They said her torturers spat in her mouth, and wiped her face on toilets. She was also threatened with rape, and exposure of degrading photos on the internet. And according to the Independent, pictures of Ayat began showing up on pornographic and dating websites.

7) 28 Shiite employees working in Bahrain International Circuit were detained, tortured and fired from their jobs. They were stripped out of their clothes.

According to one employee: “They said they’d rape us. They tried to touch you in various places to make you feel it’s going to happen.”

8)A woman doctor in custody was threatened with rape; a security officer told her: “We are 14 guys in this room, do you know what we can do to you? It’s the emergency law [martial law] and we are free to do what we want.”

9) AlJazeera English interviewed a 16-year old schoolgirl who was taken from school, detained and tortured for three days along with three other girls. She says the police officer took her head-scarf off by force after slapping her. Security officers swore and spat on them, called them “prostitutes”, and threatened to rape them.

10) A report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) on the storming of Salmaniya Hospital by Bahraini forces, accused them of “torture, beating, verbal abuse, humiliation, and threats of rape and killing.”:

One of the armed men with a Saudi accent started shouting anti-Shia insults: “Grave worshippers! Sons of whores! Sons of Muta!”

An officer with a Jodranian accent threatened to rape a patient, named Ali. Ali was previously shot in the face with bird shot.

11) A prisoner in his 60s named Jawad told his family that they were forced to kiss a picture of King Hamad, and another of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia every morning. If they kissed them, their torturers would spit in their mouths; if they didn’t, they would urinate in their mouths.

12) France 24’s reporter Nazeeha Saeed was detained overnight; she was severely tortured, humiliated and insulted by female interrogators accusing her of links with Hizbollah and Iran. One of the interrogators held a plastic bottle and put it against her mouth; “Drink, it’s urine,” she said. Nazeeha knocked the bottle; the interrogator then poured it on her face.

13) Nabeel Rajab said he met another rape victim on June 12th. She was kidnapped, blindfolded, taken to a deserted area, and raped by secret police. She reported this to a police station with no results. This is the second reported case according to Rajab.

Bahrain’s Security Forces: A History of Sexual Sadism

“There is one place in which one’s privacy, intimacy, integrity and inviolability are guaranteed – one’s body, a unique temple and a familiar territory of sensa and personal history. The torturer invades, defiles and desecrates this shrine. He does so publicly, deliberately, repeatedly and, often, sadistically and sexually, with undisguised pleasure. Hence the all-pervasive, long-lasting, and, frequently, irreversible effects and outcomes of torture.” Sam Vaknin, The Psychology of Torture

Unlike witnesses to horrors of war who usually share a collective memory with a community, victims of torture face a unique and special type of trauma. The physical and mental pain associated with torture and sexual abuse has been a subject of study in the past 50 years; intelligence agencies, good-willed psychiatrists, psychologists and philosophers have all showed special interest. No matter how much you read or watch about torture, or even if you work first-hand with torture victims, there’s no way you can truly comprehend the magnitude of their suffering.

Eliane Scarry, in her book “The Body in Pain”, says “Pain comes unsharably into our midst, at once that which cannot be denied and that which cannot be confirmed”. Psychologist Shirley Spitz, in a seminar about torture: “Torture is an obscenity in that it joins what is most private with what is most public. Torture entails all the isolation and extreme solitude of privacy with none of the usual security embodied therein”. She then tries to explain pain: “Pain is also unsharable in that it is resistant to language… Pain is not of, or for, anything. Pain is. And it draws us away from the space of interaction, the sharable world, inwards.”

Typically, torture victims suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They can experience insomnia, irritability, restlessness, attention deficits, night terrors, flashbacks, cognitive impairment, reduced capacity to learn, memory disorders, sexual dysfunction, social withdrawal, inability to maintain long-term relationships, or even mere intimacy, phobias, ideas of reference and superstitions, delusions, hallucinations, psychotic microepisodes and emotional flatness.

The torture and sexual abuse inflicted on Bahrainis, like that inflicted on Argentineans, Filipinos and others, is not only meant to crush the political prisoner, but to break-down the entire community; spreading fear, anguish, and mistrust. Many torture victims become anti-social and suicidal; and as witnessed in Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere, torture victims and their family members are among the easiest to recruit in terrorist and militant organizations.

In 2009, Chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee Carl Levin in a conference asserted: “the abuse of detainees in our custody has served as a recruitment tool for terrorists”. Despite 200 years of oppression and more than 40 years of torture, we haven’t seen serious violence or major terrorist acts in Bahrain by dissidents.

Sexual abuse is a tool that has been used in Bahrain for a long time; most torturers aren’t Bahrainis, and therefore, feel no sympathy towards the tortured.

The below cases were documented prior to recent events, in the 80s, 90s, & 2000s; they illustrate how sexual abuse and assault are basics in Bahrain’s Security Forces’ manual:

1) In a British documentary about Ian Henderson, “Blind Eye to the Butcher”, a former Bahraini prisoner Hashem Redha who’s currently living in the UK, was interviewed. He was most probably imprisoned in the 80s and early 90s era; he was severely tortured and his nose was disfigured. He described how he was tortured with sticks and hoses, and that they sexually assaulted him by putting a pencil in his anus. He also described how Henderson, himself, was supervising those torture sessions, and in one instance, he personally put his finger in the prisoner’s anus, and asked if the prisoner had confessed yet.

2) Robert Fisk interviewed a prisoner who “claims that in the 1980s he was sexually abused in Henderson’s headquarters by another British officer who forced a bottle into his anus in an attempt to persuade him to reveal the names of Shia opponents of Sheikh Issa’s regime. The man identified the Briton by name”. Fisk said he “have confirmed that a British officer of the same name worked for Henderson at the time”.

3) In 1996, Robert Fisk interviewed Sayed Hisham al-Moussawi, an opposition figure in exile was imprisoned and tortured. He claimed “British officer – not Henderson or ”Brian” – was present during the ill-treatment. He named a Briton who worked with Henderson as responsible for his torture in 1983”. Moussawi: ”[He] wanted me to confess to political activities. They beat my wife up in front of me and then the Briton pushed a bottle up my anus.”

4) Said Al-Eskafi claimed his son Ali, who died under torture, was sexually abused.

5) In an interview, a Bahraini who spent many years in jail describes how he was tortured severely, and that once when he asked for water, a torturer told another to urinate in his mouth. They also threatened him that they would rape his mother and sister. He says many detainees were raped and conditions were way worse than AbuGhraib.

6) Another prisoner, Tawfiq Mahrous, also said one of his torturers urinated in his mouth. He describes how rape used to happen in front of prisoners. According to Mahrous, officer, Jama’a Nafe’e was specialized in rape and sexual assault, and these acts happened under his supervision. He also goes on to describe how they used to put their heads in toilets.

7) From a 2010 Human Rights Watch Report titled “Torture Redux, The Revival of Physical Coercion during Interrogations in Bahrain”:

“Isa Abdullah Isa told Human Rights Watch that an officer said to him, “If you don’t confess, I will bring your wife and let all the guards have her, I swear to God.” Isa heard the officer tell someone to “start the car” before saying to Isa that he was going to get Isa’s wife. Isa said he then falsely confessed to giving a gun to another individual.”

“Isa Abdullah Isa reported that while he was blindfolded in a room at Adliya, guards tied a plastic flexible handcuff around his penis and forced him to drink a bottle of water. Every 15 to 30 minutes, the guards forced him to drink more water and Isa began to feel a strong urge to urinate. He cried out, asking to use the toilet, but the guards refused. Isa said he considered urinating where he stood, but the flexicuff prevented him from doing so. Eventually, a guard removed the flexicuff, but Isa still was not permitted to use the bathroom. He urinated on himself.”

“Naji Ali Hassan Fateel reported that while being suspended with his hands above his head officers told him that he had to cooperate. Otherwise, one of the officers told Fateel, security forces would arrest Fateel’s wife and put her with a Pakistani guard who would rape her. The officer said that the Pakistani’s regular “job” was to rape boys.”

“On the day of his arrest, Yassin Ali Ahmad Mushaima was being questioned regarding pipe bombs. When Mushaima said he knew nothing about bombs, guards removed his clothing and threatened to rape him. They also said that they would rape his sister and mother. At CID headquarters in Adliya, an officer taunted Ahmad Jaffer Muhammad by saying that he was going to have sex with Muhammad. Muhammad, who was blindfolded at the time, told Human Rights Watch that the threat terrified him.”

“They ripped my pants and shirt, and tore off all my clothes,” al-Hamadi said. “They made me lie on my side on the floor. I was handcuffed and they held my legs down. An Egyptian was holding an electric device and he put it on my sexual parts. He put it on and off many times.”Al-Hamadi reported that the device was never placed on his body for more than a second or two.”

“When al-Shaikh, who was blindfolded, said that he knew nothing about a gun, the officers removed his clothes and pulled his legs apart. Then, al-Shaikh said, they inserted what he believes was a baton into his anus for a few seconds. One of the officers said, “If you want to pretend to be a real man, we’ll show you how to be a real man.”

8) Maitham AlSheikh, mentioned above, who was tried in 2009 for alleged possession of arms, accused security forces of sexually assaulting him, and said that the doctor report proved it. In an interview, he also described how they hanged him upside down naked and used sticks to sexually assault him repeatedly. His torturers also electrocuted his genitals. His torture sessions would last up to 7 hours.

9) Essa Al Sarh, in an interview to BCHR also said Bassam Al Me’eraj, an officer, threatened him that he’ll bring his wife and undress her in front of him, if he didn’t sign the confession; which he signed after the threat.

10) Hassan Abdulnabi was imprisoned along with his wife. His torturers also threatened him they would rape his wife if he didn’t confess.

11) From a BHCR report about torture and sexual abuse: “the most recent case was in Dec. 2006 when Mossa Abdali, a human rights activist was allegedly abducted and subjected to physical and sexual abuse. As a result of such atrocities, Mr Abdali was granted political asylum in the UK starting August 2007”

12) In 2008, Mohamed Alsingace, the head of the Committee to Combat High Prices and detainee, told his family that was beaten and sexually molested by two security officers, Moftah (Bahraini) and Parvis (Non-Bahraini) in front of Sergeant Adnan Bahar. Two other detainees, Mahmood Hassan Saleh and Mohemmed Makki Ahmed complained about sexual abuse.

13) In 2008 as well, a number of opposition activists were arrested:

Hamed Ebrahim Fardan : “..I was stripped naked in full. They kept playing with my “penis”, tied it with a rope and pulled it until I fainted. Because of that, I lost control of urination (involuntary urination) for more than a week.” “They threatened to bring my wife and assault her before my eyes.”

Hameed Adnan Omran, Jawad Hameed Adnan, Jawad Hameed Adnan, Sadiq Sayed Ibrahim Jumaa and Kumail Ahmad Ali Mahdi all claimed they were threatened with rape and sexual assault. Abdulla Juma Abdalla was threatened and sexually molested.

14) In 2010, BCHR blamed “Bahraini authorities for torturing Shia clerics and stripping several human rights defenders off their clothes in order to humiliate them. The human rights center also reported that some of the detainees, among them Shia clerics, were tortured, mutilated and sexually harassed and abused inside their cells.”

15) In 2010, 76 children have been detained, many were subjected to torture and sexual abuse. Their ages range from 10 to 17 year old. BCHR received a number of complaints on cases of child abductions by armed militias in civilian clothing. They are taken blindfolded to unknown centers where they are “tortured, severely beaten, and stripped naked” and “photographed” and “sexually harassed”. The incarceration could take from several hours to several days. Among the abducted, Ahmed Ibrahim (15 years), Ali Jaffer Aradi (15 years), Jasim Ahmed Habib (16 years), and Ali Ibrahim (17 years) who were all abducted on the 15th of last August from the village of Arad. “They were tortured and then dumped naked in the dawn of the next day at one of the country’s coasts”.

“The youngest child arrested is Jihad Aqeel AlSari (10 years), who was arrested on the eve of the Universal Children’s Day, November 19, 2010. This came after the family had received a call that Jihad was to go to the Police Ceter, which he refused to do fearing for his life. His family believes that the reason for his arrest is to put pressure on his father, the Shiite cleric Mr. Aqeel AlSari who is a detainee accused of participating in what is known as the “terrorism network”, especially after speaking before the Court on October 28th about how he was tortured in detention.”

16) Also, more on abductions by secret police: in August, 2010 armed militia in civilian clothing kidnapped Hakeem Al-Ashiri and Hussein Ali Dawood from Dair area and took them to an unknown location. “Their clothes were stripped off entirely, and were photographed nude and they were sexually harassed.”

On August 15th, Ali Hasan Al-Sitri, a law student and an activist, was abducted, tortured, and photographed naked. He was later told by an interrogator that this was only a message, and that his family members will be raped if he continued his activism. He was imprisoned for 2 days.

In another incident, Ahmed Ali Hussein Abdullah was abducted, tortured, stripped naked, rubbed with oil, sexually assaulted, and photographed. He was told that his photos will be published on the internet. He was questioned about his relation with the opposition, and he was threatened with raping his family members as well.

“Torture combines complete humiliating exposure with utter devastating isolation. The final products and outcome of torture are a scarred and often shattered victim and an empty display of the fiction of power” Shirley Spitz

 

 

Source: https://arabunity2011.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/torture-part-3-bahrain%E2%80%99s-security-forces-a-history-of-sexual-sadism/

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Education, Family, Health, Human Rights, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Police, Politics, Poverty, Prison, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Psychology, Rights, Surveillance, Torture, War, Wealthy Elite, Whistleblowers

Vatican Christmas Shocker! Pope says child rape isn’t that bad, was normal back in his day

November 13, 2011 By 13 Comments

Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict’s claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.

In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.

“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.

“It was maintained - even within the realm of Catholic theology - that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.

Asking how abuse exploded within the Church, the Pontiff called on senior clerics “to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred” and to help victims heal through a better presentation of the Christian message.

“We cannot remain silent about the context of these times in which these events have come to light,” he said, citing the growth of child pornography “that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society” he said.

But outraged Dublin victim Andrew Madden last night insisted that child abuse was not considered normal in the company he kept.

Mr Madden accused the Pope of not knowing that child pornography was the viewing of images of children being sexually abused, and should be named as such.

He said: “That is not normal. I don’t know what company the Pope has been keeping for the past 50 years.”

Pope Benedict also said sex tourism in the Third World was “threatening an entire generation”.

Angry abuse victims in America last night said that while some Church officials have blamed the liberalism of the 1960s for the Church’s sex abuse scandals and cover-up catastrophes, Pope Benedict had come up with a new theory of blaming the 1970s.

“Catholics should be embarrassed to hear their Pope talk again and again about abuse while doing little or nothing to stop it and to mischaracterise this heinous crisis,” said Barbara Blaine, the head of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests,

“It is fundamentally disturbing to watch a brilliant man so conveniently misdiagnose a horrific scandal,” she added.

“The Pope insists on talking about a vague ‘broader context’ he can’t control, while ignoring the clear ‘broader context’ he can influence - the long-standing and unhealthy culture of a rigid, secretive, all-male Church hierarchy fixated on self-preservation at all costs. This is the ‘context’ that matters.”

The latest controversy comes as the German magazine Der Spiegel continues to investigate the Pope’s role in allowing a known paedophile priest to work with children in the early 1980s.

 

Filed Under: Catholic, Censorship, child, Civil Liberties, Corporations, Family, Human Rights, Money, New World Order, Paedophile, Privacy, Protests, Psychology, Rights, The Hidden Empire, Whistleblowers

The mathematical law that shows why wealth flows to the 1%

November 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of the main issues raised by the Occupy demonstrators is the inequitable distribution of wealth. Their slogan focuses on the extreme difference between the richest and the poorest: “We are the 99%,” say the banners and T-shirts, pointing out that 1% of the world’s population has somehow clawed its way to disproportionate money and power. Time to do something about this unnatural distribution, no?

The economist Edward N Wolff, of New York University, has pointed out that, as of 2007, the top 1% of households in America owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% had 50.5% of the wealth. This means that just 20% of the people owned 85% of the wealth, leaving only 15% for the bottom 80% of the people. No one who is interested in an equitable society can fail to be irked by this unfairness.

But the unfairness is, unfortunately, not unexpected. What the protesters are fighting (consciously or unconsciously) is the 80/20 rule – variously called Pareto’s principle, Zipf’s law, the long tail or Benford’s law, depending on what you are studying – a staple in scientific, economic and business textbooks, the go-to idea to show how the frequency of a set of natural events is not always what you might recognise as, well, natural.

The maths underlying the 80/20 rule, known as the power law distribution, is found in many natural systems over which no single human has much influence. Its concentration of the extremes seems built into the fabric of complex systems that depend on numerous factors that continually change over time.

The simplest version says that 80% of your company sales will come from 20% of your customers; that 80% of the world’s internet traffic will go to 20% of the websites; 80% of the film industry’s money gets made by 20% of its movies; 80% of the usage of the English language involves just 20% of its words. You get the picture.

A distribution based on a power law says extreme events (or richest people, or biggest websites) account for most of the impact in that particular world, and everything falls off quickly afterwards. The combined wealth of the top 10 richest people in the world is orders of magnitude greater than the next 10, which is orders of magnitude greater than the next 10, and so on. The rest of the field sits in a long, almost-irrelevant tail.

This distribution might sound odd. At school, we’re introduced to a different distribution, the more familiar “normal” (or Gaussian), which is best displayed in the bell-curve spread of values around an average. Measure the heights of a random selection of men, say, and most will be around the average value, with progressively fewer as you go in either direction away from the middle. Plot this on a graph and you get the bell curve.

Power law distributions, however, do not cluster around a single value. The impact of one big earthquake, for example, is bigger than the sum of millions of smaller, more common ones. Very few huge solar flares erupt from the surface of the sun, but those few are more significant than the endless thousands of smaller ones. The same applies to the numbers of big cities, the size of the Moon’s craters and the occurrence and citations of scientific papers.

Once you know power law distributions exist, they become very useful. The concept of the “average” is useless, for example, when talking about things that follow power laws. The average height of the people in a room (following the normal distribution) might tell you a lot about the spread heights of people in that room, but the average wealth of a country’s citizens (which follows a power law distribution) tells you little or nothing about how rich or poor most people are. And listening to the maths also tells you that the Occupy protesters have got it right that focusing on the extremes (a tax on the wealthiest 1%, say) will bring disproportionate results for the number of people it will affect.

 

Source: https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/commentisfree/2011/nov/11/occupy-movement-wealth-power-law-distribution?fb_ref=U-KLUosi9lgGbg4g4MI2Cxuc-CFCONX01FRS-33aqyXXX,U-_PEQZ3HeoMCr4IbaI0LvtF-CFCONX01FRS-33aqyXXX,U-tXTvwGtGYkSB4PLEKPBypv-CFCONX01FRS-2c3z9XXX&fb_source=home_multiline&fb_action_types=news.reads

Filed Under: America, Banks, Capitalism, Consumer, Corporations, Economy, Employment, Family, Income Inequality, Money, New World Order, Occupy, Politics, Population, Poverty, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Surveillance, The Hidden Empire, War

The children of Veterans are the innocent victims of Agent Orange

November 12, 2011 By 3 Comments

The debate goes on and probably will until the end of time as to the effects of DIOXIN on dozens of health related issues. The Veteran on this Veteran’s Day does not have to be reminded of the long battle with the Veteran’s Administration, the Department of Defense, and 13 chemical manufacturing companies on the massive exposure to dioxin from the use of Agent Orange and other defoliants during the Vietnam War.

The same hold true for the public population , both in the United States and many other countries, where dioxin laced products were used in a effort to “improve our lives”, by limiting growth of weeds, vegetation, and disease carrying insects, only to learn that increase health issues would become a nightmare for many of those exposed. We now understand that we cannot rewind the clock and easily solve the problems caused by dioxin, but must learn how to deal with it in a fair and equitable manner to all who have health related issues, and find ways to prevent further exposure.

As I have written, the effects of dioxin should not have been a surprise to anyone with an ounce of sense. As early-on as 1945, when scientist first began experimenting with defoliants for clearing vegetation which provided concealment to enemy forces in jungle warfare, dioxin was described as one of the deadliest compounds to human life as could ever be imagined. Yet dioxin is found in nature and created by volcanic eruptions, and wild fires which have occurred since the beginning of time. The problem does not reside in the backyard of dioxin alone, and while it is far more toxic than many other compounds, it is just one of many chemicals that that the public can be exposed to, which have an accumulative effect leading to adverse health conditions, can lead to an early death, and wreck havoc on the off-spring of those who have been exposed.

There are several observations that must be learned when we take on the issue of dioxin and other toxic chemicals, particularly those that can and do occur naturally. The first is that we must do everything in our power to limit our exposure and find ways to minimize the combined effects of a whole litany of compounds that can further exacerbate the problems, without everyone having to wear haz-mat protective gear, completely shutting down industry, shutting off all commerce, and going back to the Stone Age.

Genetics holds the key to solving the long-term solution to Agent Orange exposure

To the Veteran Dioxin leads the list of environmental-unfriendly chemicals which are extensively used in industry and commerce, such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and bisphenol A (BPA), and build-up in the human body, from the agricultural products we consume, and the meat, fish, and foul we eat during our life time. If you add purposely-driven exposure to products like Agent Orange to the mix it is like suicide. This is not just in the victim, but in the offspring for decades down the road from the genetic damage done to the one originally exposed.

The concept of genetically traced abnormalities is not new science here either. We have been teaching “evolution” for years (with most emphasis placed on naturally-occurring genetic changes) as species adapt to their environment, but now we see there can be man-made changes through pollutants as well.

What made me want to look into this phenomenon was being asked by the daughter of a retired Vietnam Veteran about her ADHA, and the autism affecting many of her special education students. I told her I had been writing articles regarding the Veteran and civilian exposure to Agent Orange, and how genetic damage could be the root cause, and nobody out here in the real world looking to “pin the tail on the donkey”, so to speak.

The more one looks, the more frightening the realization is that we as a nation just can’t seem to man-up holding those who have manufactured many of these products accountable. Whether it is Dow, Monsanto, or any of the other dozen or so companies which raced to fill the lucrative government contracts for defoliants during the Vietnam War, their compensatory efforts have been miniscule compared to that of the taxpayer. Billions in profit continue to flow into the coffers of Big Chemical, while the taxpayer bares the reoccurring cost of dealing with the problem…and what a problem it has become.

 

 

Source: https://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/11/11/the-children-of-veterans-are-the-innocent-victims-of-agent-orange/web-genes-1/

Filed Under: America, Censorship, Corporations, Family, Health, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Politics, Propaganda, Rights, Science, War, War Veterans, Weaponry
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