Archive for September, 2011
CIA-Linked General Poised to Win Guatemalan Presidential Election
Democracy Now! explores accusations of genocide against Presidential hopeful General Otto Molina Perez, and examines US foreign policy in Latin America with particular regard for the ongoing ‘War on Drugs’:
Evolution of Narcissism: Why We’re Overconfident and Why It Works
David and Goliath, Osmar Schindler (c. 1888)
Christine Dell’Amore writes in National Geographic:
For years, psychologists have observed that people routinely overestimate their abilities, said study leader Dominic Johnson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Some experts have suggested that overconfidence can be a good thing, perhaps by boosting ambition, resolve, and other traits, creating self-fulfilling prophecies.
But positive self-delusion can also lead to faulty assessments, unrealistic expectations, and hazardous decisions, according to the study — making it a mystery why overconfidence remains a key human trait despite thousands of years of natural selection, which typically weeds out harmful traits over generations.
Now, new computer simulations show that a false sense of optimism, whether when deciding to go to war or investing in a new stock, can often improve your chances of winning.
“There hasn’t been a good explanation for why we are overconfident, and this new model offers a kind of…
When War is Promoted As a Remedy for Terror
Anthony Hall writes on Salem News:
In early May President Barack Obama announced his administration’s most dramatic commemoration of this, the tenth-anniversary year of the 9/11 debacle. He boasted to the world that his government had murdered in Pakistan Osama bin Laden, who the US president described as “al-Qaeda’s leader and symbol.” “The death of bin Laden,” Obama declared, “marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al-Qaeda.”
In this military operation “Geronimo” was the code name used to identify bin Laden or his impersonator. The skeletal remains of Geronimo’s head form part a key part of the Bush clan’s family lore with its deep intergenerational connection to Yale University’s Skull and Bones Society. Skull and Bones is not a myth, but its secret rituals are legendary. As is well documented, Yale’s Skull and Bones Society has been an important seeding nursery for the national security state,…
Former NASA Employee Claims Alien Moon Cities Exist
Via Before It’s News:
Former National Aeronautics and Space Administration Data and Photo Control Department manager, Ken Johnston, who worked for the space agency’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory during the Apollo missions has been fired for telling the truth.
Johnston asserts NASA knows astronauts discovered ancient alien cities and the remains of amazingly advanced machinery on the Moon. Some of the technology can manipulate gravity. He says the agency ordered a cover-up and forced him to participate in it. Over the past 40 years other scientists, engineers and technicians have accused NASA of cover-ups and obscuring data.
The growing number of accusers’ allegations range from hiding information about anomalous space objects and lying about the discovery of artifacts on the surface of the Moon and Mars, to denying the evidence of life reported back by the Viking lander during the mid-1970s.
The Blood on Our Hands is the Blood of the Land
On misogyny, misopedia, racism, homophobia, anti-semitism and misogeoia, Julian Real writes:
My hands have blood on them, no matter how many times I wash them. The blood is from the Earth, and its inhabitants, human and nonhuman.
What does it mean to “hate the Earth”? Do heterosexual male batterers of women really hate women? Do child molesters love or hate children (are they pedophilic or misopedic)?
In conversation, I came across a critique of Derrick Jensen’s book Endgame (vol. 1), which I strongly recommend reading, along with Derrick’s other books, including vol. 2 of Endgame. The critic said they did not really believe people “hate the Earth” as Derrick claims.
This brought to mind many related matters: hatred of people of color by whites, hatred of women by men, hatred of children by adults, and hatred of the Earth by “civilised” humans.
What does it mean to “hate the Earth”? Is gross negligence, callous disregard, and active…
Great News, Everybody: A New (Secret) Bailout!
The Parable of the Blind. Pieter Bruegel (1568)
In Business Insider, scuttlebutt that German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be softening up Obama, Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner for yet another round of bailouts for the incompetent multinational financial elites.
Awesome! I was afraid that the next round of bailouts would require “patriots” like representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) to take to the floor begging again. I feel so relieved now, knowing that the whole thing can proceed quietly without anyone having to jeopardize their campaign funding.
But where do our other, prospective “leaders” stand on this topic? Hard to say. Irrelevance and opacity seem to be the primary tenets of the major candidates’ PR machines. Here’s what I mean.
Ron Paul’s heart may be in the right place regarding the need to end counterproductive wars and pointlessly intrusive social wedge issues, but his knack for failing to identify urgent priorities remains unequalled. Witness the most recent…
Media Roots Interview with Black Ops/Secrecy Researcher Trevor Paglen
Via Media Roots:
Trevor Paglen’s work deliberately blurs the lines between science, contemporary art, journalism, and other disciplines to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to see and interpret the world around us. He is also the author of several books: Torture Taxi, the first book to comprehensively cover the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program; I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me, a book looking at the world of black projects through unit patches and memorabilia created for top-secret programs; and Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World, a book that gives a broader look at secrecy in the United States.
Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin Mauled In New Tell-All Book
Larry McShane reports in the NY Daily News:
Sarah Palin bedding a budding NBA star, snorting coke and cheating on the First Dude? You betcha — or so claims a new deep-dish book on the former Alaska gov.
The scandalous details are revealed in the highly-anticipated tell-all The Rogue: Searching for The Real Sarah Palin,” written by best-selling author Joe McGinniss.
Palin bedded future pro hoops player Glen Rice while he was playing at the University of Michigan, the National Enquirer reports about the McGinniss book.
The sharp-shooting Rice — who spent one season with the Knicks — was playing in the annual “Great Alaska Shootout” while Palin was a sports reporter with Anchorage television station KTUU, the Enquirer said.
Their one-night stand over Thanksgiving weekend 1987 reportedly occurred in the dorm room of Palin’s kid sister at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Palin was described by a friend as the aggressor, with the pal reporting…
The Peter Pan Project
[disinfo ed.'s note: the following is a short piece of satirical fiction by Philip Weaver regarding the economy and job loss.]
Most people believe that COINTELPRO, the FBI program to infiltrate and neutralize domestic dissident groups, is a thing of the past; however, newly leaked documents by the hacker collective Anonymous have revealed a nearly ten year program in which the FBI colluded with school superintendents throughout the US to obtain recruits for it’s Peter Pan Project.
The Peter Pan Project was a series of mind manipulation experiments performed on unwitting children of the 1980s in the hopes of engineering sleeper agents who could be activated to quell future civil disorder in America. Documents reveal that the Peter Pan Project was the brainchild of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had outlined plans for the covert program shortly before his death in May 1972. The project was instituted in 1981 under then…
Donald Trump Wants Payment In Gold, Not Dollars
Photo: Gage Skidmore (CC)
Brett Arends suggests that the Donald preferring gold bullion to cash is probably the beginning of the end of the incredible run up in gold prices. From Marketwatch:
The Donald has just accepted gold bullion instead of cash. According to my colleague at the Wall Street Journal, Trump accepted $176,000 in bullion as a security deposit on space at 40 Wall Street from Apmex, a precious metals dealer.
Trump used the occasion for some publicity, and a dig at the Obama administration. “It’s a sad day when a large property owner starts accepting gold instead of the dollar,” Trump said in an interview. “The economy is bad, and Obama’s not protecting the dollar at all….If I do this, other people are going to start doing it, and maybe we’ll see some changes.”
Oh, brother.
When a self-promoter like The Donald jumps on a bandwagon, you know it’s getting a little old.…
Hell In 3D, From 1860s Paris
A strange find from nineteenth-century Paris, a miniaturized version of Hell photographed in 3D, promising rewards for sinners in the underworld. Via Cine-graphics:
In the opening lines of his 1978 publication, Diableries: La Vie Quotidienne Chez Satan, Jac Remise relates how a crew of demolition workers in Paris discovered a mysterious wooden box hidden in the ruins of a condemned building. The box, which had been wrapped with old military belts, was found to contain a collection of photographs depicting a hedonistic world filled with drunken devils, sinister skeletons and scantily clad women. An anonymous note found buried among the glass images added:
“This is the work of my life, it is thus that I dreamed of Hell. If my visions are true, then the wicked may rest assured, the afterlife will be sweet for them to bear.”
What the demolition workers discovered that day was a series of photographs known as Les…
Fear Of “Killer Phone Number” Spreads In Nigeria
No biggie, just let it go to voicemail. Via the BBC:
Nigeria’s authorities have been forced to reassure the public that a mobile phone number cannot kill, after rumors were spread…that several people had died when they answered calls with the ID 09141.
The regulatory body, the Nigerian Communications Commission, said this was “unimaginable” and “unscrupulous persons” were spreading fear.
A BBC reporter was unable to get through to the number.
Text messages gave conflicting accounts of the number of people killed when they answered the call – some put the death toll at seven while others put it at 10.
Jew Or Not Jew?
Still available in the good ole USofA … Jessica Ravitz and Saskya Vandoorne report on a bizarre iPhone app for CNN:
“Jew or not Jew?”: That is just part of the question.
An iPhone app bearing this name has been yanked from Apple’s App Store in France amid threats of a lawsuit and demands for its removal.
The app, still available elsewhere, pulls together a database of thousands of famous Jews – including movie stars, musicians, Nobel Prize winners and more – and offers insights into their backgrounds. Jewish mother? Jewish father? A convert? For $1.99 in the United States, app owners can know.
In an iTunes store description, it says: “Hey, did you know that Bob Dylan is Jewish? Of course I did! But was Marilyn Monroe really Jewish? And what about Harrison Ford? How many times have we had this conversation without being able to know for sure? You can now find…
Ron Paul Gains Barry Manilow Endorsement For President
This should swing the vote in Dr. No’s direction!
Nicholas Ballasy reports for the Daily Caller:
Grammy award-winning musician Barry Manilow told The Daily Caller that he agrees with “just about everything” 2012 Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul says, calling him a “solid” contender for the highest office in the land…
Philip Kitcher’s New Atheism
Philip Kitcher
Gary Gutting profiles the emerging brand of atheism espoused by Columbia University professor Philip Kitcher, in the New York Times:
Led by the biologist Richard Dawkins, the author of “The God Delusion,” atheism has taken on a new life in popular religious debate. Dawkins’s brand of atheism is scientific in that it views the “God hypothesis” as obviously inadequate to the known facts. In particular, he employs the facts of evolution to challenge the need to postulate God as the designer of the universe. For atheists like Dawkins, belief in God is an intellectual mistake, and honest thinkers need simply to recognize this and move on from the silliness and abuses associated with religion.
Most believers, however, do not come to religion through philosophical arguments. Rather, their belief arises from their personal experiences of a spiritual world of meaning and values, with God as its center.
In the last few years there…
Dawn Of The Dead Malls
The landscape of our post-recession country is littered with the carcasses of abandoned malls — fallen, ghostly temples of twentieth-century consumerism and suburbia. In an interesting two-year-old piece, Design Observer wonders what to do with them. Utopian schemes from wild-eyed planners abound:
Dead malls, according to Deadmalls.com, are malls whose vacancy rate has reached the tipping point; whose consumer traffic is alarmingly low; are “dated or deteriorating”; or all of the above. A May 2009 article in The Wall Street Journal, “Recession Turns Malls into Ghost Towns,” predicts that the dead-mall bodycount “will swell to more than 100 by the end of this year.” Dead malls are a sign of the times, victims of the economic plague years.
The multitiered, fully enclosed mall (as opposed to the strip mall) has been the Vatican of shiny, happy consumerism since it staked its claim on the crabgrass frontier — and the public mind — in…
Zombie Bankers Feeding On Us
This zombie movie short for 97 Percent Owned promotes what looks like a great new documentary about the need to democratize the money supply. Alex Jones fans will especially like the audio – crank it up!
Scientists Seek To Create Inorganic Life
Scientists in Scotland are attempting to dramatically expand our concept of what we consider “alive” by creating entities that reproduce and evolve, but are made out of non-carbon-based materials. Can plastic truly live? If it displayed the same characteristics that we normally attribute to living things, would it somehow seem “fake”? Via the BBC:
All life on earth is based on organic biology – in the form of carbon compounds – but the inorganic world is considered to be inanimate.
A team from Glasgow University has demonstrated a new way of making inorganic chemical cells. The aim is to create self-replicating, evolving inorganic cells which could be used in medicine and chemistry. The project is being led by Professor Lee Cronin from the university’s College of Science and Engineering.
He said: “What we are trying do is create self-replicating, evolving, inorganic cells that would essentially be alive. You could call it inorganic biology.”
Researchers…
