Monday, October 17, 2016

Trump Not Alone - Labor Leader Jeremy Corbyn Also Accused of Anti-Semitism



Times |  Jeremy Corbyn has allowed “institutional anti-semitism” to thrive in the Labour movement and has made his party a “safe space for those with vile attitudes towards Jewish people”, a damning report by an all-party committee of MPs has concluded.

In a withering judgment on the Labour leader, MPs on the home affairs select committee concluded that Corbyn has shown a “lack of consistent leadership” in tackling anti-semitic abuse within the Labour ranks.

The report — signed off by the Labour MPs Chuka Umunna and David Winnick — questioned whether Corbyn “fully appreciates” the nature of anti-semitism and said the party was guilty of “incompetence” over its handling of high-profile allegations of anti-semitism.

It also delivered a damning verdict on a report by the Labour peer Baroness Chakrabarti, saying her conclusions exonerating Labour in her investigation of anti-semitism in the party were “clearly lacking” and saying her decision to take a peerage from Corbyn had “completely undermined” her report.

The MPs said of Corbyn: “We believe that his lack of consistent leadership on this issue and his reluctance to separate anti- semitism from other forms of racism has created what some have referred to as a ‘safe space’ for those with vile attitudes towards Jewish people.

“The failure of the Labour Party to deal consistently and effectively with anti-semitic incidents in recent years risks lending force to allegations that elements of the Labour movement are institutionally anti-semitic.”

In the damning report the MPs: 
  • Say comments by Malia Bouattia, president of the National Union of Students, attacking Zionists “smack of outright racism” and accuse her of a “worrying disregard for her duty to represent all sections of the student population” 
  • Demand that Twitter “devote more resources and employ more staff” to identify and ban “hateful and abusive” users of the social media platform 
  • Quote figures showing the number of people in Britain with anti-semitic attitudes rose by 50% from 2014 to 2015 
  • Found that one in 20 adults in Britain can be characterised as “clearly anti-semitic” 
  • Expressed concerns that police forces in large parts of the country are doing little to record and tackle incidences of anti-semitism. Corbyn gave evidence to the committee but the MPs questioned his understanding of the issue. 
The report reserves its most damning judgments, though, for the flourishing of anti-semitic abuse in Labour under Corbyn’s leadership.

“While the Labour leader has a proud record of campaigning against many types of racism, based on the evidence we have received we are not persuaded that he fully appreciates the distinct nature of post-Second World War anti-semitism,” it said.

A Means of Control


jayhanson |  A feeling arose in the Renaissance -- and crystallized by the seventeenth century -- that moralizing and preaching religious doctrine could no longer be trusted to restrain the destructive passions of men. [[2]]  A new means of control had to be found:

"Peasant rebellions were not exceptional events.  They erupted so frequently in the course of these four centuries that they may be said to have been as common in this agrarian society as factory strikes would be in the industrial world.  In southwestern France alone, some 450 rebellions occurred between 1590 and 1715.  No region of Western Europe was exempted from this pattern of chronic violence.  The fear of sedition was always present in the minds of those who ruled.  It was a corrective, a salutary fear -- since only the threat of insurrection could act as a check against unlimited exactions." [[3]]

Bernard Mandeville (1670?-1733) suggested that a society based on the deadliest of the seven deadly sins [[4]] -- "avarice" -- would create common Machiavellian interests and suppress irrational passions.  Mandeville’s ideal society was one where the unwitting cooperation of individuals, each working for his or her own interest, would result in the greatest benefit to society at large.  Mandeville anticipated laissez-faire economic theory, which promoted self-interest, competition, and little government interference in the workings of the economy.
The utopian agenda of economic liberalism to set up a self-regulating market system was fully realized in the American political model -- one dollar, one vote:
"In 1884, one of the wealthiest men of his time, Henry B. Payne, wanted to become the next United States senator from Ohio. Payne's son Oliver, the treasurer of Standard Oil, did his best to help.  Just before the election for Ohio’s seat, son Oliver "sat at a desk in a Columbus hotel with a stack of bills in front of him, paying for the votes of the state legislators," who then elected U.S. senators." [[5]]

The most important function of a market system is its political function. [[6]]  The market system serves as a stealth political system to foster rational thought, universal values based on calculation, and world peace based on self-interest.  Great idea!  But despite good intentions, inherently defective economic methodology has led to two world wars with millions killed:
"By the end of the seventies the free trade episode (1846-79) was at an end; the actual use of the gold standard by Germany marked the beginnings of an era of protectionism and colonial expansion…  the symptoms of the dissolution of the existing forms of world economy -- colonial rivalry and competition for exotic markets -- became acute.  The ability of haute finance to avert the spread of wars was diminishing rapidly…  For another seven years peace dragged on but it was only a question of time before the dissolution of nineteenth century economic organization would bring the Hundred Years' Peace to a close." [p. 19]
"The origins of the cataclysm lay in the utopian endeavor of economic liberalism to set up a self-regulating market system." [p. 29] [[7]]

Today, this same flawed economic methodology is being taught to students all over the world and is leading to a new generation of world wars with billions killed.

Financial Oigarchy Replaces Democracy



All this contradicts what the 18th, 19th and most of the 20th century fought for in their drive to free economies from landlords, monopolists and “coupon clippers” living off bonds, stocks and real estate (largely inherited). Their income was a technologically and economically unnecessary vestige of past conquests – privileges bequeathed to subsequent generations.

When parliamentary reform dislodged the landed aristocracy’s control of government, the hope was that extending the vote to the population at large would lead to policies that would manage land, natural resources and natural monopolies in the long-term public interest. Yet what Thorstein Veblen called the vested interests have rebuilt their political dominance, led by the financial sector which used its wealth to gain control of the election process to create a neo-rentier society imposing austerity.

A cultural counter-revolution has taken place. If few people have noticed, it is because the financial sector has rewritten history and re-defined the public’s idea of what economic progress and a fair society is all about. The financial alternative to classical economics calls itself “neoliberalism,” but it is the opposite of what the Enlightenment’s original liberal reformers called themselves. Land rent has not ended up in government hands, and more and more public services have been privatized to squeeze out monopoly rent. Banks have gained control of government and their central banks to create money only to bail out creditor losses, not to finance public spending.

The next few chapters review the classical analysis of value, price and rent theory to show how “free lunch” economic rent has been taken away from the public domain by the financial sector. Instead of creating the anticipated symbiosis with industry, as was hoped a century ago, finance has backed the rent-extracting sectors. And instead of central banks creating money to finance their budget deficits, governments are now forced to rely on bondholders, leaving it up to commercial banks and other creditors to provide the credit that economies need to grow.

The result is that today’s society is indeed moving toward the central planning that financial lobbyists have long denounced. But the planning has been shifted to financial centers (Wall Street, the City of London or Frankfurt). And its plan is to create a neo-rentier society. Instead of helping the host economy grow, banking, bond markets and even the stock market have become part of a predatory, extractive dynamic.

This destructive scenario would not have been possible if memory of the classical critique of rentiers had remained at the center of political discussion. Chapter 2 therefore reviews how three centuries of Enlightenment reform sought to free industrial capitalism from the rentier overhead bequeathed by feudalism. Only by understanding this legacy can we see how today’s financial counter-Enlightenment is leading us back to a neo-feudal economy.

Hudson, Michael. Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy CounterPunch

Sunday, October 16, 2016

The Clinton Foundation left a toxic legacy in Colombia



Fusion | What’s missing from the press coverage of the Clinton Foundation is a basic question: What do its activities and outcomes reveal about Hillary Clinton’s political values?

Colombia should be the Clinton Foundation’s best case study. Ground zero for the drug wars of the 1980s and 90s, racked by uneven development and low-intensity conflict for half a century, Colombia has received more foundation money and attention than any other nation outside the United States. 

Bill and Hillary Clinton have visited the country often and enjoy close relationships with members of Colombia’s ruling party. Colombia has also been home to the vast oil and natural gas holdings of the man who is reportedly the Clinton Foundation’s largest individual donor, Canadian financier Frank Giustra. In short, conditions were right for Colombia to be the shining example of what the Clinton Foundation’s philanthropy can accomplish in the world, and what makes Hillary so proud of its efforts.

The American Media Institute, a nonprofit news service based in Alexandria, Virginia, partnered with Fusion to send us to Colombia to investigate the Clinton Foundation’s impact. We found ground realities that contrast, often starkly, with the nonprofit’s platitudes about its good work.

Many of the Colombian “success stories” touted on the foundation’s website – the ones specific enough for us to track down – were critical about the foundation’s effect on their lives. Labor leaders and progressive activists say foundation programs caused environmental harm, displaced indigenous people, and that it concentrated a larger share of Colombia’s oil and natural gas reserves in the hands of Giustra, who was involved in a now bankrupt oil company that worked closely with the Clinton Foundation and which used the Colombian military a 1984-stylesurveillance program to smash a strike by its workers.

It was a shocking record that belies the progressive principles on which the Clintons have based their political dynasty and philanthropy, embodied in the Clinton Foundation’s advertising copy: “Everyone deserves a chance to succeed.”

what the international bankers, corporations, and corporate media did to Brazil...,



petras-lahaine |  Introduction: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was removed from office through a well-organized, carefully planned operation among the corrupt Brazilian political elite, closely linked to the stock-market, financial institutions and foreign energy companies.

This ‘legislative coup d’état ‘eliminated the democratically-elected ‘political intermediaries’ and installed a regime directly controlled by the CEO’s of leading multi-nationals. The corporate composition of the post-coup regime insured there would be a radical restructuring of the Brazilian economy, with a massive shift from wage support, social spending and public ownership toward profits, a foreign capital take-over of strategic sectors and foreign-domestic elite dominance over the entire economy.

This paper will describe the socio-economic dynamics of the coup and its aftermath, as well as the strategy and program that Brazil’s new rulers will pursue. In the second half of the paper, we will discuss the Workers Party regimes’ policies (under Lulu and Rousseff) that prepared the political and economic ground-work for the right-wing seizure of power.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Welcome to the post-Hobbesian dystopia: a war of everyone against themselves.


Guardian |  What greater indictment of a system could there be than an epidemic of mental illness? Yet plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social phobia, eating disorders, self-harm and loneliness now strike people down all over the world. The latest, catastrophic figures for children’s mental health in England reflect a global crisis.

There are plenty of secondary reasons for this distress, but it seems to me that the underlying cause is everywhere the same: human beings, the ultrasocial mammals, whose brains are wired to respond to other people, are being peeled apart. Economic and technological change play a major role, but so does ideology. Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme individualism.

In Britain, men who have spent their entire lives in quadrangles – at school, at college, at the bar, in parliament – instruct us to stand on our own two feet. The education system becomes more brutally competitive by the year. Employment is a fight to the near-death with a multitude of other desperate people chasing ever fewer jobs. The modern overseers of the poor ascribe individual blame to economic circumstance. Endless competitions on television feed impossible aspirations as real opportunities contract.

Consumerism fills the social void. But far from curing the disease of isolation, it intensifies social comparison to the point at which, having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing, and to see that other people have more friends and followers than we do.

As Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett has brilliantly documented, girls and young women routinely alter the photos they post to make themselves look smoother and slimmer. Some phones, using their “beauty” settings, do it for you without asking; now you can become your own thinspiration. Welcome to the post-Hobbesian dystopia: a war of everyone against themselves.

the outgroup intolerance hypothesis for schizophrenia


rpsych |  This article proposes a reformulation of the social brain theory of schizophrenia. Contrary to those who consider schizophrenia to be an inherently human condition, we suggest that it is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that the vulnerability to it remained hidden among our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Hence, we contend that schizophrenia is the result of a mismatch between the post-Neolithic human social environment and the design of the social brain. We review the evidence from human evolutionary history of the importance of the distinction between ingroup and out-group membership that lies at the heart of intergroup conflict, violence, and xenophobia. We then review the evidence for the disparities in schizophrenia incidence around the world and for the higher risk of this condition among immigrants and city dwellers. Our hypothesis explains a range of epidemiological findings on schizophrenia related to the risk of migration and urbanization, the improved prognosis in underdeveloped countries, and variations in the prevalence of the disorder. However, although this hypothesis may identify the ultimate causation of schizophrenia, it does not specify the proximate mechanisms that lead to it. We conclude with a number of testable and refutable predictions for future research.

Friday, October 14, 2016

Trump Calls Out the Vampire Squid and is Instantly Accused of Anti-Semitism...,


thenewcivilrightsmovement |  An Unleashed and Unhinged Trump Threaded His Denial Accusations of Sexual Assault With Even Darker, Uglier Rhetoric
Donald Trump delivered one of the most disturbing and fiery speeches of his entire campaign Thursday afternoon to cheering supporters in Florida that was, as many on Twitter noticed, threaded with anti-Semitism, fascism, and sexism.


The Atlantic's Senior Editor tweeted this disturbing section of Trump's speech:
Trump: "hillary clinton meets in secret with international banks to plan the destruction of global sovereignty"
Yep it was american sovereignty, which doesn't change the meaning of "international banks" https://twitter.com/TeamTrump/status/786616112700088320 
Here is the full context of that Trump quote about "international banks" and the "global power structure"pic.twitter.com/p5qigLnxtS

View image on Twitter
Some responses:
Trump: "hillary clinton meets in secret with international banks to plan the destruction of global sovereignty"

Granny Goodness in League With Soros to Cognitively Infiltrate the Catholic Church?!?!?!?!


Newsmax |  Yesterday, I stopped short of asking Hillary Clinton to fire John Podesta, her campaign chairman. In light of the latest Wikileaks revelations, she has no choice but to cut all ties with this man. The man is hell bent on creating mutiny in the Catholic Church and must therefore be fired.
We have long known that George Soros is the single most influential donor to dissident, and anti-Catholic, organizations. Now we know from Wikileaks what I long have suspected: John Podesta has been the most influential point man running offense for Soros.

Together, they have sought to manipulate public opinion against the Catholic Church.

In 2012, Sandy Newman, founder of the left-wing group, Voices for Progress, asked Podesta for advice on how best to "plant the seeds of the revolution." The revolution he sought was an attempt to sunder the Catholic Church.

Newman, who is Jewish, confessed that he was a rookie at trying to subvert the Catholic Church. But he was determined to do so. "There needs to be a Catholic Spring," Newman told Podesta, "in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church."

Podesta not only endorsed the plan to create a revolution within the Catholic Church — he boasted that he had been working on this for years. "We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this," he said. "Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have be bottom up."

He recommended that Kathleen Kennedy Townsend be consulted on this effort.

The evidence is indisputable: Both of these groups, Catholics in Alliance and Catholics United, were created by Podesta, and funded by Soros, for the express purpose of staging a revolt within the Catholic Church.

Tards Much Slicker Than They Were Back in the Segregation Schools Days



sltrib | "No American citizen or institution [should] be labeled by their government as bigoted because of their religious views, and dismissed from the political life of our nation for holding those views," the letter declared. "And yet that is precisely what the Civil Rights Commission report does."

Labeling ideas and arguments with which one disagrees "racist" or "phobic," these leaders argued, "not only cheapens the meaning of those words, but can have a chilling effect on healthy debate over, or dissent from, the prevailing orthodoxy."

The letter closed with a plea to Obama, Hatch, R-Utah, and Ryan, R-Wis., to "renounce publicly the claim that 'religious freedom' and 'religious liberty' are 'code words' or a 'pretext' for various forms of discrimination."

Last month, one of the signers, Charles Haynes, founding director of Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute, held up Utah's efforts on behalf of religious freedom and nondiscrimination as an example of genuine balance between the two.

In 2015, with the blessing and encouragement of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Utah Legislature approved a measure protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals from housing and workplace discrimination while safeguarding some religious liberties.

"Peace between those who worry that religious claims are code for bigotry and those who seek religious accommodations will not be possible," Haynes wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece, "without setting aside name-calling, committing to civil dialogue and working for common-ground solutions."

Though the religious leaders' letter was addressed to Hatch as well as the other two officeholders, Utah's senior senator already has responded to the civil rights report.

"The report adopts a stunted and distorted version of religious liberty, suggesting that claims of religious conscience are little more than a cloak for bigotry and hatred," Hatch said. "I reject the false picture of religious liberty presented."

Thursday, October 13, 2016

The Iron Law of Oligarchy: Inequality is Like a Mathematical Fractal



vox |  As America becomes more unequal, it’s ever harder to claim that it is a meritocratic country. It still looks like one to the people at the top, who continue to prosper. However, their view of the world is increasingly at odds with the view of people below, who like the idea of equal opportunity but don’t believe it is working.

The people at the top and the middle class are increasingly distant from each other. Elites don’t understand the challenges and frustrations of middle-class people. (As Hayes puts it, "Power narrows the vision of the powerful.")

But many middle-class people don’t believe elites when they say that the system is working well. They see institutions that are failing and corrupt. They interpret the government’s response to the economic crisis as evidence that well-connected people will get bailed out while other people are screwed over. They do not trust the traditional press anymore, and are able to find alternative sources of information that may often be wrong but at least reflect their understanding that there is something basically wrong with American politics.

While poorer people have always been at a disadvantage in the American system, middle-class people have historically had more faith in it, yet they are increasingly finding their expectations frustrated.

Hayes argues that the angriest voters are not going to be the people at the bottom, but the people in the middle, who used to expect that they and their kids could do well through enterprise and don’t believe that anymore. Experts have disagreed over whether Trump supporters are richer or poorer than the average. Yet emerging evidence is beginning to portray a more nuanced portrait of Trump's supporters than those earlier takes.

Jonathan Rothwell, a senior economist at Gallup, has used survey data on nearly 113,000 Americans to ask what really drives Trump support. He finds that support for the mogul turned politician is concentrated in the middle-income categories; in contrast, those who are relatively rich and those who are relatively poor are less likely to support him. Furthermore, economic insecurity is a huge factor – those who worry about their economic future are much more likely to vote for Trump. Rothwell builds on work by Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren at Harvard to find that people in living in areas with weak mobility for kids from middle-class families are more likely to vote for Trump.

These findings are only the start of what is likely to be a long debate. Nonetheless, they support Hayes’s argument. People seem to be more likely to support an anti-system candidate like Donald Trump when they have a middling income, when they feel economically insecure, and when they live in places where middle-class kids have worse prospects for getting ahead.

Granny Goodness Phugged Up Putting Catholics in the Deplorables Basket....,



Huff Po | Washington D.C. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Megan Kelly and true Christians are outraged by attacks on Catholics and Evangelicals by Team Hillary. Begging the burning question: “Who has place in Hillary’s America?” She and her team obviously despise these Christian denominations. Catholic and Evangelical Democrats must make a choice between Christ or the Evil One. Mother Teresa’s nuns are praying the rosary daily for voters to receive clarity of truth from The Holy Spirit and vote for the candidate who supports life and religious liberty (Trump) against the party engendering a culture of death and new atheism disguised as liberalism. Sadly, the Democratic Party has been taken over by spiritually bankrupt global conglomerates and foreign billionaire elites like George Soros desiring power over the people. Responding to breaking news of the sinister Team Hillary plot, Bill Donahue, President of the Catholic League informed Neil Cavuto the funding source for the strategy to divide Catholics and elect Hillary is George Soros. 

He is the same foreign billionaire influence funding “legalize marijuana” initiatives in America to control youth and undermine our workforce just as the nefarious global elites did during the 19th century Opium Wars against China to control their people and trade. Military strategist Sun Tzu teaches in “The Art of War,” divide and conquer. Soros makes his billions based on currencies and global conflict. Take away guns, religion and addict people to drugs and you have no resistance. Voters, it’s power, money and greed. It’s anti-Christ, as religion must be mocked and removed from the public square and families divided, just as Team Hillary has advanced while plotting to control the people. Marx taught it and Soros et al through the Democratic Party is funding it. That’s the truth. No new strategies, just repeat what worked in history, fine tune it, grab power, control people. Similar strategy to divide Christians was undertaken surrounding Kennedy’s presidency. By the way, there are some notable Republicans part of the elite-domination circle. Sounds like the Illuminati, New World Order story, Narnia Chronicles or James Bond thriller. Many a truth is disguised. Follow wiki-leaks, Team Hillary emails and money funding the anti-Catholic, anti-pope, anti-Evangelical plots before voting.

This current devious plot unfolds while being suppressed by mainstream media in concert with Team Hillary. Biblical experts see it as signs in The Book of Revelations describing The Apocalypse. We better watch and pray for ourselves and America’s future, is the mantra of the faithful. Surprising reaction to these attacks from humble, holy nuns across America. To my surprise, Religious are not surprised. On the contrary they believe these revelations are God’s way of unveiling the truth about Hillary and her deeply-rooted anti-Christian agenda carried out by her like-minded team, with the pretense of being Christians. Conversations with selfless sisters helping poor families in America’s inner-cities inform voters:

“We must pray the rosary every day as Our Lady of Fatima
revealed in 1917 and stay on the side of Christ and fight the enemy.
All Christians must unite and not scatter the vote.
Even if some believe it is the lesser of two evils, 
all true Christians must vote for Trump.
There are only two choices and Hillary is a vote for the Evil One.”

Faith Trumps Politics for Faithful People

Christians, irrespective of political party, cannot in good conscience vote anti-Christ. Team Hillary emails and aftermath are unapologetic and anti-Christian. They stridently continue to try to divide both Catholics and Evangelicals. Hillary will discover, voters are not deceived or deplorable just because they don’t trust her. Light is shining on Hillary and her team, the real agenda is to further divide America. Every true Christian on Team Hillary starting with purportedly Catholic running mate Tim Kaine should resign and be counted as standing for Christ. This is a rare opportunity to be among the elect that truly matters. Christ taught we must choose God or Evil. The same is expected of Nancy Pelosi and all Catholics. Jesus warned, “What good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul?” Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, John Kasich should stand and be counted for Christ, like Marco Rubio, Dr. Ben Carson, Chris Christie, even Ted Cruz. Put self aside and fight for Trump to help stop the forces of evil from prevailing. Faithful Catholics know the truth. If you choose to hide from it or rationalize it, like Newt Gingrich said “you join Team Hillary” and the Evil One. It’s life or death for souls. That’s the truth.

October: Month of Revelations, Reckoning and The Rosary.

For Jews, October is time of atonement. For Catholics, time of reflection of what really matters, living for the now or preparing for the future. Remember life is short for our bodies but our soul is eternal, where do we want it to go? Trump’s past transgressions, of which he has expressed shame, remorse and apologies, pale in comparison to the revelations we now know about the plot against Christians and the strategy of creating a Catholic Spring, dividing Catholics and undermining the authority of the pope by Team Hillary and the global elite. That’s the truth. On October 13, 1917, Our Lady of Fatima appeared to 70,000 observers for the“Miracle of the Sun.” This prophetic event predicted future wars and disasters if humanity did not change its ways. Documented by media, historians and theologians with relevant news that continues to become reality in the unfolding drama of salvation history. Looking very sad, Our Lady said to the world: “Do not offend the Lord our God anymore, because he is already so much offended.” The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph appeared reminding the world of the sanctity of life and family, which is under attack today. Similar to current America, secular media and humanist government then mocked religion and people of faith. Interestingly, skeptical journalists, atheist government officials and intellectual elite witnesses converted becoming promoters of the truth.

Fatima for Today-The Urgent Marian Message of Hope”

Franciscan Friar, author Andrew Apostoli insightfully states: “We must survive warfare, but it is most often the spiritual warfare brought on by the evils of our times, with its attacks on life, the family and our faith.” Sums up the unfolding real agenda of Team Hillary, evidenced by emails, policies and tactics to win and rule at any cost including the soul of America and her people. Interestingly, like now, there was “great tension and turmoil “preceding the 1917 miraculous events for the elect, bringing about “one of the greatest manifestations of God’s power in the history of the Catholic Church.” The smell test for diabolical interference according to respected theologian Louis J. Camelli in “The Devil You Don’t Know” is counted on one hand: deception, division, diversion, discouragement- leading to death. Fellow Christians and Americans of all faiths, let us choose life, uniting with Christ and vote for Trump-Pence. Conversely a vote for Team Hillary is a vote for bigotry, deception, division, diversion, discouragement and death. Hallmarks of the Evil One. That’s the truth. 

God bless America, land that we love.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us all and keep us in your Immaculate Heart.

Brothers and Sisters, Alleluia. Amen.

India's Eternal Inequality


NYTimes |  The 2014 election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his B.J.P. emboldened every variety of Hindu nationalist group. The primary aim of these groups is an aggressive form of nationalism. But there is a contradiction at the heart of this ideology: As Mr. Paz wrote in 1995, the idea of the nation itself is “incompatible with the institution of caste.” It was not possible to want everyone to be homogeneous while at the same time believing them to be fundamentally unequal.
The contradiction presented by caste and nationalism was never clearer than in the searing images that emerged from Mr. Modi’s own home state, Gujarat, in July. They showed Dalit boys being stripped and beaten with iron rods. They were accused of killing a sacred Indian cow. But they claimed they were only skinning a cow that was already dead, work that is typically reserved for people of low caste. The irony could not have been more stark: It was caste on one hand that had forced this occupation upon them, and it was caste that was degrading them further.

Modernity should be the natural enemy of caste. And, in many ways, it is. Urban life, apartment buildings, restaurants — even something as simple as municipal water and housing — have the power to erase the prohibitions under which caste functions. Democracy, too, is an enemy of caste: The low-caste groups form a powerful voting bloc, and so politicians are obliged to be responsive to them. But by upsetting hierarchies, modernity can also exacerbate old tensions. It can make the higher castes, whose numbers are small, insecure about their place in the world and drive them to reinforce it.

The spread of modernity in India has certainly undermined caste, but it has also made the need to assert it more vehement. And the unfolding story in India is not one about the disappearance of caste, but rather of its resilience. Brahmins still have an outsize presence in intellectual life; the armed forces are still dominated by the martial castes; a majority of rich businessmen and industrialists are still of the mercantile castes; the lower castes still do the least desirable jobs.

In the cloistered, English-speaking world where I grew up, caste seemed hardly to exist. As a child in Delhi, I could no more tell a Brahmin name like Mishra or Sharma from any other. And even if I could, I would not have held it in regard. Our only category was class, and it was determined by privilege, education and how well one spoke English. But there are some categories so deep that they hold without needing to be enforced. What I didn’t realize was that in one very important respect, caste did exist among us: because the lowest castes were not represented.

For the last two years, I have been speaking with a Brahmin from Bengal, a philosopher and a teacher of ancient logic, a man conversant with both Eastern and Western intellectual traditions. I admire him in many ways — his immense learning, his defense of tradition in the face of Western influence — but when I questioned him about the prohibitions of caste he gave me an answer that turned my stomach.

“If a person is suffering from a communicable disease, you would not let him touch your utensils,” he said. “You have this one idea of contamination, but you refuse to accept that there might be certain spiritual conditions …” His voice trailed off. He seemed to know that he had lost me. As if wanting to clear the air, he said: “You have to understand that modern European culture is based on the idea that all men are born equal, and later become differentiated. The Indian idea is different. We believe that men are born unequal, but we are all — Brahmin, sage, cobbler, outcaste — heading toward the same destiny.”

It was a valiant attempt at a defense, but in the end absurd. It would mean that millions of lower-caste Indians, like Rohith Vemula, had to forfeit the aspirations of this life in exchange for the promise of some ultimate destiny, many lifetimes away, in which all differences would be obliterated.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

anonymous on Hitlery



anonews |  With so much exposed already, why do we continue to follow, allow, and accept people like Hillary and Trump as potentials to be country leaders? Truly think about it. Can we even take a system that puts these two so high up in the ranks seriously?

Is this not the perfect storm to allow us to wake up to the reality of our current state? We should be thankful that this is going on so we can help wake up the world and begin a conversation about what we can legitimately do next.

This isn’t about Trump vs Clinton. That is merely the illusion we are being invited to believe. This is about awakening to the fact that our system is absurd and that it’s time to do something different. What is the answer? That is what we must discuss instead of playing this broken political game of dividing and choosing who to “vote” for.

It was Putin!!!



RT |  Hillary Clinton’s campaign has dubbed WikiLeaks “Russian propaganda,” accusing it of supporting Republican candidate Donald Trump. The comments came after a cache of leaked emails from the campaign’s chairman were published by the whistleblowing website.

Addressing the site from his Twitter account on Monday, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said: “You are no media organization. You are a propaganda arm of the Russian govt, running interference for their pet candidate, Trump.”

WaPo |  Brazile has issued this statement —
“As a longtime political activist with deep ties to our party, I supported all of our candidates for president. I often shared my thoughts with each and every campaign, and any suggestions that indicate otherwise are simply untrue. As it pertains to the CNN Debates, I never had access to questions and would never have shared them with the candidates if I did.
“But let’s get one thing straight. Our Intelligence Community has made it clear that the Russian government is responsible for the cyberattacks aimed at interfering with our election, and that WikiLeaks is part of that effort. This revelation should deeply trouble all Americans in both parties. And yet, Donald Trump continues to deny that Russia is behind these attempts to meddle with our electoral process and cheer on these efforts to undermine our democracy.

“This is the same man who called for more Russian cyber-espionage against us, who has extensive business ties to Russia, and who regularly coddles Vladimir Putin by praising his leadership and refusing to call him out. I am deeply disappointed that the Republican leaders of the party of Reagan are publicly using information illegally obtained by the Russians, because the national security of our country should not be a partisan issue.

“We are in the process of verifying the authenticity of these documents because it is common for Russia to spread misinformation and forge documents, but we cannot bow down to Putin’s wishes and allow foreign actors to try and divide our country with the hope of affecting the outcome on Election Day. There is too much at stake.” – DNC Interim Chair Donna Brazile

the MOST evil phone company going hard after a $billion discount on its yahoo purchase proffer...,



theintercept |   Verizon’s general counsel and head of public policy made a public case this week for reconsidering legal protections on customer data in light of evolving technology that allows companies to almost continuously track cell phone users’ location.

Craig Stillman’s opinion piece published Monday in Bloomberg Law comes just days after Reuters revealed that Yahoo, the company Verizon is reportedly buying, helped the U.S. government scan millions of emails for a specific “digital signature,” outraging privacy activists. It also follows several years of controversy since Verizon was implicated in the NSA’s mass surveillance program through the 2013 Snowden disclosures, which revealed the collection of thousands of its customers’ phone records.

The piece describes the legal ins-and-outs of location privacy, including a specific issue courts have been pondering over the last few years: whether or not customers, when they make phone calls or log into apps on their smartphones, are voluntarily handing over to private companies’ information about where they are and what they’re doing — making that information available to law enforcement without a warrant.

After detailing Verizon’s rapidly evolving ability to collect more and more specific location data on its own customers, Silliman urged courts to consider how the law might need to adapt. “I hope that [the court] takes into account how quickly technology — including the volume and precision of location information — is changing,” he wrote.

Verizon says the timing of the piece is unrelated to the recent related to Yahoo and email surveillance. “In fact, the piece was finished several weeks ago.  We were preparing to post it when we got news of the Yahoo breach,” wrote Rich Young, Verizon policy spokesman, in an email to The Intercept. “We decided to delay the posting because we did not want the two to appear related, which they are not.”
According to Silliman and Verizon’s official Twitter account, the piece was born out of conversations that took place during company business meetings.

US start-up Geofeedia 'allowed police to track protesters'



bbc |   Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have revoked access to their data to an analytics firm accused of selling information that allowed US police to track activists and protesters.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said Chicago-based Geofeedia had allowed police to "sneak in through a side door" to monitor protests.

Geofeedia said it was committed to the principles of personal privacy.

It comes amid growing concern about government access to social media.

ACLU said Geofeedia had been marketing its services to police agencies to help track activists using location data and social media posts.

The group said it had seen internal documents in which Geofeedia said that it "covered Ferguson/Mike Brown nationally with great success," referring to protests which erupted in 2014 after an unarmed African-American man was shot dead by police.

"The ACLU of California has obtained records showing that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram provided user data access to Geofeedia, a developer of a social media monitoring product that we have seen marketed to law enforcement as a tool to monitor activists and protesters," the group said in a statement.

"We know for a fact that in Oakland [California] and Baltimore [Maryland], law enforcement has used Geofeedia to monitor protests."

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Asymmetric power boosts extortion in the workplace



phys.org | What do profit-driven bosses do if they are not satisfied with an employee's conduct? They use their strategic advantage to blackmail their subordinates: "If you don't want to do the job, I'm sure we'll find somebody else who does". Together with researchers from Harvard University and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön have found that asymmetrical power encourages extortionate behaviour. Both in a model and an experimental setup, such 'blackmailing' strategies proved successful for the extortionists. An especially surprising finding was that subordinates were in fact better off if they played along in the unfair game. However, extortionists shouldn't be too obviously selfish; they are only successful if they maintain a well-measured degree of friendliness.

Nearly one in two people will take advantage of others if the opportunity arises: that is the sobering conclusion of a study recently published by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology. The scientists asked 160 students to take part in the so-called 'prisoner's dilemma' game where two players choose, over several rounds, if they will cooperate with each other or not to receive a cash payoff. In this scenario, cooperation only pays off if the respective opponent also cooperated.

This means that particularly Machiavellian players can lull their opponents into a false sense of security by initially cooperating, only to unexpectedly withhold cooperation in the next round. In this case, the selfish player receives an especially large payoff, whereas their opponent is left empty-handed. Such strategies, however, are only successful in the short term. Ultimately, extortionate players often emerge as losers, because their opponents tend to stop cooperating with them altogether.

Master Arbitrageur Nancy Pelosi Is At It Again....,

🇺🇸TUCKER: HOW DID NANCY PELOSI GET SO RICH? Tucker: "I have no clue at all how Nancy Pelosi is just so rich or how her stock picks ar...