According To Whitley Strieber Work Exercises Got Him Abducted....,

starlogic  |  It seems the most unlikely of links: Whitley Strieber follows the ‘sensing’ exercise as suggested by George Gurdjieff. This brought the light of his soul to the attention of the ‘visitors’.

Creating this type of friction is central to the way the visitors teach, and as a matter of fact, its use is also important in the Gurdjieff Work. Mr. Gurdjieff would create situations that would challenge his students’ egos and force them to face themselves, either driving them away or spurring them on. Gurdjieff called it puncturing the “hot air pie” of ego. My hot air pie has been leaped up and down on for many years by rude little men, and I am much the better for it. As I will discuss later when explaining how building a strong soul enables one to render moot the fear of them, the first lesson they ever gave me was about the danger of arrogance and the importance of humility.

I think that I’ve been in their school ever since that dream. When it happened, the two forms involved were nowhere in the news and not in my life. But there they were, kicking me out of the university that I have been studying in ever since!

Just as maintaining the double arrow enriches one’s life experience, doing the sensing exercise enables the sharing of self. While you are doing it, they can enter the silence of your mind and join you in your life experience. For them, this is more than a pleasure. I suspect that, when they are in their normal state, it is an utter delight for them, and I would think that they want to experience it with as many of us as possible. I suspect that Anne intuited this early on, which is why she insisted that our book be called Communion. Contact is not just about our learning new science and making new social and cultural discoveries. It is, more importantly, about this sharing of self. And incidentally, this has nothing to do with what is called possession. That’s exactly what the visitors don’t want to do.

For them, I don’t think that anything is ever new. For us, everything is always new. They may know reality outside of time. We don’t really know what the next second will bring. They hunger to share our sense of newness.

I think that the reason for this is explained by an insight that was published in the April 1977 issue of the magazine Science. D.B.H. Kuiper and Mark Morris made the observation that any intelligent entity appearing here from another world would have essentially nothing to gain from us except the results of our own independent thought. They would be after newness, and they would therefore be concerned about our state of preparedness to engage with them. As Kuiper and Morris speculate, “We believe that there is a critical phase in this. Before a certain threshold is reached, complete contact with a superior civilization (in which their store of knowledge is made available to us) would abort further development through a ‘culture shock’ effect. If we were contacted before we reached this thresh- old, instead of enriching the galactic store of knowledge we would merely absorb it.” They continue, “By intervening in our natural progress now, members of an extraterrestrial society could easily extinguish the only resource on this planet that could be of any value to them.” Having been involved with them now for so many years—for much of my life, really—I feel that this is indeed the reason for their secrecy. But they now find themselves in a quandary: Our planet is failing so rapidly that if they continue to hide and wait for us to catch up, we might go extinct first, or enter into a period of chaos that will destroy what progress we have made, causing them even further delay.

Fortunately, it’s not clear that our making more scientific progress is the only thing that holds them back. I think that what I might call psychospiritual progress is at least as important, and probably more so.

This would be why they have lavished so much more attention on this non-scientist spiritual seeker than they have on any scientist I am aware of. I learned, first through my Gurdjieff work and then by working directly with them, a grammar of communication that is both efficient, in the sense that progress is steady, and fruitful, in that the richness of communication is rapidly increasing.

The sensing exercise not only opens us to them and enables communication, it sends out a signal that communicates a good deal more than a laser pointer. When we place our attention on the nervous system, it glows in their level of reality like a little ember. Our dead can see this, too.

Strieber, Whitley. A New World (pp. 47-50). Walker & Collier, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

¹⁶ Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16 KJV)

A Lot Of Crypto Cash Was Parked At SVB - So..., Our Real Money Bailed Out Their Fake Money?

decrypt  |  As the fallout from the stunning collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) plays out, numerous crypto companies have signaled their exposure to the bank, which long maintained a reputation as one of the most prominent lenders to tech startups in the world.

The bank’s closure Friday by the California Department of Financial Protection marked the second-largest bank failure in American history, after the undoing of Washington Mutual during the financial crisis of 2008. Silicon Valley Bank reported $212 billion in assets last quarter.

The stock (SIVB) began spiraling late Wednesday after rumors circulated that the institution was seeking an acquisition after failing to raise sufficient capital to cover its obligations. In the hours and days that followed, numerous venture capital funds reportedly advised their clients to withdraw their funds, resulting in $42 billion of withdrawals initiated on Thursday, constituting a run on the bank. On Friday morning, the Nasdaq halted trading of SIVB shares.

Though it was venture capital firms and tech startups that were most severely affected by the SVB scare on Friday, numerous crypto companies have also disclosed their exposure to the bank. Here’s a running list of the crypto firms caught in the crosshairs of SVB's collapse, along with those that have publicly claimed they avoided the damage.

Note: On Sunday, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chairman Martin Gruenberg issued a joint statement saying that all Silicon Valley Bank depositors would be made whole and have access to their funds on Monday, March 13. The Federal Reserve is now investigating the bank's failure.

Crypto companies that had money in SVB

It's Decentralized Bro, That Means It's Safer Bro, Please Believe Me Bro!!!

 CNBC  |  The two biggest banking institutions serving crypto businesses in the U.S. have shut down in the last four days. Investors have worried that the collapse of Signature Bank, whose assets were seized Sunday evening by regulators, was inevitable following the impending liquidation of Silvergate Bank and given the increasing regulatory hostility toward crypto companies. Now that event is past us, and has left young U.S.-based crypto startups with few options for banking relationships. 

 “There’s kind of a black mark on crypto deposits for the next few weeks,” said Conor Ryder, research analyst at Kaiko. “It could be that one of the smaller banks decides to raise their hand and take on the deposits but I don’t think they’ll be jumping on that opportunity after everything was done over the weekend.” The biggest priorities for the industry now are around diversifying on-ramps into crypto and focusing on policymaker education. 

 Before the end of Silvergate and Signature, the regulatory crackdown on crypto had already started. The days before the industry had crypto-forward banks to turn to were some of the darkest for the industry. The inability to form banking relationships was a big obstacle to growth. At the end of February, three major banking regulators issued a joint statement warning banks of the liquidity risks associated with banking crypto companies. In January, the Wyoming-chartered special purpose depository institution and famously unleveraged Custodia Bank set off the de-banking wave when its application to become a member institution of the Federal Reserve was denied. “Banks and law firms are getting a clear message from regulators: distance yourselves from crypto companies,” said Ric Edelman, founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. “This is blatant bias without legal standing, and if sustained, it will harm U.S. innovation for decades to come,” he said of the Signature closure. “But for the moment, crypto companies are increasingly finding themselves where cannabis companies were a decade ago.” 

Stablecoins in focus Stablecoin regulation is set to take center stage with the industry scrambling for banking alternatives, according to various crypto market participants who are skeptical the remaining banking institutions will welcome crypto with open arms. One of the most clear paths forward is for crypto firms to transact in stablecoins. “We’ve seen stablecoins crypto-pairs rise to an all-time high 90% of trading volume on exchanges, up from 79% a year ago, at the expense of the dollar,” Ryder said. “The industry has become less and less reliant on the U.S. dollar and crypto firms are familiar with stablecoins, so this could be a smoother transition than people expect.” Stablecoins also satisfy the need for 24/7 payment rails, he added. 

Both Silvergate and Signature offered a service that allowed fiat money to easily flow into crypto assets. Even if another bank opened its arms to crypto companies, the industry is still feeling the loss of the Silvergate Exchange Network and Signature’s Signet platform. Kaiko reported Monday that liquidity is already suffering at U.S. exchanges. Gemini’s was down 74% in for the month, while Coinbase’s fell 50% and liquidity at Binance.US dropped 29%. Binance, however, suffered a smaller, 13% impact. The problem with the stablecoin route is it concentrates trust in a handful of stablecoin issuers, who would likely need to be more heavily regulated, Ryder said. Over the weekend Circle’s USDC stablecoin broke its peg to the U.S. dollar, dropping below 87 cents. The frenzy came after Circle said it has about $3.3 billion in SVB. It regained its peg Monday.

La Cucaracha Said Some Words Too....,

 president.ua |  Dear Ukrainians!

This year began on February 24. Without prefaces and preludes. Sharply. Early. At 4 o'clock.

It was dark. It was loud. It was hard for many and scary for some. 311 days have passed. It can still be dark, loud, and complicated for us. But we will definitely never be afraid again. And we'll never be ashamed.

It was our year. Year of Ukraine. Year of Ukrainians.

We woke up on February 24. Into another life. Being another people. Another Ukrainians. The first missiles finally destroyed the labyrinth of illusions. We saw who was who. What friends and enemy are capable of, and most importantly, what we are capable of.

On February 24, millions of us made a choice. Not a white flag, but a blue and yellow flag. Not escaping, but meeting. Meeting the enemy. Resisting and fighting.

The explosions on February 24 stunned us. Since then we have not heard everything. And we don't listen to everyone. We were told: you have no other option but to surrender. We say: we have no other option than to win.

On February 24, we began to create our victory. From many bricks – hundreds of other victories.

We have overcome the panic. We did not run away but united. We have overcome doubts, despair, and fear. We believed in ourselves and in our strength. The Armed Forces of Ukraine. Intelligence. National Guard. SBU. Special Operations Forces. Border guards. Territorial defense forces. Air defense forces. The police. The State Emergency Service. All our defense and security forces. I am proud of you all, our warriors!

This year can be called a year of losses for Ukraine, for the whole of Europe, and the whole world. But it's wrong. We shouldn't say that.

We haven't lost anything. It was taken from us. Ukraine did not lose its sons and daughters – they were taken away by murderers. Ukrainians did not lose their homes – they were destroyed by terrorists. We did not lose our lands – they were occupied by invaders. The world did not lose peace – Russia destroyed it.

This year has struck our hearts. We've cried out all the tears. All the prayers have been yelled. 311 days. We have something to say about every minute. But most of the words are superfluous. They are not needed. No explanations or decorations are needed. Silence is needed to hear. Pauses are needed to realize.

If Ukrainian Conscripts Had Any Ammo, They'd Frag The Shit Out Of Their Nazi "Leaders"

More #Ukranian soldiers telling their president that they are coming for him and all the other politicians if they can only survive this. pic.twitter.com/S30gKpdtAR

— Arthur Morgan (@ArthurM40330824) December 31, 2022

Pravda  |  Background: On 13 December, the Verkhovna Rada approved and directed the President to sign draft law No. 8271, which significantly strengthens the criminal liability of the military. A petition asking Volodymyr Zelenskyy to promise this law gained more than 25,000 votes in a day.

Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, stated that he supports the law No. 8271, which increases the criminal liability of military personnel for disobeying combat orders, deserting the battlefield or a military unit.

Source: Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s video statement on Facebook

Quote: "Today I have to raise a rather difficult topic: increased responsibility [of military personnel — ed.] for voluntarily leaving a military unit or place of service, desertion, voluntary leaving the battlefield or refusal to act with weapons, disobedience, and failure to comply with combat orders. 

I support the relevant amendments to the legislation adopted by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine [Ukrainian Parliament — ed.] and ask the President to sign the law. My opinion clearly reflects the position of commanders of groups and military units, who demanded a systematic solution to this set of issues."

Details: The army exists on discipline, Zalyzhnyi empasised. 

And if gaps in the legislation do not ensure its compliance, and "refuseniks" can pay a fine of up to 10% of combat pay, or receive a probationary sentence, this is unfair, the Commander-in-Chief believes.

Quote: "Furthermore, this is key: exposed areas of the front are forced to be covered by other servicemen, which leads to increased losses of personnel, territories, and civilians on them. Often, lost positions have to be restored by assault actions at a very high cost. This should not be the case."

After Putin Spoke, La Cucaracha Tells Russians Some Jokes...,

BBC  |  Speaking after Vladimir Putin delivered a New Year address flanked by people in military uniform, Mr Zelensky said the Russian president was hiding behind his troops, not leading them.

Saturday saw a day of deadly strikes across Ukraine, and Mr Zelensky said Ukrainians would not forgive Russia.

At least one person died and dozens were injured in the attacks.

The head of Ukraine's armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhny, said air defences had shot down 12 of 20 Russian cruise missiles on Saturday.

There were further missile strikes on Kyiv just hours into the New Year on Sunday, officials said. The Ukrainian Air force said it had shot down 45 Iranian-made kamikaze drones overnight.

But the strikes, which came in the opening hours of 2023, fuelled anger and hate among Ukrainians already tired of Russia's unrelenting air campaign.

As explosions rocked the capital, some residents sang the national anthem, while officials accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians while they gathered to celebrated the New Year.

Andriy Nebitov, the head of the Kyiv police, posted an image to social media of a downed drone with the words "Happy New Year" scribbled across it in Russian.

"That is everything you need to know about the terror state and its army," he wrote on Facebook, adding that the remains had crashed in a children's playground.

• Battlefield is deadlocked, Ukraine spy chief tells BBC

• Five ways Ukraine war could go in 2023

The latest wave of attacks happened two days after one of the largest air strikes since the start of the war. Dozens of attacks in recent weeks have caused repeated power cuts.

Moscow has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, but Mr Putin has recently admitted hitting critical energy facilities.

In an address on his Telegram channel, Mr Zelensky said those who carried out Saturday's attacks were inhuman.

Switching from Ukrainian to Russian, he then attacked Mr Putin.

Only NIH Approved Treatments Get The HHS Prep Act Liability Waiver

“Enacted in December 2005, the PREP Act authorizes the Secretary of HHS (Secretary) to issue a declaration (called a PREP Act declaration) that provides immunity from tort liability (except for willful misconduct) for claims of loss caused, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from administration or use of countermeasures to diseases, threats and conditions determined by the Secretary to constitute a present, or credible risk of a future public health emergency to entities and individuals involved in the development, manufacture, testing, distribution, administration, and use of such countermeasures.” (link)

 

A PREP Act declaration is specifically for the purpose of providing immunity from tort liability, and is different from, and not dependent on, other emergency declarations.

 

Under the HHS Notification, the PREP Act has been modified: “The amended Section VII adds that PREP Act liability protections also extend to Covered Persons for Recommended Activities that are related to any Covered Countermeasure that is:

 

1. licensed, approved, cleared, or authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (or that is permitted to be used under an Investigational New Drug Application or an Investigational Device Exemption) under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act or Public Health Service (PHS) Act to treat, diagnose, cure, prevent, mitigate or limit the harm from COVID–19, or the transmission of SARS–CoV–2 or a virus mutating therefrom; (link)

 

The attachment of a liability or tort waiver to only cover FDA approved therapeutics likely explains a shift amid the medical community to stop patients treatment due to coverage restrictions on their malpractice insurance.  Additionally, Big Pharma -the group who controls NIH- wouldn’t make as much money if their mandatory vaccines had a less costly alternative.  So there’s that.

 

The PREP Act offers hospitals blanket financial liability protection in treating C19 patients only if the hospitals follow the approved protocol; if hospitals treat only with CDC, FDA approved countermeasures, i.e. NIH approved measures, they keep the liability shield. Any hospital deviating from the protocol loses the PREP Act C19 liability shield, it seems. Again, follow the money.

 

I can’t see any other reason hospitals would fight so hard to block dying patients last-chance medical requests for an FDA approved drug used off-label but not EUA’d for C19. It might explain the hospital’s use of the term “human guinea pig”.

 

This is from a brief outline of the current PREP Act applied to C19 treatments. Ivermectin is not a "covered countermeasure” by this definition.

 

“Fourth, the medical product at issue must be a covered countermeasure. The PREP Act specifies four types of covered countermeasures: (i) a qualified “pandemic or epidemic product”; (ii) a “security countermeasure”; (iii) a drug, biological product,or device that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)has authorized for emergency use; and (iv) a “respiratory protective device” that is approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).”

Pentagon Busy Making Up Excuses To Boost Warsocialist Welfare

tomdispatch |  For almost 20 years, U.S. drone warfare was largely one-sided. Unlike Afghans and Yemenis, Iraqis and Somalis, Americans never had to worry about lethal robots hovering overhead and raining down missiles. Until, that is, one appeared in the skies above Florida.

But that’s a story for later. For now, let’s focus on a 2017 executive order issued by President Trump, part of his second attempt at a travel ban directed primarily at citizens of Muslim-majority nations. It begins: “It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks.”

That sentence would be repeated in a January report from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” Meant to strengthen the president’s case for the travel ban, it was panned for its methodological flaws, pilloried for its inaccuracies, and would even spur a lawsuit by the civil rights organization, Muslim Advocates, and the watchdog group, Democracy Forward Foundation. In their complaint, those groups contend that the report was “biased, misleading, and incomplete” and “manipulates information to support its anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim conclusions.”

To bolster the president’s arguments for restricting the entry of foreigners into the United States, the DOJ/DHS analysis contained a collection of case summaries. Examples included: the Sudanese national who, in 2016, “pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to ISIS”; the Uzbek who “posted a threat on an Uzbek-language website to kill President Obama in an act of martyrdom on behalf of ISIS”; the Syrian who, in a plea agreement, “admitted that he knew a member of ISIS and that while in Syria he participated in a battle against the Syrian regime, including shooting at others, in coordination with Al Nusrah,” an al-Qaeda offshoot.

Such cases cited in the report, hardly spectacular terror incidents, were evidently calculated to sow fears by offering a list of convicted suspects with Muslim-sounding names. But the authors of the report simply looked in the wrong places. They could have found startling summaries of truly audacious attacks against the homeland in a collection of U.S. military documents from 2016 obtained by TomDispatch via the Freedom of Information Act. Those files detail a plethora of shocking acts of terrorism across the United States including mass poisonings, the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and that “People’s Armed Liberation (PAL) attack on U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) headquarters in Tampa, Florida, [by] a drone-launched missile.”

That’s right! A drone-launched missile attack! On CENTCOM’s Florida headquarters! By a terrorist group known as PAL!

Wondering how you missed the resulting 24/7 media bonanza, the screaming front page headlines in the New York Times, the hysterics on Fox & Friends, the president’s hurricane of tweets?

Well, there’s a simple explanation. That attack doesn’t actually happen until May 2020. Or so says the summary of the 33rd annual Joint Land, Air, and Sea Strategic Special Program (JLASS-SP), an elaborate war game carried out in 2016 by students and faculty from the U.S. military’s war colleges, the training grounds for its future generals and admirals.

Scientific Integrity Within the Academic and Media Industrial Complexes

CounterPunch |  You may not recognize names like Amy Cuddy, Kristina Durante, or Brian Wansink but if you listen to NPR, watch TED talks, or read popular online news sites or local and national outlets such as the New York Times, you have probably stumbled across their work. They are among a growing number of academics who have produced one or more exciting, novel, too-amazing-to-be-true research studies that have caught the attention of the media and have been widely disseminated through American culture to the point that we may have internalized their findings as fact. Yet their work has since been debunked, shown to be unscientific and irreproducible. It is all part of what has been dubbed the “replication crisis” in science. Since replication is one of the basic tenets of science, failure to reproduce the results of a study (especially after several attempts) indicates a lack of support for the original findings. How does this happen time and time again, and what does it say about science and the news media?

Case 1 – Amy Cuddy

Amy Cuddy’s famous study on how an assertive “power pose” could elevate testosterone levels and increase a person’s confidence and risk-taking was published in the prestigious Psychological Science, one of the top journals in that field. Then a professor in the Harvard Business School, Cuddy went on to give the second most-popular TED talk ever, sign a book deal, and travel around the world commanding huge fees on the lecture circuit based on the general theme of her study. In the meantime, other skeptical researchers Joe Simmons and Uri Simonsohn questioned the veracity of her claims and Eva Ranehill and collegues failed to replicate the results of the study. One of Cuddy’s co-authors, Dana Carney, has since withdrawn her support of the study, saying “I do not believe the effects are real.” But Cuddy, having voluntarily left her academic position, still stands by her work.

In truth, not only is the power pose study a replication failure, it is a failure of peer review. No one needs a particularly specialized expertise to see some of the problems with the study. One glance at the methods section of the paper and you see the sample size of 42, hardly sufficient or statistically powerful. In addition, like in many studies, specific subjective proxies were used to indicate a much more general, supposedly objective, finding. Here, risk taking was measured by participants’ willingness to perform a certain gambling task. Yet one’s interest in gambling is not necessarily directly proportional to one’s interest in other risky activities. Further, participants’ levels of confidence were self-reported on a scale of 1-5. Self-reporting is always error prone, because your level of “2” may not be equivalent to my level of “2.” And yet, all of these subjective measurements are treated as concrete quantifiable data. Finally, the study assumed no cultural differences; demonstrations of power or confidence might not be viewed as beneficial and positive as they are assumed to be in the American culture.

You can see how the reliability of the study deteriorates under scrutiny. But no study is perfect. One of the biggest problems with this study and many similar ones is not just how unreliable the results are, but that the results are treated as generalizable to everyone everywhere. If Cuddy had defined the results as provisional and contingent upon certain assumptions, and circumstances, then her research might have been more defendable, but instead she presented her shoddy science as universal immutable fact. This practice appears to be too widespread.

Bitshit: BUY! BUY! BYE!

ibankcoin |  Crypto currency Bitconnect (BCC) plunged from $321 to a tad over $35 today, a drop of more than 86% after regulators from state authorities issued cease and desist letters for unauthorized sale of securities. That’s right. Just because your shit is on the blockchain, that doesn’t mean you get to solicit your fucking Ponzi scheme to people in America. State regulators will have something to say about that.

Via the company’s website, as per the reasons for shutting down.

The reason for halt of lending and exchange platform has many reasons as follow:
The continuous bad press has made community members uneasy and created a lack of confidence in the platform.
We have received two Cease and Desist letters, one from the Texas State Securities Board, and one from the North Carolina Secretary of State Securities Division. These actions have become a hindrance for the legal continuation of the platform.
Outside forces have performed DDos attacks on platform several times and have made it clear that these will continue. These interruptions in service have made the platform unstable and have created more panic inside the community.

Price action.

What did Bitconnect do? They quite literally ran a Ponzi scheme. Look at one of their brochures, promising investors 40% returns, PER MONTH.

Via Tech Crunch:

Many in the cryptocurrency community have openly accused Bitconnnect of running a Ponzi scheme, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
The platform was powered by a token called BCC (not to be confused with BCH, or Bitcoin Cash), which is essentially useless now that the trading platform has shut down. In the last The token has plummeted more than 80% to about $37, down from over $200 just a few hours ago.
If you aren’t familiar with the platform, Bitconnect was an anonymously-run site where users could loan their cryptocurrency to the company in exchange for outsized returns depending on how long the loan was for. For example, a $10,000 loan for 180 days would purportedly give you ~40% returns each month, with a .20% daily bonus.
Bitconnect also had a thriving multi-level referral feature, which also made it somewhat akin to a pyramid scheme with thousands of social media users trying to drive signups using their referral code.
The platform said it generated returns for users using Bitconnnect’s trading bot and “volatility trading software”, which usually averaged around 1% per day.
Of course profiting from market fluctuations and volatility is a legitimate trading strategy, and one used by many hedge funds and institutional traders. But Bitconnect’s promise (and payment) of outsized and guaranteed returns led many to believe it was a ponzi scheme that was paying out existing loan interest with newly pledged loans.
The requirement of having BCC to participate in the lending program led to a natural spike in demand (and price) of BCC. In less than a year the currency went from being worth less than a dollar (with a market cap in the millions) to a all-time high of ~$430.00 with a market cap above $2.6B.

Lenders into the Bitconnect Exchange have revealed the company is closing out accounts, issuing BCC in exchange for their dollars — which is causing the price to plummet.

Bitconnect is officially closing up. They sent me 33 BCC for my $11k+ in loans. Worth $6600 and dropping by the second. Their exchange is down so the only option is to send the BCC to an external exchange.

— LifeByAdam (@LifeByAdam1) January 16, 2018

Addicts Pawns in a Sprawling National Network of Insurance and Treatment Fraud

BostonGlobe  |  Drug users, desperate to break addictions to heroin or pain pills, are pawns in a sprawling national network of insurance fraud, an investigation by The Boston Globe and STAT has found.

They are being sent to treatment centers hundreds of miles from home for expensive, but often shoddy, care that is paid for by premium health insurance benefits procured with fake addresses.

Patient brokers are paid a fee to place insured people in treatment centers, which pocket thousands of dollars in claims for each patient. They often target certain Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, because of their generous benefits and few restrictions on seeking care from out-of-network treatment programs.

The fraud is now so commonplace that brokers use a simple play on words to describe how it works: “Do you want to Blue Cross the country?”

gubmint instigated terra plots becoming more ambitious...,

publicintegrity |  The clandestine group’s goal was clear: Obtain the building blocks of a so-called radioactive “dirty bomb” – capable of poisoning a major city for a year or more – by openly purchasing the raw ingredients from authorized sellers inside the United States.

It should have been hard. The purchase of lethal radioactive materials – even modestly dangerous ones – requires a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a measure meant to keep them away from terrorists. Applicants must demonstrate they have a legitimate need and understand the NRC’s safety standards, and pass an on-site inspection of their equipment and storage.

But this secret group of fewer than 10 people – formed in April 2014 in North Dakota, Texas, and Michigan – discovered that getting a license and then ordering enough materials to make a “dirty bomb” was strikingly simple in one of their three tries. Sellers were preparing shipments that together were enough to poison a city center when the operation was shut down.

The team’s members could have been anyone – a terrorist outfit, emissaries of a rival government, domestic extremists. In fact, they were undercover bureaucrats with the investigative arm of Congress. And they’d pulled off the same stunt nine years before. Their fresh success has set off new alarms among some lawmakers and officials in Washington about risks that terrorists inside the United States could undertake a “dirty bomb” attack.

Here’s how they did it: 

Government agents 'directly involved' in most high-profile US terror plots

tards, climate-denialists, and the DNC - LIARS - all love the chewbacca defense

skepticalscience |  When I give a presentation and mention the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming, I’m often asked, “what’s the deal with the other 3%?”. These are the publishing climate scientists who argue that something other than humans is responsible for the majority of global warming, although their explanations are often contradictory and don’t withstand scientific scrutiny.

A few months ago, the world’s largest private sector coal company went to court, made its best scientific case against the 97% expert consensus, and lost. One of coal’s expert witnesses was University of Alabama at Huntsville climate scientist Roy Spencer - a controversial figure who once compared those with whom he disagreed to Nazis, and has expressed his love for Fox News.

Last week, Spencer wrote a white paper for the Texas Public Policy Institute (TPPI) outlining the contrarian case against climate concerns. TPPI is part of the web of denial, having received substantial funding from both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries, including $65,000 from ExxonMobil and at least $911,499 from Koch-related foundations since 1998, and over $3 million from “dark money” anonymizers Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

Spencer’s arguments should of course be evaluated on their own merits, regardless of who commissioned them. However, it turns out that they have little merit on which to stand. The white paper is a classic example of a Gish Gallop – producing such a large volume of nonsense arguments that refuting all of them is too time-consuming. 

neuroscience and technology have far outpaced the training and practice of psychiatry...,

behaviorismandmentalhealth |  Joel Yager, MD, is a Professor of Psychiatry, University of Colorado at Denver School of Medicine.  He started his career as a US Army psychiatrist in 1969, and has held a wide range of clinical and teaching positions in the intervening years.  He has received numerous awards, including lifetime achievement awards from the National Eating Disorders Association (2008) and from the Association for Academic Psychiatry (2009).  He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers, many of which are concerned with the training of psychiatrists.

In January 2011, Dr. Yager published The Practice of Psychiatry in the 21^st Century: Challenges for Psychiatric Education, in the journal Academic Psychiatry.  This paper received favorable comment from Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President of the APA, in the article Training the Psychiatrists of the Future, in the November 26, 2013 issue of Psychiatric News.  As my regular readers will know, I am an avid fan of Dr. Lieberman’s, and it is my belief that anything he recommends warrants close scrutiny.

The stated purpose of Dr. Yager’s article is:

“To consider how shifting scientific, technological, social and financial pressures are likely to significantly alter psychiatric practice, careers, and education in the 21^st century…”

and to review

“…trends and innovations likely to have an effect on tomorrow’s psychiatrists and their educators.”

It’s a wide-ranging and optimistic article.  Here are some quotes, interspersed with my thoughts and observations.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Measurement-based disease-management care will progress as even chronically ill psychiatric patients increasingly use computer-based tools in waiting rooms to rate their clinical status before office appointments.”

From his use of the terms “disease” and “ill,” it is clear that Dr. Yager is immersed in the medical model.  There is nothing in the article to suggest even an awareness of the fact that this model is under considerable criticism at the present time, nor that this reality may have some relevance for psychiatrist training.

Is there a hint of condescension in the phrase “even chronically ill psychiatric patients”?  And is having the client fill in boxes on a computer screen in the waiting room an improvement over talking to him in the office?  Will the 15-minute med check be reduced to 10 minutes?

clock in a box unleashed fifty megatons of stoopid...,

guardian |  The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins found himself at the centre of controversy on Sunday when he questioned the motives of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old boy who was arrested and detained in Texas when a teacher thought a clock he had made was a bomb.

Dawkins did not dispute that Mohamed should not have been arrested, but questioned whether the boy had truly “invented” the clock, as has been reported. 

Dawkins, the author of books including the groundbreaking The Selfish Gene, the bestselling The God Delusion and the memoir A Sense of Wonder, is a leading critic of religious belief and an advocate for rational thought. 

On Sunday, the emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford said he was simply looking for the truth of the Texas schoolboy’s story.

In a tweet, the scientist linked to a YouTube video entitled Ahmed Mohammed [sic] Clock is a FRAUD, in which user Thomas Talbot alleges Mohamed’s clock “is in fact not an invention. The ‘clock’ is a commercial bedside alarm clock removed from its casing”.

Dawkins eventually retreated. He devoted tweets to questioning police motives and tweeted a reference to the new leader of Britain’s opposition Labour party: “Sorry if I go a bit over the top in my passion for truth. Not just over a boy’s alleged ‘invention’ but also media lies about J[eremy] Corbyn.”

behavioral genetics - bad science and worse just-so storytelling...,

scientificamerican |  Last spring, I kicked up a kerfuffle by proposing that research on race and intelligence, given its potential for exacerbating discrimination, should be banned. Now Nature has expanded this debate with "Taboo Genetics." The article "looks at four controversial areas of behavioral genetics"—intelligence, race, violence and sexuality—"to find out why each field has been a flashpoint, and whether there are sound scientific reasons for pursuing such studies."

The essay provides a solid overview, including input from both defenders of behavioral genetics and critics. The author, Erika Check Hayden, quotes me saying that research on race and intelligence too often bolsters "racist ideas about the inferiority of certain groups, which plays into racist policies."

I only wish that Hayden had repeated my broader complaint against behavioral genetics, which attempts to explain human behavior in genetic terms. The field, which I've been following since the late 1980s, has a horrendous track record. My concerns about the potential for abuse of behavioral genetics are directly related to its history of widely publicized, erroneous claims.

I like to call behavioral genetics "gene whiz science," because "advances" so often conform to the same pattern. Researchers, or gene-whizzers, announce: There’s a gene that makes you gay! That makes you super-smart! That makes you believe in God! That makes you vote for Barney Frank! The media and the public collectively exclaim, "Gee whiz!"

Follow-up studies that fail to corroborate the initial claim receive little or no attention, leaving the public with the mistaken impression that the initial report was accurate—and, more broadly, that genes determine who we are.

Over the past 25 years or so, gene-whizzers have discovered "genes for" high IQ, gambling, attention-deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism, dyslexia, alcoholism, heroin addiction, extroversion, introversion, anxiety, anorexia nervosa, seasonal affective disorder, violent aggression—and so on. So far, not one of these claims has been consistently confirmed by follow-up studies.

These failures should not be surprising, because all these complex traits and disorders are almost certainly caused by many different genes interacting with many different environmental factors. Moreover, the methodology of behavioral geneticists is highly susceptible to false positives. Researchers select a group of people who share a trait and then start searching for a gene that occurs not universally and exclusively but simply more often in this group than in a control group. If you look at enough genes, you will almost inevitably find one that meets these criteria simply through chance. Those who insist that these random correlations are significant have succumbed to the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.

To get a sense of just how shoddy behavioral genetics is, check out my posts on the "liberal gene," "gay gene" and God gene" (the latter two "discovered" by Dean Hamer, whose record as a gene-whizzer is especially abysmal); and on the MAOA-L gene, also known as the "warrior gene." Also see this post, where I challenge defenders of behavioral genetics to cite a single example of a solid, replicated finding.

squeeze your eyes tightly shut and pretend as hard as you can, or else...,

ETonline |  It's been just over a week since Caitlyn Jenner's big reveal in Vanity Fair, and already she's giving back to her community.

The former Olympian is returning to motivational speaking and her first stop was at the Los Angeles LGBT Youth Center on Tuesday.

In these exclusive photos, Jenner is seen braving the rain with a big umbrella, while rocking a pair of figure-hugging skinny jeans, a fitted black blouse, knee-high boots and an Elisabeth Weinstock Tokyo cross-body bag.

Looking very jovial and relaxed, Jenner stayed at the LGBT Center for about two hours and arrived with her camera crew and bodyguards in tow.

The LGBT Center's mission is to build "a world where LGBT people thrive as healthy, equal and complete members of society," and their message seems to fit right in with Caitlyn's views.

"So many people go through life and they never deal with their own issues," the 65-year-old reality star said in a promo for her upcoming eight-part docu-series, I Am Cait. "No matter what those issues are -- ours happen to be gender identity -- but how many people go through life and just waste an entire life because they never deal with themselves? To be who they are."

no love for the modus operandi of violent predatory parasites...,

Dale sent me a link to some interesting pictures on Thursday, pictures that I think may have had something to do with my little epiphany about the nature of the thugs and the peculiar parasitic outlaw subculture quietly tolerated in our midst. The characters mugging in this picture are not in fact samurai, as much as the characters dressing up in leathers and riding around on Harley Davidson motorcycles are not in fact warriors. These are peasants dressed-up and posed in found armor - you can see it in their faces as well as in the unsheathed steel slung across the 2nd from the left's shoulder.

My introduction to Edo culture was as romanticized and artificial as it could be, coming from a teenage encounter with the book Shogun compounded and instantiated by the presence of a genuine Japanese martial arts studio on the outskirts of my neighborhood that preserved, highlighted, and sought to faithfully transmit a cultural and religious ethos embodied - at least in part - in the warrior's arts. Better to watch the period series Zatoichi and be reminded how bleak, predatory, brutal and crimey every installment was inclined to be, and to remember that there was a reason that the samurai put aside their old and lethal religion and imposed the Meiji restoration upon Japan.

whole buncha acewholes disavowed and their double-00 status rescinded...,

zerohedge |  But according to NBC News, which has reportedly been conducting their own investigation for the last several years, Hersh’s claims aren’t that inaccurate after all.

Two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a “walk in” asset from Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the world was hiding – and these two sources plus a third say that the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding all along.

The U.S. government has always characterized the heroic raid by Seal Team Six that killed bin Laden as a unilateral U.S. operation, and has maintained that the CIA found him by tracking couriers to his walled complex in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The new revelations do not necessarily cast doubt on the overall narrative that the White House began circulating within hours of the May 2011 operation. The official story about how bin Laden was found was constructed in a way that protected the identity and existence of the asset, who also knew who inside the Pakistani government was aware of the Pakistani intelligence agency’s operation to hide bin Laden, according to a special operations officer with prior knowledge of the bin Laden mission. The official story focused on a long hunt for bin Laden’s presumed courier, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.
 …

The NBC News sources who confirm that a Pakistani intelligence official became a “walk in” asset include the special operations officer and a CIA officer who had served in Pakistan. These two sources and a third source, a very senior former U.S. intelligence official, also say that elements of the ISI were aware of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. The former official was emphatic about the ISI’s awareness, saying twice, “They knew.”

The one thing that President Obama could hail as a success during his tenure as President has now been exposed as an outright lie.

 Slate  |  Here’s what NBC wrote earlier this week:

Two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a “walk in” asset from Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the world was hiding.

If true, that would be major news. But NBC now says it’s not actually true. Here’s what now appears atop NBC’s story on the walk-in:

Editor's Note: This story has been updated since it was first published. The original version of this story said that a Pakistani asset told the U.S. where bin Laden was hiding. Sources say that while the asset provided information vital to the hunt for bin Laden, he was not the source of his whereabouts.

While NBC’s story doesn’t use the word correction or retraction, that’s what this appears to be. The walk-in “did not provide the location of the al Qaeda leader’s Abottabad, Pakistan compound,” the story now says.

our second black POTUS the hon.sis.preznit souljah laments the missing black men bill snatched...,

NYTimes |  Hillary Rodham Clinton had not planned to make the first major policy speech of her presidential campaign an impassioned plea to mend the nation’s racial fissures and overhaul an “out-of-balance” criminal justice system.

But by Tuesday, as the nation confronted shocking scenes of Baltimore’s smoke-filled streets, Mrs. Clinton knew that the death of Freddie Gray from injuries he suffered while in police custody would lead her to make race, poverty and incarceration of men from poor, black communities central to her early campaign.

“There is something profoundly wrong when African-American men are still far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes and sentenced to longer prison terms than are meted out to their white counterparts,” Mrs. Clinton said in a forceful address Wednesday at Columbia University.

She said Mr. Gray’s death, the subsequent protests and the assault on innocent police officers in Baltimore “tear at your soul.”

The remarks marked the first time Mrs. Clinton has delivered a substantive policy address in a fledgling presidential race that had to now been defined by candidates’ upbeat announcements and vague promises.