pawn in the endless war that must never be won...,

NYTimes | From heroin and cocaine to sex and lies, Tetris and the ponies, the spectrum of human addictions is vast. But for Dr. Nora D. Volkow, the neuroscientist in charge of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, they all boil down to pretty much the same thing.

She must say it a dozen times a day: Addiction is all about the dopamine. The pleasure, pain and devilish problem of control are simply the detritus left by waves of this little molecule surging and retreating deep in the brain.

A driven worker with a colorful family history and a bad chocolate problem of her own, Dr. Volkow (pronounced VOHL-kuv), 55, has devoted her career to studying this chemical tide. And now, eight years into her tenure at the institute, the pace of addiction research is accelerating, propelled by a nationwide emergency that has sent her agency, with a $1.09 billion budget, into crisis mode.

The toll from soaring rates of prescription drug abuse, including both psychiatric medications and drugs for pain, has begun to dwarf that of the usual illegal culprits. Hospitalizations related to prescription drugs are up fivefold in the last decade, and overdose deaths up fourfold. More high school seniors report recreational use of tranquilizers or prescription narcotics, like OxyContin and Vicodin, than heroin and cocaine combined.

The numbers have alarmed drug policy experts, their foreboding heightened by the realization that the usual regulatory tools may be relatively unhelpful in this new crisis.

As Dr. Volkow said to a group of drug experts convened by the surgeon general last month to discuss the problem, “In the past, when we have addressed the issue of controlled substances, illicit or licit, we have been addressing drugs that we could remove from the earth and no one would suffer.”

But prescription drugs, she continued, have a double life: They are lifesaving yet every bit as dangerous as banned substances. “The challenges we face are much more complex,” Dr. Volkow said, “because we need to address the needs of patients in pain, while protecting those at risk for substance use disorders.”

In other words, these drugs must be somehow legal and illegal, encouraged yet discouraged, tightly regulated yet easily available.

The experts are looking to the institute for scientific tools that might help by loosening the tight bonds between pain relief and addiction in the brain.

bishopricks

Egodeath | It was important to the institutional, hierarchical, empire-affiliated and profit-driven state church to literalize Jesus and the pseudo-historical understanding of the mythic allegory. The church's exclusive monopoly and rule would have been harmed, were Christ taken to be mystic-state allegory, which is universally available without a hierarchical middleman of the controlling bishop. The bishops wanted to form an exclusive monopoly on religious Good.

They didn't directly care at all about literalism, but what was all-important was having a monopoly, and literalism was the means to their monopoly, not the end in itself. That's what literalism was financially for. Follow the money: how did the rulers of society financially profit from literalization of the Christian myth? The official religion became necessarily literalist because that was a strategy to monopolize and control salvation, creating a false scarcity of enlightenment and salvation and righteousness.

Jesus came only once, and all religious value comes strictly through him and then through controlled channels (the Peter figure) to him.

Note that while one book proclaims Christ and the apostles as the foundation stones of the Church, Matthew 16:18 seems to portray either Peter, or more likely Peter's proclamation of jesus as son of god, as the foundation stone of the Church.

There is nothing wrong with the pun of equating the mythic Peter figure with the foundation of the mystic-state Church, but the official bishops strove to profit from control of religious Good (salvation, sin-cleansing, enlightenment), and the way to do this was to literalize the mythic fine notion of Peter and his proclamation being the foundation petra of the Church. Ultimately, the issue isn't whether the word "this" points to Peter or to his proclamation, in identifying what Jesus said is the foundation of the Church.

What *really* matters is the mode of interpretation: mystic mythic metaphor that describes universally directly available religious Good, versus literalism -- particularly a literalism that is intent, above all, on crafting an artificial scarcity of religious Good (salvation, however it is conceived), controlled by the bishops. The bishops' real strategy is, "We don't care what you think salvation is and means, as long as you agree that it is only available through routing your money through our pockets exclusively."

What is acceptable theology? The theology which is acceptable to the bishops is anything and everything as long as it supports most effectively the one thing that is actually important: routing all the religious money through the pockets of the bishops; with only one sacrament, only one church, only one (flexible) theology, and far above all -- only one channel for money, the one that goes through the bishops' pockets.

Why *must* all religious value be concentrated entirely and only in the one true savior, the only door to heaven, Jesus? And why must Peter be real and be the only apostle to whom Jesus gave the keys to heaven and all religious Good, however it may be conceived?

Because a literal man in whom all religious Good is exclusively concentrated, and who handed the exclusive and restricted keys to only one man, Peter, the original head bishop, and always onto only one man at a time, the head bishop or Pope, is the most effective way to construct and fabricate an artificial monopoly of religious Good in order to route all money and power through the pockets and controlling hands of the bishops.

Why and to what extent do the bishops need to suppress the pure mythic view, the no-free-will doctrine, and sacred meals of visionary plants? The bishops don't directly give a damn about visionary plants, no-free-will philosophy, or pure mythic views -- but they *do* care *entirely* about creating artificial scarcity of religious Good in order to route money and power their way, and this indirectly requires suppressing high, effective religion.

Only by suppressing the no-free-will doctrine, visionary plants, and the pure mythic interpretation of religion, can direct access of each person to religious Good be prevented and a salvation franchise chain, controlled by bishops, be installed in order to profitably sell salvation to individuals at grossly inflated prices, similar to how the government and big business profit from the funny money generated by the results of making psychoactives illegal.

By suppressing real religion and constructing the narrowest acceptable substitute channel for religious quasi-fulfilment instead, the rulers of this world have profited wildly through their artificial salvation franchise, like the governor who supressed the discovery of the air-generating machine on Mars in the movie Total Recall, in order to profitably sell air to the populace.

Suppression of the universal mythic mystic-state Jesus was necessary in order to restrict availability of Jesus' religious Good to the few, official channels, controlled by the profit-mongering bishops. Another reason Christianity was popular pre-313 was the figure of the godman chastising the pseudo-religious profit-driven religious leaders, who were part of the profit-driven System of Empire.

Those profit-driven temple leaders who strove to retain a monopoly on religious Good and cleansing of sins formed a direct, literal model for later pseudo-religious profit-driven leaders; there is nothing coincidental about it, just an age-old battle between the rulers who want to franchise religious Good and the mystics and populace who want religious Good to be directly universally accessible.

why christian literalism is instrumental for the ruling elite

Egodeath | Why was the false Literalist story of Christian origins supported by the ruling elites, but the other, gnostic, esoteric story vigorously suppressed? To maximize the elites' degree of coercive control over the widest population; to try a little to justify their tithing scam - - the other story overthrows the financial, political, cultural domination of the elites.

Even more generally: why does the official (false) literalist *type* of history help the ruling elite? Why does the (true) gnostic/esoteric *type* of history hurt the ruling elite? Why (in the beginning and later) was literalist false history beneficial to the ruling elite, and why was the gnostic true history harmful to the ruling elite?

• How has the ruling elite benefitted by Literalist false history?
• How would the ruling elite not have benefitted had the gnostic true history been admitted or promoted?
• Are there some types of Literalist false history that would have harmed the ruling elite?
• Are there some types of gnostic true history that would have benefitted the ruling elite?

*Must* the ruling elite promote the kind of Literalist false history it did?

Do things *necessarily* group as follows? Why do things necessarily group as follows?

• Literalist false history, the dominance of the ruling elites (oligarchic)
• Gnostic true history, the non-dominance of the ruling elites (democratic)
• Why do literalist false history and oppressive oligarchy go hand in hand?
• Why do gnostic true history and democracy go hand in hand?

Loyalty of the led and controlled -- the coerced -- by those who desire to be the leaders and controllers -- the coercers -- is a main concern of the coercers. In politics the whole problem was how to coerce people into supporting you.

Gnostic esoteric Christianity as such didn't provide an opportunity for coercers to insert themselves and organize people into an organized body of the coerced -- literalist Christianity, with its false history of Jesus handing exclusive authority to Peter then to the bishops/popes, did provide such an opportunity to systematically coerce people into an organized, powerful social-political-religious force.

Why does literalism offer political power that gnostic esotericism doesn't? Because of the networked mass unity of the form of religion, and exclusive concentration of power at the top of a hierarchy. What rulers want is widespread uniformity of system, throughout the social-political-religious culture, and exclusive concentration of power and authority at the top of a hierarchy.

Literalist false history enabled such networked uniformity and such oligarchic, systematically coercive power concentration. Gnostic esoteric Christianity, because of its democratic distribution of authority and proliferation of variations -- each community creating their own largely isolated version of the religion -- was useless at setting up networked uniformity, and was useless for the exclusive hierarchical concentration of power.

chop licking and bickering...,

Politico | China fired back on Tuesday against Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s warning that its heavy investments in Africa could lead to a “new colonialism” there, Reuters reported.

“China and the countries of Africa were historically the victims of colonial occupation and oppression, and they all truly know what colonialism was,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said when asked about Clinton’s comments at a press conference Tuesday.

“We have never imposed our will on African countries,” Hong added. “We hope that those concerned can view Chinese-African cooperation objectively and fairly.”

Beijing’s comments come after Clinton told a Zambian TV show that African nations must keep their own interests in mind when doing business with other nations. Clinton didn’t name China, but her comments made it clear which country she had in mind.

“When people come to Africa to make investments, we want them to do well but also want them to do good,” Clinton said. “We saw that during colonial times it is easy to come in, take out natural resources, pay off leaders and leave.”

Hong countered that China provides aid to African nations – Premier Wen Jiabao offered $10 billion in loans over three years – for “mutually beneficial gain.”

governance essentials

LewRockwell | What we have in common is the need to protect one another’s inviolability from governmental force. When we understand that the woman being groped by a TSA agent stands in the same shoes as our wife, mother, or grandmother; when the man being beaten by a sadist cop is seen, by us, as our father or grandfather, we become less willing to evade the nature of the wrongdoing by invoking the coward’s plea: "better him than me." The state owes its very existence to the success it has had in fostering division among us, a topic I explored in my Calculated Chaos book. Divide-and-conquer has long been the mainstay in political strategy. If blacks and whites; or Christians and Muslims; or employees and employers; or "straights" and "gays"; or men and women; or any of seemingly endless abstractions, learn to identify and separate themselves from one another, the state has established its base of power. From such mutually-exclusive categories do we draw the endless "enemies" (e.g., communists, drug-dealers, terrorists, tobacco companies) we are to fear, and against whom the state promises its protection. By becoming fearful, we become existentially disabled, and readily accept whatever safeguards the institutional fear-mongers impose, . . . all for our "benefit," of course!

Look at the title of this article: do you find any governmental program or practice therein that is not grounded in state-generated fear? Each one – and the numerous others not mentioned – presumes a threat to your well-being against which the state must take restrictive and intrusive action. Terrorists might threaten the flight you are about to take; terrorist nations might have "weapons of mass destruction" and the intention to use them against you; your children might be at risk from drug dealers or from sex perverts using the Internet; driving without a seat-belt, or eating "junk" foods might endanger you: the list goes on and on, changing as the fear-peddlers dream up another dreaded condition in life.

It is not sufficient to the interests of the state that you fear other groups; it is becoming increasingly evident that you must also fear the state itself! Governments are defined as entities that enjoy a monopoly on the use of violence within a given territory. Implicit in such a monopoly is the recognition that there be no limitations on its exercise, other than what serve the power interests of the state. In relatively quiet and stable periods (e.g., 1950s) the state can afford to give respect to notions of individual privacy, free speech, and limitations on the powers of the police. In such ways, the state gives the appearance of reasonableness and respect for people. But when times become more tumultuous – as they are now – the very survival of the state depends upon a continuing assertion of the coercive powers that define its very being.

For a number of reasons – some of it technological – our social world is rapidly becoming decentralized. The highly-structured, centrally-directed institutions through which so much of our lives has been organized (e.g., schools, health-care, government, communications, etc.) no longer meet the expectations of many – perhaps most – men and women. Alternative systems, the control of which has become decentralized into individual hands, challenge the traditional institutional order. Private schools and home-schooling; alternative health practices; the Internet, cell-phones, and what is now known as the "social media," are in the ascendancy. With the state becoming increasingly expensive, destructive, economically disruptive, oppressive, and blatantly anti-life, secession and nullification movements have become quite popular.

Of course, such transformations are contrary to the established institutional interests that have, for many decades, controlled the state – and, with it, the monopoly on violence that is its principal asset. Having long enjoyed the power to advance their interests not through the peaceful, voluntary methods of the marketplace, but through such coercive means as governmental regulation, taxation, wars, and other violent means, the established order is not about to allow the changing preferences of hundreds of millions of individuals to disrupt its traditional cozy racket.

Because the institutional order has become inseparable from the coercive nature of the state, any popular movement toward non-political systems is, in effect, a movement away from the violent structuring of society. The corporate interests that control the machinery of the state may try to convince people that government does protect their interests vis-à-vis the various fear-objects. Failing in this, the statists must resort to the tactic that sustains the playground bully: to reinforce fear of the bully, who controls his victims through a mixture of violence and degradation.

Neither the TSA nor the alleged "war on terror" have anything to do with terrorism. The idea that the TSA came about as a consequence of 9/11 ignores the fact that the state’s practice of prowling through the personal belongings of airline passengers goes back many decades. I recall how upset a friend of mine was – in the early 1970s – when government officials went through his hand-luggage, and ordered him to unwrap a birthday gift he was carrying home to a relative. The purpose of such a search then, as now, was to remind passengers of the bully’s basic premise: "I can do anything I want to you whenever I choose to do so." It is for the purpose of keeping us docile – an objective furthered by degrading and dehumanizing us – that underlies such state practices. The groping of people’s genitals and breasts is but an escalation of this premise, and should the TSA later decide that all passengers must strip naked for inspection, such a practice will go unquestioned not only by the courts, but by the mainstream media who will ask " . . . but if you don’t have anything to hide . . . " Those who cannot imagine state power going to such extremes to humiliate people into submission, are invited to revisit the many photographs of German army officers at such places as Auschwitz, who watched – as "full body scanners" – as naked women were forced to run by them.

the nostalgic clowning of depotentiated social units

gizmodo | In George Orwell's 1984, citizens of the totalitarian state of Oceania were required to accomplish the impossible task of holding two contradictory ideas in their minds and accepting both of them: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Orwell called this "Doublethink." Similarly, Citizen Cold Warriors in the United States were expected to be able to reconcile these two diametrically opposed thoughts: A nuclear war can destroy all life on earth. You will survive if you build a family fallout shelter.

But the family fallout shelter's ostensible purpose - to ensure survival during and after a nuclear attack - was impossible to achieve. That wasn't why it was created. It was part of the propaganda campaign to convince the American people that they could survive a nuclear war.

How The US Was Supposed to Survive a Nuclear Holocaust With 9 Inches of ConcreteNo one knows exactly how many shelters were built. But tens of thousands of Americans - maybe even hundreds of thousands - actually did build shelters. Millions considered doing so. Why? How could so many people believe that hiding in an underground concrete cube would save their lives during a nuclear attack? And then, if they somehow did survive, why did they believe they could function when they emerged into a post-apocalyptic world with fires raging, cities destroyed, and a landscape littered with the dead and injured? Because by the time the Federal Civil Defense Authority launched its Family Fallout Shelter campaign in 1958, Americans had spent nearly a decade steeped in Civil Defense campaigns, posters, films, classes, and emergency drills. The idea of being a Citizen Cold Warrior had become embedded in the American psyche. People built shelters because doing so seemed to be their best hope; it was a desperate grab for empowerment in the face of the unthinkable. Doing something felt better than doing nothing.

The roots of the family fallout shelter can be traced back to 1952, when the U.S. created a new bomb - the hydrogen bomb - that was 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This bomb would destroy an atomic bomb shelter as easily as the wolf blew down the house of straw in the fairy tale, The Three Little Pigs.

The world witnessed the astounding power of this new weapon on March 1, 1954, when it was exploded above the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. The blast vaporized the island below it and carved out a crater a half-mile wide and several hundred feet deep.

The bomb also threw several million tons of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. After a nuclear bomb is detonated, it sucks dirt, water, and other matter into the explosion and transforms it into radioactive particles that can be as large as snowflakes or so small as to be invisible. Fallout can drift in unpredictable directions for thousands of miles over a period of years.

How The US Was Supposed to Survive a Nuclear Holocaust With 9 Inches of ConcreteNo longer was a nuclear bomb's killing power limited to the place where it was detonated. Now everyone, everywhere was a potential victim of radioactive fallout. The following year, the U.S.S.R. exploded its first hydrogen bomb. Fear of fallout gripped the nation. The government acknowledged that a bomb shelter would be useless against a direct hit by the H-bomb. However, it said, you can protect yourself against fallout. During a nuclear attack, go into your fallout shelter and stay there for two weeks, until the radiation in the atmosphere has dropped to a safe level.

In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared: "The National fallout shelter policy is based firmly on the philosophy of the obligation of each property-owner to provide protection on his own premises."

psychodential vimana

Video - Doomsday Plane' Would Save President and Joint Chiefs in Apocalypse Scenario

ABCNews | In the event of nuclear war, a powerful meteor strike or even a zombie apocalypse, the thoroughly protected doomsday plane is ready to keep the president, secretary of defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff and other key personnel in the air and out of danger. It may not deflect a Twitter photo scandal, but it can outrun a nuclear explosion and stay in the air for days without refueling.

The flight team for the E-4B, its military codename, sleeps nearby and is ready to scramble in five minutes. It was mobilized in the tumultuous hours after planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and southern Pennsylvania on 9/11.

"If the command centers that are on the ground in the United States have a failure of some sort, or attack, we immediately get airborne. We're on alert 24/7, 365," Captain W. Scott "Easy" Ryder, Commander, NAOC, told ABC News' Diane Sawyer as she traveled to Afghanistan with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the apocalypse-proof plane. "Constantly there's at least one alert airplane waiting to get airborne."

ugly scenarios?

Video - What are the chances the U.S. economy could trigger violence in the U.S.

the monkey in the machine and the machine in the monkey

Video - Episode 3 of Adam Curtis new All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace series.

second-string psychopaths

CommonDreams | The economic system that remains after the destruction of American local cultures has created an excellent employment picture for psychopaths. But the opportunities open to them are now so vast that there is apparently now an actual labor shortage. At least that is the only explanation I can find for the rise of a cadre of psychopathic leaders who resemble the usual type in all ways but one: they’re simply not that smart. One has only to look at right-wing not-so-Christian fundamentalists to see the peculiar emergence of a second-string of psychopaths.

The US has been endowed with abundant resources, and there have always been a more than sufficient supply of psychopaths of the first intellectual grade to supply corporate suites and their subsidiary, the Congress. Why is there now a downgrade to the dumb ones, like the lowering of standards for military recruits to deal with a shortage of cannon fodder?

It is no secret that the Koch brothers and others of the super-rich seem to have undertaken a final push to consolidate control through the conversion of a marginally democratic to an essentially fascist state; extreme right-wing, authoritarian, and demagogic. This kind of government is ideal for control of a populace by the moneyed elite. To carry this out requires the employment of many ‘kept’ politicians to excite and misdirect scared and angry – and ignorant – voters. Lest the citizenry realize who stole their money and storm their castles with torches, the rapacious elite need politicians who will carry out the work of re-directing anger at teachers, or labor unions, or the poor. I can only conclude that the people who now own the country couldn’t find any first-rate psychopaths to carry out their work. Or maybe the smart ones were all occupied. So they had to go to second-stringers, people who could actually believe what they were told to say.

We are a country who has become second-best, even in the quality of our psychopaths.

how financial oligarchy replaces democracy

MichaelHudson | When Greece exchanged its drachma for the euro in 2000, most voters were all for joining the Eurozone. Their hope was that it would ensure stability, and that this would promote rising wages and living standards. Few saw that the stumbling point was tax policy. Greece was excluded from the eurozone the previous year as a result of failing to meet the 1992 Maastricht criteria for EU membership, limiting budget deficits to 3 percent of GDP, and government debt to 60 percent.

The euro also had other serious fiscal and monetary problems at the outset. There is little thought of wealthier EU economies helping bring less productive ones up to par, e.g. as the United States does with its depressed areas (as in the rescue of the auto industry in 2010) or when the federal government does declares a state of emergency for floods, tornados or other disruptions.

As with the United States and indeed nearly all countries, EU “aid” is largely self-serving – a combination of export promotion and bailouts for debtor economies to pay banks in Europe’s main creditor nations: Germany, France and the Netherlands. The EU charter banned the European Central Bank (ECB) from financing government deficits, and prevents (indeed, “saves”) members from having to pay for the “fiscal irresponsibility” of countries running budget deficits. This “hard” tax policy was the price that lower-income countries had to sign onto when they joined the European Union.

Also unlike the United States (or almost any nation), Europe’s parliament was merely ceremonial. It had no power to set and administer EU-wide taxes. Politically, the continent remains a loose federation. Every member is expected to pay its own way. The central bank does not monetize deficits, and there is minimal federal sharing with member states. Public spending deficits – even for capital investment in infrastructure – must be financed by running into debt, at rising interest rates as countries running deficits become more risky.

This means that spending on transportation, power and other basic infrastructure that was publicly financed in North America and the leading European economies must be privatized. Prices for these services must be set high enough to cover interest and other financing charges, high salaries and bonuses, and be run for profit – indeed, for rent extraction as public regulatory authority is disabled.

This makes countries going this route less competitive. It also means they will run into debt to Germany, France and the Netherlands, causing the financial strains that now are leading to showdowns with democratically elected governments. At issue is whether Europe should succumb to centralized planning – on the right wing of the political spectrum, under the banner of “free markets” defined as economies free from public price regulation and oversight, free from consumer protection, and free from taxes on the rich.

The crisis for Greece – as for Iceland, Ireland and debt-plagued economies capped by the United States – is occurring as bank lobbyists demand that “taxpayers” pay for the bailouts of bad speculations and government debts stemming largely from tax cuts for the rich and for real estate, shifting the fiscal burden as well as the debt burden onto labor and industry. The financial sector’s growing power to achieve this tax favoritism is crippling economies, driving them further into reliance on yet more debt financing to remain solvent. Aid is conditional upon recipient countries reducing their wage levels (“internal devaluation”) and selling off public enterprises.

The tunnel vision that guides these policies is self-reinforcing. Europe, America and Japan draw their economic managers from the ranks of professionals sliding back and forth between the banks and finance ministries – what the Japanese call “descent from heaven” to the private sector where worldly rewards are greatest. It is not merely delayed payment for past service. Their government experience and contacts helps them influence the remaining public bureaucracy and lobby their equally opportunistic replacements to promote pro-financial fiscal and monetary policies – that is, to handcuff government and deter regulation and taxation of the financial sector and its real estate and monopoly clients, and to use the government’s taxing and money-creating power to provide bailouts when the inevitable financial collapse occurs as the economy shrinks below break-even levels into negative equity territory.

Regressive tax policies – shifting taxes off the rich and off property onto labor – cause budget deficits financed by public debt. When bondholders pull the plug, the resulting debt pressure forces governments to pay off debts by selling land and other public assets to private buyers (unless governments repudiate the debt or recover by restoring progressive taxation). Most such sales are done on credit. This benefits the banks by creating a loan market for the buyouts. Meanwhile, interest absorbs the earnings, depriving the government of tax revenue it formerly could have received as user fees.

The tax gift to financiers is based on the bad policy of treating debt financing as a necessary cost of doing business, not as a policy choice – one that indeed is induced by the tax distortion of making interest payments tax-deductible.

Buyers borrow credit to appropriate “the commons” in the same way they bid for commercial real estate. The winner is whoever raises the largest buyout loan – by pledging the most revenue to pay the bank as interest. So the financial sector ends up with the revenue hitherto paid to governments as taxes or user fees. This is euphemized as a free market.

Promoting the financial sector at the economy’s expense

The resulting debt leveraging is not a solvable problem. It is a quandary from which economies can escape only by focusing on production and consumption rather than merely subsidizing the financial system to enable players to make money from money by inflating asset prices on free electronic keyboard credit. Austerity causes unemployment, which lowers wages and prevents labor from sharing in the surplus. It enables companies to force their employees to work overtime and harder in order to get or keep a job, but does not really raise productivity and living standards in the way envisioned a century ago. Increasing housing prices on credit – requiring larger debts for access to home ownership – is not real prosperity.

To contrast the “real” economy from the financial sector requires distinctions to be drawn between productive and unproductive credit and investment. One needs the concept of economic rent as an institutional and political return to privilege without a corresponding cost of production. Classical political economy was all about distinguishing earned from unearned income, cost-value from market price. But pro-financial lobbyists deny that any income or rentier wealth is unearned or parasitic. The national income and product accounts (NIPA) do not draw any such distinction. This blind spot is not accidental. It is the essence of post-classical economics. And it explains why Europe is so crippled.

The way in which the euro was created in 1999 reflects this shallow vision. The Maastricht fiscal and financial rules maximize the commercial loan market by preventing central banks from supplying governments (and hence, the economy) with credit to grow. Commercial banks are to be the sole source of financing budget deficits – defined to include infrastructure investment in transportation, communication, power and water. Privatization of these basic services blocks governments from supplying them at subsidized rates or freely. So roads are turned into toll roads, charging access fees that are readily monopolized. Economies are turned into sets of tollbooths, paying out their access charges as interest to creditors. These extractive rents make privatized economies high-cost. But to the financial sector that is “wealth creation.” It is enhanced by untaxing interest payments to banks and bondholders – aggravating fiscal deficits in the process.

all 100 major labor markets have fewer private-sector jobs

Bizjournals | Every corner of America still feels the pain of the Great Recession, especially Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

All of the nation’s 100 biggest labor markets have fewer private-sector jobs today than they did three years ago, according to a new On Numbers analysis of the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The U.S. economy was flying high in April 2008, posting the biggest number of private-sector jobs for any April since the beginning of the 21st century. But the subsequent economic slide has stripped away 6.7 million jobs in three years, even taking into account the slight upswing recently reported for April 2011.

The Los Angeles area suffered the sharpest three-year decline in raw numbers. It now has 387,500 fewer private-sector positions than it did in 2008. Las Vegas was hit with the biggest drop in percentage terms, a slide of 13.8 percent in three years.

Eleven other markets have lost at least 100,000 private-sector jobs, and eight others have registered declines of more than 10 percent.

The top 100 markets account for 74.4 million private-sector positions, nearly 70 percent of the national total.

A recent On Numbers analysis of private-sector job growth in the states between 2001 and 2011 showed that only 19 states and the District of Columbia added jobs during that period.

The database below has a comparison of April 2008 and April 2011 private-sector employment figures for all 100 markets. It can be re-sorted by any column. Just click the appropriate header.

On Numbers will devote the rest of the week to a closer look at the lasting impact of the recession. Tomorrow’s entry will focus on metropolitan employment in the financial sector. The entire database is available at the bottom of the story.

camden - poster child of american ruin

Video - RT's Anastasia Churkina reports on the extent of the damage, and whether this ghost town - but once industrial giant - could end up disappearing off the face of the Earth.

manna?

Video - Exodus 16:20: “Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning and it bred worms and stank.”

Excerpts from the King James Bible, Exodus 16: "Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; ... And in the morning, then ye shall see the glory of the LORD; ... And Moses said, This shall be, when the LORD shall give you in the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full; ... And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel: speak unto them, saying, At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God. ... And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host. And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar (red.: "a white or greyish-white colour.") frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna [see also: Mana]: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat. This is the thing which the LORD hath commanded, Gather of it every man according to his eating, an omer for every man ... they gathered every man according to his eating. And Moses said, Let no man leave of it till the morning. Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank: and Moses was wroth with them. And they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted. ... This is that which the LORD hath said, To morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the LORD: bake that which ye will bake to day, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein. ... And the house of Israel called the name thereof Manna: and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. And Moses said, This is the thing which the LORD commandeth, Fill an omer of it to be kept for your generations; that they may see the bread wherewith I have fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you forth from the land of Egypt. And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a pot, and put an omer full of manna therein, and lay it up before the LORD, to be kept for your generations. As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept."

the oldest representations of hallucinogenic mushrooms in the world

artepreistorica | Even though the ‘neuropsychological model’ put forward by Lewis-Williams & Dawson is not sufficient on its own to interpret that complex phenomenon which is poleolithic art, this model at least paves the way to supposing that mind-altering factors may have contributed to a prehistoric will-to-art.
At this point, we should remember Kaplan´s (1975) theory that mushrooms are represented in the Swedish cave art of the long Scandinavian Bronze Age.
It should also be pointed out that the explicit representation of psychotropic vegetals, as sacred objects (and therefore subject to taboo), is rare and the few cases of explicit representation make up but a small part of prehistoric art, as sacred art, associated with the use of hallucinogens. We must consider that, generally speaking, sacred cult objects will not be represented and that it is more than likely that these will be hidden behind symbolic devices, also of a graphic nature, whose meaning is indeed beyond us.

Further evidence in support of the idea that the relationship between Man and hallucinogens – in this case mushrooms – is indeed an ancient one comes from the ancient populations of the Sahara desert who inhabited this vast area when it was still covered with an extensive layer of vegetation (fig. 1) (Samorini, 1989). The archeological findings consist in prehistorical paintings which the author personally had the opportunity to observe during two visits to Tassilli in Algeria. This could be the most ancient ethno-mycological finding up to the present day, which goes back to the so-called ‘Round Heads’ Period (i.e. 9,000 – 7,000 years ago). The centre of this style is Tassili, but examples are also to be found at Tadrart Acacus (Libya), Ennedi (Chad) and, to a lesser extent, at Jebel Uweinat (Egypt) (Muzzolini, 1986:173-175).

Central Saharian rock art, apart from extensive concentrations of incisions, near the sites of ancient rivers, and rockshelter paintings among the large promontories or high plateaux which reach an altitude of some 2,000 meters, cover a period of 12,000 years, generally divided in 5 periods: the ‘Bubalus antiquus’ Period, the works of which were produced by the Early Hunters at the end of the Pleistocene period (10,000 – 7,000 years B. C.) – characterized by representations of large wild animals (Mori, 1974); the ‘Round Heads’ Period, in turn divided into various phases and styles, associated with the epipaleolithic populations of the Early Gatherers (7,000 – 5,000 years B. C.), whose works of fantasy have quite rightly become world famous; the ‘Bovidian’ or ‘Pastoral’ Period (starting 5,000 years B. C.), a population of animal herders and breeders whose art is predominantly concentrated on these activities and, after these, the ‘Horse’ Period and, lastly, the ‘Camel’ Period, the art works of which are stereotyped and of a lower quality.

Some rock art experts have already produced evidence supporting the idea that the art of the Round Head Period could be influenced by ecstatic or hallucinogenic states. According to Anati (1989:187), this art is produced by the Early Gatherers during the end of Pleistocene and the beginning of Holecene periods. Analogous works dating back nearly to the some period are to be found in various sites around the world (Sahara Desert, Tanzania, Texas, Mexico etc.). These areas were later to become arid or semi-arid when the lakes and rivers dried up. From the many works of art these peoples have left us we learn what were gatherers of wild vegetal foods: ‘people who lived in a sort of garden of Eden and who used mind-altering substances’. Sansoni too (1980) is of the opinion that ‘it might be that (the works of art of the Round Heads Period) are the works of normal consciousness or the results of particular ecstatic states associated with dance or the use of hallucinogenic substances’. The context, or rather the ‘motivations’ behind Round Heads art, just as with all the other periods of Sahara rock art, are generally of a religious and, perhaps, initiatic nature. Fabrizio Mori, discussing Acacus, stressed ‘the close relationship which there must have been between the painter and that figure so typical in all prehistoric societies whose main role is that of mediator between earth and sky: the wizard-priest’ (Mori, 1975). According to Henri Lohte, the discoverer of the Tassili frescoes, ‘it seems evident that these painted cavities were secret sanctuaries’ (Lhote, 1968).

Images of enormous mythological beings of human or animal form, side by side with a host of small horned and feathered beings in dancing stance cover the rock shelters of which there are very many on the high plateaux of the Sahara which in some areas are so interconnected as to form true ‘citadels’ with streets, squares and terraces.
One at the most important scenes is to be found in the Tin-Tazarift rock art site, at Tassili, in which we find a series of masked figures in line and hieratically dressed or dressed as dancers surrounded by long and lively festoons of geometrical designs of different kinds (fig. 2). Each dancer holds a mushroom-like object in the right hand and, even more surprising, two parallel lines come out of this object to reach the central part of the head of the dancer, the area of the roots of the two horns. This double line could signify an indirect association or non-material fluid passing from the object held in the right hand and the mind. This interpretation would coincide with the mushroom interpretation if we bear in mind the universal mental value induced by hallucinogenic mushrooms and vegetals, which is often of a mystical and spiritual nature (Dobkin de Rios, 1984:194). It would seem that these lines – in themselves an ideogram which represents something non-material in ancient art – represent the effect that the mushroom has on the human mind.

The whole scene is steeped in deep symbolic meanings and is a representation of a cultural event which actually happened and which was periodically repeated. Perhaps we are witnessing one of the most important moments in the social, religious and emotional lives of these peoples. The constant nature of the physical nature of the dancers and their stances reveals a coordinated will towards scenic representation for collective contexts. The dance represented here has all the indications of a ritual dance and perhaps, at a certain stage, this rite became ecstatic.

In the various scenes presented, a series of figurative constants lead us to imagine an accompanying conceptual structure associated with the ethno-mycological cult described here.

dr. barbara brown

Video - Final Minutes of One Step Beyond Episode The Sacred Mushroom

Wikipedia | Barbara B. Brown (1921-1999) was a research psychologist who popularized biofeedback and neurofeedback in the 1970s. "Brown was the biofeedback field's most prolific writer and most successful popularizer." [1]

Brown earned her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1950. She went from a technician at pharmaceutical company Merrill to heading their Department of Pharmacology. From there she went to Riker Laboratories and Psychopharmacology Research Laboratories. She became Associate Clinical Professor of Pharmacology at the University of California Center for Health Sciences in Los Angeles and at the University of California, Irvine. She lectured at the Department of Psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles.[2]

Dr. Brown created and popularized the word "biofeedback". She did her ground-breaking research when she was Chief of Experiential Physiology Research at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sepulveda, California.[3]

Brown was co-founder and first president (1969-1970) of the Biofeedback Research Society, which evolved into the Biofeedback Society of America and then into the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback.

In later years she suffered a stroke and died in 1999 in Rancho Mirage.

Brown was featured in a 1960 episode of the television series One Step Beyond. The episode, titled "The Sacred Mushroom", was a rare documentary-style departure for the series and dealt with the search for psychedelic mushrooms in Mexico.

rentiers rule...,

NYTimes | The latest economic data have dashed any hope of a quick end to America’s job drought, which has already gone on so long that the average unemployed American has been out of work for almost 40 weeks. Yet there is no political will to do anything about the situation. Far from being ready to spend more on job creation, both parties agree that it’s time to slash spending — destroying jobs in the process — with the only difference being one of degree.

Nor is the Federal Reserve riding to the rescue. On Tuesday, Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, acknowledged the grimness of the economic picture but indicated that he will do nothing about it.

And debt relief for homeowners — which could have done a lot to promote overall economic recovery — has simply dropped off the agenda. The existing program for mortgage relief has been a bust, spending only a tiny fraction of the funds allocated, but there seems to be no interest in revamping and restarting the effort.

The situation is similar in Europe, but arguably even worse. In particular, the European Central Bank’s hard-money, anti-debt-relief rhetoric makes Mr. Bernanke sound like William Jennings Bryan.

What lies behind this trans-Atlantic policy paralysis? I’m increasingly convinced that it’s a response to interest-group pressure. Consciously or not, policy makers are catering almost exclusively to the interests of rentiers — those who derive lots of income from assets, who lent large sums of money in the past, often unwisely, but are now being protected from loss at everyone else’s expense.

Of course, that’s not the way what I call the Pain Caucus makes its case. Instead, the argument against helping the unemployed is framed in terms of economic risks: Do anything to create jobs and interest rates will soar, runaway inflation will break out, and so on. But these risks keep not materializing. Interest rates remain near historic lows, while inflation outside the price of oil — which is determined by world markets and events, not U.S. policy — remains low.

And against these hypothetical risks one must set the reality of an economy that remains deeply depressed, at great cost both to today’s workers and to our nation’s future. After all, how can we expect to prosper two decades from now when millions of young graduates are, in effect, being denied the chance to get started on their careers?

Ask for a coherent theory behind the abandonment of the unemployed and you won’t get an answer. Instead, members of the Pain Caucus seem to be making it up as they go along, inventing ever-changing rationales for their never-changing policy prescriptions.

While the ostensible reasons for inflicting pain keep changing, however, the policy prescriptions of the Pain Caucus all have one thing in common: They protect the interests of creditors, no matter the cost. Deficit spending could put the unemployed to work — but it might hurt the interests of existing bondholders. More aggressive action by the Fed could help boost us out of this slump — in fact, even Republican economists have argued that a bit of inflation might be exactly what the doctor ordered — but deflation, not inflation, serves the interests of creditors. And, of course, there’s fierce opposition to anything smacking of debt relief.

Who are these creditors I’m talking about? Not hard-working, thrifty small business owners and workers, although it serves the interests of the big players to pretend that it’s all about protecting little guys who play by the rules. The reality is that both small businesses and workers are hurt far more by the weak economy than they would be by, say, modest inflation that helps promote recovery.

No, the only real beneficiaries of Pain Caucus policies (aside from the Chinese government) are the rentiers: bankers and wealthy individuals with lots of bonds in their portfolios.

arnach tugs big don's sleeve

I would like to propose a subreal summer reading list:

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor

If you believe that there is meaning in the tone and manner in which words are said and stories told, then you have a compelling reason to listen to the audiobook recording of that last one as read by the author. In any case, you should have no problem getting through any of these books if you are able to read and comprehend at the high school level; there's nothing obscure or technical anywhere in any of them. What you may find, in fact, is that you are drawn into each as you might be by a good novel. You might also find yourself looking forward to reading (or listening to) them again, because you know you’ll get a little something more out of each the next time through.

I believe that, if you are able to understand and integrate the information in these books into your thinking, you will discover that you have a better understanding of, and better control over, how your own brain works and how your mind is affected by things that are presented to you in everyday life. Besides, what’s the most it’ll cost you? A little lazy time and a trip or two to the library? As you can see from the wikipedia page in the title link, you can read Gladwell’s book starting right now, for free, from his website!

The question, Big Don, is whether or not you’re actually man enough to do it? I can see from your bookshelf that you are not a man afraid of words. A whole summer should be enough time. Now, I have a feeling that the suggestion alone (particularly coming here on this blog) is likely to predispose you against both the action and the material. If so, that would be a shame. Particularly because, since you and I come from similar technical backgrounds (I think I might need to get myself a copy of Carrier’s fan book you got that ~1970 edition of on your bottom shelf there), I’m very interested to learn when the setting of one’s ways in stone will occur and when to expect to reach the point at which all new information becomes irrelevant (or perhaps worse, dangerous). I thought engineers were different than that. Not that I believe any of that is actually inevitable…just (unfortunately) common.

operating limits

Video - Prism Defense Ship-Helicopter Operating Limits Fist tap Arnach.

sounds a little like a hot mess...,

globalresearch | The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.

Coinciding with the onset of the nuclear crisis in Japan, a new regional war theater has opened up in North Africa, under the disguise of a UN sponsored "humanitarian operation" with the mandate to "protect civilian lives".

These two seemingly unrelated events are of crucial importance in understanding both the nuclear issue as well as the ongoing US-NATO sponsored war, which has now extended its grip into Libya. The crisis in Japan has been described as "a nuclear war without a war". Its potential repercussions, which are yet to be fully assessed, are far more serious than the Chernobyl disaster, as acknowledged by several scientists.

The crisis in Japan has also brought into the open the unspoken relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear war. Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap. In Japan at the height of the disaster, "the nuclear industry and government agencies [were] scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan's civilian nuclear power plants".[1] The media consensus is that the crisis at Fukushima's five nuclear power plants has been contained. The realties are otherwise. The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that "the severity rating of its nuclear crisis ... matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster". Moreover, the dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:

"Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements - called internal emitters - migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer".

a high cabal?

globalresearch | The control of the US, and of global politics, by the wealthiest families of the planet is exercised in a powerful, profound and clandestine manner. This control began in Europe and has a continuity that can be traced back to the time when the bankers discovered it was more profitable to give loans to governments than to needy individuals.

These banking families and their subservient beneficiaries have come to own most major businesses over the two centuries during which they have secretly and increasingly organised themselves as controllers of governhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifments worldwide and as arbiters of war and peace.

Unless we understand this we will be unable to understand the real reasons for the two world wars and the impending Third World War, a war that is almost certain to begin as a consequence of the US attempt to seize and control Central Asia. The only way out is for the US to back off – something the people of the US and the world want, but the elite does not.

The US is a country controlled through the privately owned Federal Reserve, which in turn is controlled by the handful of banking families that established it by deception in the first place.

In his interesting book The Secret Team, Col. Fletcher Prouty, briefing officer of the US President from 1955-63, narrates a remarkable incident in which Winston Churchill made a most revealing utterance during World War II: “On this particular night there had been a heavy raid on Rotterdam. He sat there, meditating, and then, as if to himself, he said, ‘Unrestricted submarine warfare, unrestricted air bombing – this is total war.’ He continued sitting there, gazing at a large map, and then said, ‘Time and the Ocean and some guiding star and High Cabal have made us what we are’.”

Prouty further states: “This was a most memorable scene and a revelation of reality that is infrequent, at best. If for the great Winston Churchill, there is a ‘High Cabal’ that has made us what we are, our definition is complete. Who could know better than Churchill himself during the darkest days of World War II, that there exists, beyond doubt, an international High Cabal? This was true then. It is true today, especially in these times of the One World Order. This all-powerful group has remained superior because it had learned the value of anonymity.” This “High Cabal” is the “One World Cabal” of today, also called the elite by various writers.

facebook's face-recognition "feature" draws privacy scrutiny

NYTimes | European Union data protection regulators said on Wednesday that they would investigate Facebook over a feature that uses face-recognition software to suggest people’s names to tag in pictures without their permission, and a privacy group in the United States said that it planned to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over the feature.

A group of privacy watchdogs drawn from the European bloc’s 27 nations will study the measure for possible rule violations, said Gérard Lommel, a Luxembourg member of the so-called Article 29 Data Protection Working Party. Authorities in Britain and Ireland said they are also looking into the photo-tagging function on the world’s most popular social networking service.

“Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people’s prior consent and it can’t be activated by default,” said Mr. Lommel. Such automatic tagging suggestions “can bear a lot of risks for users” and the European data protection officials will “clarify to Facebook that this can’t happen like this.”

Facebook said on its blog on Tuesday that “Tag Suggestions” was available in most countries after being phased in over several months. When Facebook users add photos to their pages, the feature uses facial-recognition software to suggest names of people in the photos to tag based on pictures in which they have already been identified. Before the feature was introduced, users could tag pictures manually without permission from their friends.

The feature is active by default on existing users’ accounts, and Facebook explains on its blog how people can disable the function if they don’t want their names to be automatically suggested for other people’s pictures.

“We launched Tag Suggestions to help people add tags of their friends in photos; something that’s currently done more than 100 million times a day,” Facebook, which is based in Palo Alto., Calif., said in an e-mailed statement. “Tag suggestions are only made to people when they add new photos to the site, and only friends are suggested.”

In Europe, where personal privacy is protected by law more often than in the United States, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have also been pushed by data protection officials to limit the amount of time they store online users’ search records.

influence explorer

Influence Explorer | Influence Explorer now integrates with three other Sunlight projects: Party Time, Lobbying Registration Tracker and OpenCongress. Check out the updated lobbying sections, which now include links to bills lobbied on and daily updates of recent lobbying activity. The updated politician pages now include links to recent and upcoming fundraisers.

Influence Explorer also now shows data from the Project On Government Oversight indicating when federal contractors have a history of misconduct such as contract fraud and environmental, ethics and labor violations.

Inbox Influence

Your new favorite email tool since the spam filter

Inbox Influence is a new tool from the Sunlight Foundation that allows you to see the political contributions of the people and organizations that are mentioned in emails you receive. This easy-to-use tool can be used for researching influence background on corporate correspondence, adding context to newspaper headlines or discovering who is behind political fundraising solicitations.

Learn More


Checking Influence

When you shop, do you wonder where your money really goes?

Checking Influence shows you how companies you do business with every day are wielding political influence. By securely analyzing your online bank or credit card statement, Checking Influence shows your own spending alongside corporate spending on lobbying activities and campaign contributions, helping you be a more informed consumer and citizen.


Learn More


Poligraft

Dig up political influence


Feed in a news article, blog post or press release, and Poligraft will present you with an enhanced view of the people, organizations and relationships described in the piece. Poligraft allows you to connect the dots between money and politics in Congress and state offices.


Learn More

state seeks compensation for nevada test site contamination

LATimes | The Nevada Legislature wants the U.S. government to contain and mitigate about 300 million curies of radioactive contamination left in the soil and water of the former nuclear weapons testing site.

The Nevada Legislature has taken the first step in demanding that the federal government make amends for massive radioactive contamination left by decades of nuclear weapons testing on a swath of desert the size of Rhode Island.

In a joint resolution, the state's Senate and House are asking the federal government to contain and mitigate about 300 million curies of contamination left in the soil and water of the former Nevada Test Site, about 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Energy Department detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground before testing ended in 1992. An estimated 1.6 trillion gallons of water in aquifers under the site are radioactively contaminated with the byproducts of the bomb tests.

The resolution will open the way for Nevada to demand compensation for the loss of its water resources, said Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, the resolution's lead sponsor. He said the resolution stemmed from a detailed examination of the radioactive legacy of testing that was published by The Times in November 2009.

"It is one of the largest contamination zones in the U.S., if not the world," Goedhart said. "If we are prevented from using our water resources, it is a taking and we should be compensated."

The Energy Department has said the contaminated water is moving very slowly downhill toward Death Valley National Park, but it could take thousands of years to reach any affected community.

Until then, it would be technically and economically impossible to purify the water, some of which is 5,000 feet below the land surface, Energy Department scientists have asserted.

"The test site has been declared a sacrifice zone," said , Joseph Strolin, acting director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects. "The federal officials are basically taking the approach that this can never be cleaned up and will be monitored in perpetuity." Fist tap Big Don.

the devil's experiment

Guardian | Marta Orellana says she was playing with friends at the orphanage when the summons sounded: "Orellana to the infirmary. Orellana to the infirmary."

Waiting for her were several doctors she had never seen before. Tall men with fair complexions who spoke what she guessed was English, plus a Guatemalan doctor. They had syringes and little bottles.

They ordered her to lie down and open her legs. Embarrassed, she locked her knees together and shook her head. The Guatemalan medic slapped her cheek and she began to cry. "I did what I was told," she recalls.

Today the nine-year-old girl is a rheumy-eyed 74-year-old great-grandmother, but the anguish of that moment endures. It was how it all began: the pain, the humiliation, the mystery.

It was 1946 and orphans in Guatemala City, along with prisoners, military conscripts and prostitutes, had been selected for a medical experiment which would torment many, and remain secret, for more than six decades.

The US, worried about GIs returning home with sexual diseases, infected an estimated 1,500 Guatemalans with syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid to test an early antibiotic, penicillin.

"They never told me what they were doing, never gave me a chance to say no," Orellana said this week, seated in her ramshackle Guatemala City home. "I've lived almost my whole life without knowing the truth. May God forgive them."

The US government admitted to the experiment in October when the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, issued a joint statement apologising for "such reprehensible research" under the guise of public health. Barack Obama phoned his Guatemalan counterpart, Alvaro Colom, to say sorry too.

Susan Reverby, a professor at Wellesley College in the US, uncovered the experiment while researching the Tuskegee syphilis study in which hundreds of African American men were left untreated for 40 years from the 1930s.

The Guatemalan study went further by deliberately infecting its subjects. Not only did it violate the hippocratic oath to do no harm but it echoed Nazi crimes exposed around the same time at the Nuremberg trials.

The victims remained largely unknown but the Guardian has interviewed the families of the three survivors identified so far by Guatemala. They chronicled lives blighted by illness, neglect and unanswered questions.

"My father didn't know how to read and they treated him like an animal," said Benjamin Ramos, 57, the son of Federico, 87, a former soldier. "This was the devil's experiment."

Mateo Gudiel, 57, said his father, Manuel, 87, another ex-conscript, has syphilis-linked infections, dementia and headaches. "Some of this has been passed on to me, my siblings and our children." Children can inherit congenital syphilis.

More than half of the subjects were low-ranking soldiers delivered by their superiors to US physicians working from a military base in the capital. The Americans initially arranged for infected prostitutes to have sex with prisoners before discovering it was more "efficient" to inject soldiers, psychiatric patients and orphans with the bacterium.

Guatemala's official inquiry, headed by its vice-president, is due to publish its report in June. "What impacted me the most was how little value was given to these human lives. They were seen as things to be experimented on," said Carlos Mejia, a member of the inquiry and head of the Guatemalan College of Physicians.

The US scientists treated 87% of those infected with syphilis and lost track of the other 13%. Of those treated about a tenth suffered recurrences.

dr. cornelius p. rhoads

Wikipedia | Cornelius P. Rhoads (1898–1959) was an American doctor and pathologist who became infamous for allegedly performing deadly experiments on human beings.[1]

It has been claimed than in 1931, while working for the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University), Rhoads deliberately infected several Puerto Ricans patients with cancer cells. Accusations against him are based on a letter he wrote, which states in part:[2]

The Porto Ricans (sic) are the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever to inhabit this sphere... I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more... All physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects.[3]

He would, however, later state that the writing was done in a moment of anger - his car had been vandalized - and did not reflect anything he had actually done. In 1932, Rhoads was accused by Puerto Rican Nationalist leader, Pedro Albizu Campos of carrying out these experiments.

According to San Juan doctor Hector Pesquera, "At least 13 people died as a result of these experiments." [4] and Science Magazine reported that “13 patients…died during Rhoads's tenure” According to Susan E. Lederer, chair of the Medical History and Bio-ethics department of the University of Wisconsin , however, “Careful review of patient records at the Presbyterian Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where Rhoads had performed his research revealed that no patients in the young pathologist's care had died under suspicious circumstances.” [5] The project Rhoads worked for "was studying hookworm-caused anemia and tropical sprue anemia” [6] and "Puerto Ricans who had hookworm infestation and anemia" had "high mortality" [7]. Rhoads was subject to separate investigations ordered by the governor of Puerto Rico and the Rockefeller Institute, “neither…was able to uncover any evidence that Dr. Rhoads had exterminated any Puerto Ricans.” [8]

According to his critics he was later placed in charge of two chemical warfare projects in the 1940s establishing U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama.[9] After World War II Rhoads served as director of the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and an adviser to the United States Atomic Energy Commission regarding nuclear medicine [10]. He was also awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit by the government for his research.[11]

In 2002, controversy over the letter and the alleged experiments arose once again when University of Puerto Rico biology professor Edwin Vazquez contacted the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). In 2003 the AACR announced that the Cornelius P. Rhoads Memorial Award would be renamed, after an investigation commissioned by them and led by bioethicist Jay Katz "concluded that although there was no evidence of Dr. Rhoads' killing patients or transplanting cancer cells, the letter itself was reprehensible enough to remove his name from the award."[12]

altered consciousness is a many splendored thing

Video - Charles Tart discusses altered states of consciousness.

Journal of Cosmology | A discussion of altered states of consciousness (ASC), like one on politics or religion, invites strong emotional reactions. In this paper I question some assumptions about the accuracy and benevolence of the typical ordinary state of consciousness (OSC) while discussing some of the main functions of ASC. Three of the main arguments against ASC are that they: 1) go against what is normal and rational, 2) wreak havoc at personal and social levels, and 3) produce a delusional account of reality, as compared with the (OSC). Because we live in a monophasic (rather than polyphasic, see Laughlin, McManus, & d'Aquili, 1992; Whitehead, in press) society that primarily values our ordinary state of consciousness to the detriment of other states, these assumptions are rarely questioned.

1. Ordinary and altered states of consciousness

Regarding the first argument, we are immediately confronted by the relativity of what is "normal" and "rational." As various anthropologists have pointed out, what we consider "normal" in post-industrial, Western societies differs markedly from the experiences of other groups. Turnbull (1993, p. 74) gives a lucid example of how he could not even begin to understand the Mbuti of Congo until he transformed his consciousness to fully participate in their world:

"But the more it happened the more other things happened. Not only did seemingly incontrovertible oppositions disappear, such as joy and grief, noise and quietness… somehow the differentiation between my senses seemed to disappear and I began touching moonlight, smelling the sound of the songs, hearing the scent of the various kinds of woods blazing away... and seeing the truth, even if I could not understand what I saw."

As to rationality, Richard Shweder (1986) has cogently discussed how holding such ideas as reincarnation, which may at first blush strike the reader as irrational, may be based on a rational consideration of empirical evidence, although parting from different metaphysical axioms than those held by many in the secular West who hold different ones (and by definition axioms are not the result of rational consideration but a-priori assumptions).

As to the second issue, undoubtedly the search for and consequences of ASC can be destructive, as in the personal and social costs of drug addiction, which is why various traditional societies provide training on and ritualize the use of psychoactive drugs, which then cause no harm, in contrast with what occurs in our midst (Dobkin de Rios, 1984). Let me be clear that despite my cheery title it is not my contention that ASC are necessarily beneficent. Although evidence has accumulated that just having unusual experiences and ASC is not per se a sign of dysfunction (Cardeña, Lynn, & Krippner, 2000; Moreira-Almeida & Cardeña, in press), this does not deny that hellish ASC are also encountered in the ravines of a schizophrenic or otherwise seriously disordered mind (Cardeña, in press), or that ritually-induced ASC to form in-group cohesion may not be used for horrible purposes as in the Nazi Nuremberg rallies. The other side of the coin, however, is that the vast majority of atrocities have been planned while in an OSC, from decisions to wage unnecessary wars and genocides to the socially accepted mistreatment of non-human sentient beings to save some money.

any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

Video - Impressive 3-D lightshow on administration building Kharkiv, Ukraine

simple harmonic (and non-harmonic) motion

Video - Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion.

Harvard | What it shows: Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and random motion. One might call this kinetic art and the choreography of the dance of the pendulums is stunning! Aliasing and quantum revival can also be shown.

How it works: The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations. When all 15 pendulums are started together, they quickly fall out of sync—their relative phases continuously change because of their different periods of oscillation. However, after 60 seconds they will all have executed an integral number of oscillations and be back in sync again at that instant, ready to repeat the dance.

Setting it up: The pendulum waves are best viewed from above or down the length of the apparatus. Video projection is a must for a large lecture hall audience. You can play the video below to see the apparatus in action. One instance of interest to note is at 30 seconds (halfway through the cycle), when half of the pendulums are at one amplitude maximum and the other half are at the opposite amplitude maximum.

Comments: Our apparatus was built from a design published by Richard Berg 1 at the University of Maryland. He claims their version is copied from one at Moscow State University and they claim to have seen it first in the US, so we don't know who made one first. The apparatus we have was designed and built by Nils Sorensen.

James Flaten and Kevin Parendo2 have mathematically modeled the collective motions of the pendula with a continuous function. The function does not cycle in time and they show that the various patterns arise from aliasing of this function—the patterns are a manifestation of spatial aliasing (as opposed to temporal). Indeed, if you've ever used a digital scope to observe a sinusoidal signal, you have probably seen some of these patterns on the screen when the time scale was not set appropriately.

Here at Harvard, Prof Eric Heller has suggested that the demonstration could be used to simulate quantum revival. So here you have quantum revival versus classical periodicity!

have you discovered the beginning that you seek after the end?

Wikipedia | The tree of life (Heb. עץ החיים Etz haChayim) in the Book of Genesis is a tree planted by God in midst of the Garden of Eden (Paradise), whose fruit gives everlasting life, i.e. immortality. Together with the tree of life, God planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:9). According to some scholars, however, these are in fact two names for the same tree.[1] According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, both are forms of the world tree.[2]

The Biblical account states that Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to prevent them from eating from the tree of life:
“ And the Lord God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." (Genesis 3:22)[3] ”

By questioning God's word and authority, the serpent, who is regarded as Satan in Christianity but not in Judaism, initially tempted Eve into eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, an act explicitly forbidden by God. The serpent tempted Eve by suggesting that eating the fruit would cause her to become as wise as God, having knowledge of good and evil. Eve ate the fruit, against God's command to Adam and later so did Adam, despite God's warning that "in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17). As a consequence of their transgression, the land, the Serpent, Adam, and Eve were each cursed by God. To prevent them access to the tree of life God separated them from the tree of life, casting them out of the Garden. The banishment from the Garden of Eden is balanced in the New Testament by the planting of the tree of life on mankind's side of the divide.[citation needed]

In the Book of Revelation, a Koine Greek phrase xylon zoës (ξύλον ζωής) is mentioned 3 times. This phrase, which literally means "wood of life" is translated in nearly every English Bible version as "tree of life", see Revelation 2:7, 22:2, and 22:19.

The Eadwine Psalter, Circa 1150 AD

Alfonso Vel Magnanimo and Ancient Crown of Aragon

Basilica de Nossa Senhora da Conceicao da Praia

St. Michael's Church, Hildesheim Germany 1192 AD