10 Presidents & Politicians Who Told Us That A “Secret Government” Controls The World & What They Said      & gee i thought it IS all just some big ole "C"  humm & fuck me o my ...who's "wear~in" the ...tin foil ...hats  ... Oops

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/09/15/10-presidents-politicians-who-told-us-that-a-secret-government-controls-the-world-what-they-said/September 15, 2015 by Arjun Walia

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” – Edward Bernays (“the father of public relations”), Propaganda, 1928 (note that Bernays’ book, Propaganda, begins with the above quote).

If you told somebody 10 years ago that there existed some sort of secret group or “secret government” pulling the strings behind the scenes of government policy, international law, various global rules/regulations, and more, they would have called you a “conspiracy theorist.” Today things have changed, largely as a result of information leaked by Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and various other whistleblowers and activists in recent years. Their bravery has shed light on the world of secrecy that’s been blinding the masses since its inception.

I’ve mentioned this before, and I’ll mention it again, did you know that the U.S. Government classifies more than 500 million pages of documents each year? Did you know that the United States has a history of government agencies existing in secret? For example, the National Security Agency (NSA) was founded in 1952, but its existence was hidden until the mid 1960’s. Even more secretive is the National Reconnaissance Office, it was founded in 1960 but remained completely secret for 30 years. Then we have the entire black budget world, a world dominated by secrecy that was officially revealed by Edward Snowden a couple of years ago. This deals with what are known as “Special Access Programs.”

It’s not just statements that these “high-level” people are making. It’s all of the proof and evidence that goes along with it.

***You can read more about the black budget HERE***

Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer

Former Minister of National Defence, Paul Hellyer, is one of Canada’s best known and most controversial politicians. He was first elected in 1949, and was the youngest cabinet minister appointed to Louis S. St. Laurent’s government eight years later. He held senior posts in the governments of Lester B. Pearson and Pierre E. Trudeau. He achieved the rank of senior master (Deputy Prime Minister), and went on to become the Canadian Defence Minister. He is best known for the unification of the Canadian Armed Forces, and in September 2005 he became the first person of cabinet rank in the G8 group of countries to state unequivocally that “UFOs are as real as the airplanes flying overhead.”

Here’s what he had to say about the world of secrecy:

It is ironic that the U.S. would begin a devastating war, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction, when the most worrisome developments in this field are occurring in your own backyard. It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy, when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects about which both the Congress and the Commander in Chief have been kept deliberately in the dark. (source)

 The 28th U.S. President Woodrow Wilson 

Woodrow Wilson, an American academic, politician, and the 28th president of the United States, had this to say (among other things) in his book The New Freedom. The book also contains several other, similarly eye-opening statements:

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.  (source)

The 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Here’s what JFK had to say in one of his most famous speeches:

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. … For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. (source)

John C. Calhoun, 7th Vice President of The United States

John C. Calhoun was the 7th Vice President of the United States, from 1825-1832. He was also a political theorist during the first half of the 19th century.

Here’s what he had to say:

A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many, and various, and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks. (source)

This quote reminds me of a great clip from the Thrive documentary by Foster Gamble, heir to the Proctor Gamble corporation. He was groomed for the establishment, but chose a different path.

New York City Mayor John F. Hylan

John F. Hylan was Mayor of New York City from 1918-1925. He has been famously quoted as saying:

The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation … The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties … [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection. (source)(source)

Senator William Jenner

A United States senator who said this to Congress in 1954:

Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means … We have a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state … It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government … This ruthless power-seeking elite is a disease of our century… This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable. (source)

Senator Daniel K. Inouye

Inouye was the highest ranking Asian-American politician in United States history, serving the democratic party from 1963 until his death in 2012.

There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself. (source)

34th U.S. President And 5 Star General, Dwight Eisenhower

In his farewell address to the nation, president Eisenhower offered these words of caution:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. … Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful message and goals. (source)

This speech is relevant to share here,  because the disastrous rise of misplaced power within the military industrial complex has indeed occurred…

Benjamin Disraeli, First British MP

The world is governed by very different personages to what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes. (Coningsby, Book 4, Chap. 15.) – Page 131

26th U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt

President Roosevelt revealed this information:

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. (source)

The list of quotes is very large and could fill a number of pages, so I will stop there.

Chess President Claims Sport Came From Aliens

  it was ...aliens LOL  gollldarn ,fucking preds ...mud ,Mud !! MUD!!!    :) r 

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Chess President Claims Sport Came From Aliens

• http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/09/chess-president-claims-sport-came-from-aliens/
•  September 12, 2015
•  Paul Seaburn

If you have trouble learning chess or playing well enough to be competitive even with friends, perhaps you should blame it on aliens. The president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) claims the sport was given to earthlings by aliens … information he received firsthand on an alien spaceship.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has been the head of FIDE since 1995, having been re-elected a number of times including in 2014 when he won over Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion Anatoly Karpov. From 1993 to 2010, Ilyumzhinov was also president of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, where he made chess a compulsory subject in the first three years of elementary school. He is currently contemplating a run for president of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA).

World Chess Federation president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov

Why is Ilyumzhinov such a fan of chess? During an interview last week about his FIFA bid, he talked about being abducted from a Moscow apartment by aliens on September 18, 1997. He claimed to have been taken to the aliens’ ship where they communicated telepathically (because there wasn’t enough oxygen for speaking) while traveling to and from their home planet. Based on that telepathic conversation, he had this to say:

I believe that chess comes either from God or from beings flying a UFO … Each year, archaeologists find evidence of chess in America, India, Japan or China, played under the same rules, from a time without planes or the internet … the chessboard has 64 squares, and our cells are made of 64 pieces. All this shows that chess comes either from God or from UFOs.

Ilyumzhinov said the abduction was witnessed by his driver, his minister and an assistant. He may need their help because another Russian politician wants to know what kind of state secrets he may have revealed to the aliens. Who knows? He may have also told them how to defeat the Sicilian Defense.

Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Alien Party?

Is Ilyumzhinov telling the truth about his abduction and belief that chess came from aliens? Well, he’s running to replace Sepp Blatter as leader of an organization notorious for corruption, bribery and other nefarious behavior and he himself had a similar reputation as head of FIDE.
Maybe the aliens decided that chess isn’t the right sport to use for conquering Earth and want to do it instead through Ilyumzhinov as head of football. Good luck with trying to explain to them why Americans have their own football and call football soccer. For that, Ilyumzhinov may need more than telepathy.

George W. Bush: “My Dad Was Meeting with the Brother of Osama on September 11, 2001. Does That Make Him a Terror Suspect?”          ~  ah.. um, oh yea ! ...Oops :)

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, March 17, 2015

Region: USA

Theme: 9/11 & 'War on Terrorism'

Under the anti terrorist legislation adopted in Western countries, a person can be arrested for visiting an “anti-American” or “Islamist” website on the internet.  In the US, habeas corpus has been scrapped, the police can arrest a citizen on mere suspicion of “terror activities” without a warrant. Moreover, under Obama, the practice of “extrajudicial killing” applies to suspected US citizens.   
In Canada, under the clauses of  Canada’s proposed C-51 “Anti-terrorism” Bill, Canadian citizens can be arrested on a mere suspicion:

 Six Muslim young adults stand in front of a mosque late at night in heated discussion in some foreign language. … They may be talking about video games, or sports, or girls, or advocating the overthrow of the Harper government. Who knows? … But the new standard for arrest and detention—reason to suspect that they may commit an act—is so low that an officer may be inclined to arrest and detain them in order to investigate further. … They could act on mere suspicion that an arrest is likely to prevent any terrorist activity. Yesterday, the Muslim men were freely exercising constitutional rights to freedom of expression and assembly. Today they are to be arrested. (Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives,  February 15, 2015) 

Anti-Terrorism Double Standards
Ironically, the anti-terrorist legislation does not apply to politicians in high office, namely to the “State sponsors of terrorism”; nor does it apply to U.S. or Canadian diplomats, intelligence officials, who are routinely in liaison with terrorist organizations in the Middle East. 
Individuals can be arrested but presidents and prime ministers are allowed to mingle and socialize with family members of the World’s most renowned terrorist and alleged architect of the 9/11 attacks: Osama bin Laden. 
Lest we forget, one day before the 9/11 attacks, the dad of the sitting President of the United States of America, George Herbert Walker Bush was meeting none other than Shafig bin Laden, the brother of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. It was a routine business meeting on September 10-11, no conflict of interest, no relationship to the 9/11 attacks which allegedly were carried out on the orders of Shafiq’s brother Osama.
Confirmed by the Washington Post, “fellow investors” of the Carlyle Group including Osama’s brother Shafiq bin Laden and Dubya’s dad former President George H. W. Bush met in the plush surroundings of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on September 10-11, 2001. Their business encounter under the auspices of the Carlyle Group was unfortunately interrupted on September 11 by the 9/11 attacks.

It didn’t help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden [Shafiq bin Laden]. Former president Bush [senior], a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day. (Greg Schneider, Pairing the Powerful With the Rich, Washington Post, March 16, 2003)

A timely business meeting on September 10-11 at the Ritz Carlton with Osama’s brother disrupted by the 9/11 attacks: pure coincidence,  totally unrelated to the 9/11 attacks.

A day later, on the evening of September 11, 2001, president George W. Bush pronounced a historic speech in which he defined the relationship between “terrorists’ and “state sponsors of terrorism”:

The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

Also in attendance at the Ritz Carlton meetings were former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker III, and other unnamed members of the bin Laden family.
The bin Laden – Bush Carlyle Group meeting was also confirmed by The Economist in a June 2003 article entitled C- for Capitalism:

ON the day Osama bin Laden’s men attacked America, Shafiq bin Laden, described as an estranged brother of the terrorist, was at an investment conference in Washington, DC, along with two people who are close to President George Bush: his father, the first President Bush, and James Baker, the former secretary of state who masterminded the legal campaign that secured Dubya’s move to the White House. The conference was hosted by the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that manages billions of dollars, including, at the time, some bin Laden family wealth. It also employs Messrs Bush and Baker.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, when no one was being allowed in or out of the United States, many members of the bin Laden family in America were spirited home to Saudi Arabia. The revival of defence spending that followed greatly increased the value of the Carlyle Group’s investments in defence companies. (emphasis added)

The Carlyle Group is  embroiled  with the defense and intelligence establishment. “It is widely regarded as an extension of the US government, or at least the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the Pentagon.”
Double standards in anti-terrorism legislation? Double standards in police and law enforcement? No questions asked. No police investigation or interrogation of Osama’s brother Shafig.

Normally, under established rules of police investigation, both Shafig bin Laden and the president’s dad George Herbert Walker Bush should have been remanded in custody for police questioning and in all likelihood, Shafig bin Laden would have been arrested as a potential suspect. But that did not happen.

The presence of members of the bin Laden family meeting up with the father of the president of the United States was hushed up and 13 members of the bin Ladens including Shafig were flown out of the US on September 19, 2001 in a plane chartered by the White House. Meanwhile, suspected Muslims are arrested on a mere suspicion, –e.g. that they have an old school friend, who’s cousin’s 86 year old grandmother is an alleged sympathizer of the “jihad”.
Timely departure of Shafig et al: On the day following the departure of the bin Ladens, President Bush delivered an address to a joint session of the House and the Senate (September 20, 2001), in which he stated unequivocally his administration’s intent to “pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism”, with no exceptions (e.g. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan)

“We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make.
Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.)
From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime [state sponsor of terrorism].  President George W. Bush, 20 September 2001 (emphasis added)

Osama behind 9/11?
According to CIA Director George Tenet in a late morning statement on September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda under the helm of Osama bin Laden was “behind these evil acts”.
The alleged responsibility of Osama bin Laden in carrying out the 9/11 attacks was later confirmed by Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair in a statement to the the House of Commons on October 4, 2001.  This did not,  however,  prevent Tony Blair from socializing with Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who prior to 9/11 had allegedly provided millions of dollars of financial assistance to the Al Qaeda terror network:

In testimony [accused hijacker] Moussawi said he created a database of al-Qaeda donors, including members of the royal family such as former intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was Saudi ambassador to the United States for 22 years until 2005. Mint Press, February 14, 2015)

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, right receives Mideast envoy Tony Blair, the ex-prime minister of Britain after his arrival in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.  Bandar bin Sultan, was accused of direct support for al-Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks (undated). (Mint Press, February 15, 2015)
Known and documented, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Pakistan have been harboring Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists for more than twenty years.
In accordance with George W. Bush’s September 2001 address to the House and the Senate, America’s staunchest allies –which routinely provide support to terrorists– should have been categorized as “hostile regimes”. Yet in practice, these “nations that provide a safe haven to terrorism” are acting on behalf of the US. They are in permanent and close liaison with Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels.
“You are either with us or with the terrorists”, said George W. in the wake of 9/11. In fact the US government is both “with us” and “with the terrorists”. The United States is the ultimate “state sponsor of terrorism” which has entrusted its allies (Saudi Arabia, et al) with the tasks of recruitment and training of terrorists. 
Flash Forward: NATO and The Islamic State (ISIS)
State sponsorship of terrorism prevails, with NATO playing a central role in the process of financing, training and recruitment of terrorists. According to Israeli intelligence sources,  NATO and the Turkish High Command have been involved in the recruitment of ISIS and Al Nusrah mercenaries from the outset of the Syrian insurgency in March 2011.

 “a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011.)

Similarly, Western Special Forces and Western intelligence operatives had integrated the ranks of the ISIS. British Special Forces and MI6 have been involved in training jihadist rebels in Syria. In turn, US, Canada embassy officials are in liaison with terrorist entities.
Update (March 18, 2015)
Concluding Remarks
What should be clear to Western public opinion is that “the war on terrorism” is a lie. The architects of terrorism are the Western governments and their intelligence services. The anti-terrorism legislation serves the following objectives: 

1. It conveys the illusion that Western society is threatened by Muslim terrorists and that Western governments are committed to the security of their citizens. This in itself constitutes the basis of the demonization campaign directed against Muslims;

2. It presents the “Global War on Terrorism” against an outside enemy as a legitimate undertaking, thereby providing a justification for US-NATO’s wars of aggression;

3. It protects the political and intelligence architects of terrorism. It upholds the legitimacy of the “State sponsors of terrorism” (State officials in high office) and their intelligence services involved in the covert financing, recruitment and training of terrorists on behalf of the Western military alliance;

4. “The Global War on Terrorism” is a criminal undertaking. Those who uphold the truth will be targeted. The Anti-terrorism legislation will be used against  those who question the  validity of the “Global War on Terrorism” consensus. That campaign has already commenced through the targeting of so-called “conspiracy theorists”.

These issues have been amply documented, see:
Canada, State Sponsor of Terrorism? Role of Canadian Embassy in Jordan in ISIS Recruitment?By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 15, 2015
The Ultimate War Crime: America’s “Global War on Terrorism”By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 08, 2015

Twenty-six Things About the Islamic State (ISIL) that Obama Does Not Want You to Know AboutBy Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 09, 2015

Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2015

The Age of the Image. Simulated Realities. “The Image-oriented way of Viewing the World”   ~ hehe "we" r b'ing...have been & r gonna STILL B , fucking played...until "we" wakey wakey, eggs & bakey  lil peeps   Oops

JOE JACKSON ★ Is She Really Going Out with Him 【HD】

By Dr. Robert P. Abele

Global Research, September 14, 2015

Region: USA

In the movie The Truman Show, the main character is locked into a world of image: he is the unknowing star of a “simulated/constructed reality” television show, whose life is tightly controlled by those seeking to project the TV images they want beamed to the world, showing the day-to-day events in Truman’s life. In the world of social media today, we are voluntarily becoming just like Truman: involved in a world of controlled images, and concerned with truth very late in the game, if at all.

This image-oriented way of viewing the world has significant consequences. For example, last year the Pew Research Center reported nearly a quarter of American adults had not read a single book in the past year. The number of non-book-readers has nearly tripled since 1978, when 13 percent responded that they had read more than 50 books in a year. Today, Pew finds that just 28 percent hit the 11 mark. Last year, the NEA found that 52 percent of 18-24 year-olds had not read a book outside of work or school. (The Atlantic, January, 2014).

There are two uses of media technology today that reinforce this trend, and both have to do with the actual production of images. The first use is the oft-discussed practice of government and media in crafting images of propaganda for public consumption. In this practice, both the word and the visual image are geared to get the public at large to believe in something and to react to that created—and often false, incomplete, or misleading—image.

The other use of media technology is less discussed, and that is the use of technology by individuals to create an image of reality, including an image of oneself, that is intended only for the sensory consumption of others, but is actually only an expression of our desired public—and often false, incomplete, or misleading—image how we would like people to see us. So whether the use of technology is by government or by individuals on social media, crafting and consuming primarily images instead of attempting to understand the reality behind the images seems to be the fate of Western culture, and the challenge to those attempting to change society for the better.

To be specific, by “images,” I mean the use of visualizations, sounds, words, and/or actions, done either in personal encounters or via modern technology, that are intended to produce a pre-ordained visceral effect in or to some other person or persons. The heavy reliance on image-creation, whether by government, media, or individuals, makes people quite vulnerable to manipulation, if they don’t ask questions, and if truth becomes just a function of the image-created.

On the level of institutional image-creation, this can be easily seen by each attempt the U.S. makes to paint an image of “the latest enemy” as “a threat to national security” or “a terrorist threat.” Thus, from the Taliban to Saddam Hussein to Isis and beyond, the image portrayed is not confirmed by the facts. Isis is not a threat to U.S. domestic security, only to U.S. Mideast interests. Such images can even become downright humorous when one actually takes time to analyze the image-creation attempted, such as when Benjamin Netanyahu went before the United Nations and presented a speech centered on a cartoonish drawing of an old-fashioned fuse bomb, whose fuse was lit and which would explode when the Palestinians were granted their human and political rights.

On the individual level, the sense of self that is created by the image is ironically entirely self-defeating because in the process of projecting a desired image of our self, our self then becomes who the other sees us to be; the sense we get of ourselves from the other who participates in our own technologically-created fantasy. This is postmodern ideology come home to roost: rejecting a sense of self that comes from introspection, from within, through self-reflective, self-conscious understanding, integrity, and digging for the truth, and embracing instead an externally-determined self as a function of one’s social and public persona. This is often summarized by the number of “Facebook Friends” one has. When we live for and in a world of images, both the world and our self are then false and hollow. Both are directly opposite the self-expression of an authentic self: a self that is based on an already present and abiding internal knowledge of one’s worth, dignity, integrity, and self-confidence.

So-called “smart phones” and corporate and government media propaganda are thus all contributing factors to “the age of the image:” they are propaganda mechanisms used to craft images, and lost is the recognition that truth and reality lag behind images, since they take longer to assimilate. This is because the rational mind—that dynamic of our cognition which seeks truths and sorts facts from fiction—requires reflection time in order to assimilate its contents. Using images requires no reflection and little time: knowledge is visceral; facts are in the present; reflection is “yesterday.”

The social consequences of practicing and living in an image-based hyper-reality are stark.

First, no holds are barred for the goal of producing the desired image. Truth is relative and slave to the image; knowledge is opinion; and no one counts as a distinctly human end in themselves. Rather, everyone is susceptible to being reduced to a means, a role-player in and of a world of images. In other words, if I’m concerned only or primarily with how you see me, I’m not concerned with you as a person. The ethical implication is this: I can’t have compassion for an image; I can only have compassion for a flesh-and-blood human being. In hyper-reality, there is no such depth. This happens on a personal and governmental level.

The clearest example of this on the governmental level is the way drone controllers in the U.S. operate the drones that fly half a world away in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As most people now know, the drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan are controlled from the state of Nevada. What most commentators do not comment on is how the image that the drone pilots watch controls their very mental processes. The images they see are not of humans, but of what they term “sightings.” The actions based on perceiving these images in this distinct way is entirely different. If one sees a human being, one is reluctant to kill them when they do not know what that human is doing. However, responding to the image as simply a “sighting,” the entire point of action in response to the “sighting” then becomes only to “target” the “sighting.” In fact, drone operators can’t even make out faces; only little pixels that look like video game targets. Thus, using images alone changes the way we take in the world, such that the military personnel who fire the drone missiles don’t even see a human. The image of “sightings” becomes the image of “targets,” and the “proper” action then becomes “click-and-kill.”

Even in media reporting of conflicts, it is the sensational image that makes the story, not the details of the story itself. The traditional media motto, “if it bleeds, it leads,” has become “if it titillates the vision, it doesn’t matter the precision.”

The second social consequence of living in a world of images is that our view of reality changes: nothing is substantively real; everything is a technological art, an electronic reality. In such a “cell phone society,” the authentic self, and its understanding of being completely immersed in the spatiotemporal world, the physical and temporal now, is substantially diminished. The real self includes the ability to examine the inner experience of being human, and discussing that with others, in person, all of which results in meaning, which requires self-reflection and thought about self and world and society, not just visceral impressions. Absorption in creating or responding to crafted personal and/or multi-media images directs us to sheer immediacy: one cannot be concerned with the truth when the idea of what is true goes no further than the image, be it given or created.

Third, there are issues concerning what a technologically-created image does (or doesn’t) do to the mind/brain. We have the clear potential to be rational thinkers. But when people reduce themselves to the production, combining, and manipulation of images and call it “thinking” or “understanding,” they remain at the lowest levels of human cognition, with very little authentic self-consciousness. More specifically, thinking is reduced to mental processing by and through images rather than through facts and concepts and their relation. The latter is more rational and fine-tuned than the former, and has for many centuries been held to be an integral part of human nature. Regular empirical studies are published that demonstrate the lethal combination of a high amount of technology use and reduced cognitive functioning (see, for one good example, the study published in mid-2014 by The Atlantic).

The implications of this change to the mind/brain are significant. One is that thinking through what counts as evidence to a given claim is gone in an image-based world; it just takes too long to do that, when the image says everything for someone who believes in it. The point here is not that images don’t or shouldn’t count as evidence. Rather, the point is that while use of images can be a good in itself (e.g. police abuse of African Americans in the U.S., etc.), when they are used as the first, foremost, and/or definitive assumption as to what counts as evidence in forensics and specifically in thinking about and discussing social issues, it reduces the ability of people to compile factual evidence and draw conclusions in a specifically rational-logical way. The image does the thinking for me. This is what the philosopher Jacques Ellul refers to when he coins the phrase “the triumph of the image.”

If this is all true, why don’t we or can’t we just put our cell phones down for a day and/or shut off the TV? The answer is that we are already fully immersed in an age in which we live our lives through and in the images created by and for us: we are psychological junkies for new and mesmerizing—and most of all, superficial—images, by which we experience our thrills, agonies, consolations, and even relaxation. Most of all, the images tell us our “reality,” and thus what to believe and how to “think,” so that we no longer have to do it for ourselves. Such is the age of the image, that we are so addicted to living in it, and creating our images for others, that shutting it all off would put us in a whole different world, and thus a whole different mindset, in which “reality” and “truth” would strike us right between the eyes: our comfort and the phony world of the image we have created and live in would be shattered, gone, and in its place would come discomfort, the unease of being alive in the world, the difficult process of thinking about events, of actively assimilating facts, issues, and evidence, and of forming and understanding our “self” before broadcasting a simple image to the world. Most of all, truth, or a concern for truth, would replace image. We would be more prone to look at the hard truths of climate change and global inequities; of the harshness of war, and the dysfunction of a society that values money, possessions, and ego over authentic human connections. We would have to face the fact that a “Facebook friend” is not a real friend, who shares our “real space.” We would have to experience our sorrows and find our joys in the consort with others, and in nature, and they would all engage us at a deeper, more human level than merely having images of persons, events, and issues, because they would require our full presence, not our half-presence/distracted presence, as technological images do. The latter take no effort, no concentration; the former do.

In The Truman Show, Truman chooses to leave the world of the image for a most uncertain and definitely less easy life. But he realizes that at least he would then be able to create the life he chose to live, with all its complexities, ambiguities, and uncertainties, instead of living in the predictable, tightly controlled and manipulated world of the image he was used to and eventually came to know as an image.

In real life, we face the same issue as Truman did, but most people who are immersed in the image-based tech world of social media don’t see it. This issue is this: will we continue to craft and live in the artificially-induced, unreal, untrue, and phony world of the image that government, media elites, and tech-friends all encourage for us, or will we regain that human authenticity that is thoughtful, reasonable, reasoning, and oriented toward truth and reality? The former road is the world of the automaton, the world of the faux human. The latter road is the human road. It’s a tougher road because it is real, and requires our focus, but it is also the most distinctly humanly-fulfilling world. Fascists rule by image; democracy requires face-to-face dialogue with others about what is true, right, and just. We are at a crossroads in our democracy: be Trumans or be Jeffersons? The choice is ours, individually and collectively.

Dr. Robert Abele holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Marquette University and M.A. degrees in Theology and Divinity. He is a professor of philosophy at Diablo Valley College, in California in the San Francisco Bay area. He is the author of four books, including A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act, and The Anatomy of a Deception: A Logical and Ethical Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq, along with numerous articles. His new book, Rationality and Justice, is forthcoming (2016).

Copyright © Dr. Robert P. Abele, Global Research, 2015

THE GMO SCRAPBOOK: NEW STUDY: STEADY CONSUMPTION OF GMOs LINKED TO GENETIC ALTERATIONS OF LIVER AND KIDNEYS

Posted on September 15, 2015 by Joseph P. Farrell •http://gizadeathstar.com/2015/09/the-gmo-scrapbook-new-study-steady-consumption-of-gmos-linked-to-genetic-alterations-of-liver-and-kidneys/

According to an article shared by Mr. M.D. with us here, there is a new study linking steady GMO consumption, and the pesticide Roundup, with genetic damage to livers and kidneys:
Study: Diet Full Of GMO Foods Deadly- Alters 4000 Genes In Liver And Kidney
This one says it all:

The new study is foreboding:

Published in the Environmental Health Journal,the new study suggests that even super low levels of Roundup exposure are deadly.
The study results showed that exposure to low-dose glyphosate concentrations, in an established laboratory animal toxicity model system, can result in liver and kidney damage, with potential significant health implications for people as well as our pets and wildlife populations.
The new study finds that even glyphosate (the main ingredient in Round-Up’s crop resistant formula) which is found in our water, can cause this damage alone–the study used a far lower level of glyphosate than is found in our drinking water, in fact America has the highest levels of glyphosate in our water than most of the world.  Many say the run off of Roundup which is sprayed along highways and can run into our ground water, hence our levels are higher than other countries that do not utilize the chemical as much as Americans. (It also is the grim reaper of monarch butterflies–81% decline in monarchs when it is sprayed in their habitats).

And they're paying for it in Argentina:

Dr. Michael Antoniou, and his team from King’s College London, did the “follow-up” study to Dr. Seralini’s two year study on rats exposed to Roundup.  Although the new study by Antoniou was attacked and ad-hoc articles written to suppress by the biotech industry, like the Genetic Literacy Project,  the study has real results by real Scientists from a reputable College.

With both Seralini and Antoniou’s work we now have more evidence that Roundup causes damage to the liver and kidneys. Despite this, and the numerous other findings, such as the recent news from Argentinathat children are suffering from genetic damage at heavily sprayed GM soy sites in the country, there has been no international move to heavily examine Roundup, and hold Monsanto accountable for its poisoning of the people. (Boldface emphasis added)

This much is predictable: when a corrupt company like Mon(ster)santo/IG Farbensanto (or whatever you wish to call that hideous corporation) gets its hands on the food supply and lines the pockets of America's bottomless supply of stupid and very corrupt politicians(see the current roster of Dummycrook and Republithug presidential candidates, or just look at Congress), then there's bound to be long term trouble and repercussions.
Not the least of these, I suggest, is that when you buy off science itself, or actively seek to corrupt the scientific process itself by suppressing findings contrary to your own limited studies (designed only to reassure the corrupt politicians), that there will be a foreign  and domestic policy backlash; you cannot keep poisoning people - or getting said corrupt politicians to pass laws prohibitting you from growing a little garden - or poisoning people's kids and afflicting them with liver disease, autism, or kidney disease, without there being a backlash. The article mentions Argentina, but we've all heard of the problems in India as well, and increasingly, this or that country in Europe is revolting against the easy breezy assurances of pro-GMO corporate science.
Now all this brings me to my high octane speculation of the day. Lately I've been watching - as regular readers here know - the messages and signals coming out of the United Kingdom, which in its quiet way is signaling, with growing frequency and intensity, its dissatisfaction with America's calcified oligarchy. (Andf they, unlike us, did not have to do a major university study like Princeton's to conclude that America is not a republic, it's an oligarchy). Recall that op-ed piece just a couple of month's ago in Britain's Economist magazine; the "calcified" oligarchy isn't my observation; it's theirs. Then there was the BBC's highly suggestive message-sending Worricker Trilogy. But if you've been watching the GMO issue, it's been going on in Great Britian, though with predictably less fanfare than in North America. And every now and then, a prestigious British research institution or university - like King's College, London (part of the University of London) - publishes a paper questioning GMO claims and safety. Indeed, this has been going on in Britain for some time: recall only the episode recounted by F. William Engdahl in his Seeds of Destruction that it took a personal phone call from President Clinton to Prime Minister Blair to get a certain study of GMO safety suppressed. (Yes, the GMO corruption goes that far folks.)
But nonetheless, such studies continue to be done in the UK, and every now and then we get to hear about them.
And with them, I wonder whether or not there are other messages being sent in the emerging world of GMO geopolitics, this time, not from New Delhi or Moscow or Buenos Aires, but from London. If so, you can't blame them, for it only means that besides exporting war, America's other major export in the past few decades has been poisonous foods. If the drones don't get you, Mon(ster)santo will. And if so, then, if the scientific studies are any indicator in the UK, there is growing quiet opposition to the corruption of science, and the food supply. Prediction? We'll really know the game is afoot when other agribusiness giants seek publicly to distance themselves from Mon(ster)santo specifically. Recall only that recent rejection by Syngenta of Mon(ster)santo's takeover offer on the implied grounds that it(Syngenta) was dealing in good faith... followed by...well, silence... And in that silence, you could read the implication. And why was Mon(ster)santo seeking to do that? Well, one reason, you'll recall, is that they wanted to move their corporate headquarters from St. Louis to London. And perhaps this King's College study gives a bit of a glimmer as to why.
In the meantime, I very much doubt you'll see IG Farbensanto's products on the menu at the Palace.

“ABNORMAL” PRESSURE HALTS TRADING ON MOSCOW BOURSE ON SEPT 8th

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Joseph P. Farrell • http://gizadeathstar.com/2015/09/abnormal-pressure-halts-trading-on-moscow-bourse-on-sept-8th/

Explosions in Chinese chemical plants, explosions on US military bases in Japan, US claims of Chinese cyber-warfare and hacking of US systems, Chinese counter-claims to "put up or shut up," missing Chinese space mapping experts, and now, on Sept 8th, a "glitch" in the trading networks on Moscow's bourse used to execute and clear trades. All of this is, of course, marvellous coincidence and synchronicity, and there's absolutely no call for concern, alarm, or wild speculation. Nothing to see here, get your coffee and move along. That at least is how it's being handled publicly, but with a recent fourth explosion at a Chinese chemical plant - really, are the Chinese that chemically incompetent? - one begins to wonder.
Those "glitches" in electronic trading now also seem to have spread from Wall Street to Red Square, for the Moscow bourse is reporting a two hour suspension of trade occurred on Septh 8th, in this article shared by Mr. C.S. from Bloomberg:
Russia's Main Exchange Resumes Trading After Two-Hour Halt
The language here is the usual frustrating Russian mix of absolute candor and deliberate ambiguity:

Although there were no errors with the trading and clearing systems, customers had trouble connecting to the exchange because of "abnormal" pressure on the network, Moscow Exchange said in a statement in the evening.

The halt is a setback for Russia’s biggest exchange as it seeks to lure foreign and local investors to the Moscow trading platform. The last interruption on the Moscow Exchange was on Aug. 12 when derivatives trading was halted. In March, the exchange stopped currency and precious-metals transactions for more than an hour.

“Had this been the first halt, that would’ve been tolerable, but this is not the first time a halt occurs this year,” Yaroslav Podsevatkin, head of trading at Aton in Moscow, said by e-mail. “These halts are turning into a statistic. I think many market players will start taking these risks seriously and considering the overall situation this could seriously decrease liquidity.” (Emphases added)

Granted, continued interruptions in trading would make any potential investor skittish, for even though the article indicates that no errors had occurred either with trades or clearing, the potential clearly is implied with repeated glitches, and that in turn, as Mr. Podsevatkin notes in the article, can lead to serious decreases in liquidity.
The real question is, is this normal, that is to say, is this merely and really a simple technical "glitch"? or is there something more sinister behind it? Is technological backwardness being masked by the phrase "abnormal pressure on the network", or are the Russians to be taken at their word that there was something genuinely abnormal about the pressures on the network.
Our trademark "high octane speculation" of the day would suggest that the peculiarity of the phrase indicates that the Russians suspect some sort of deliberate - though "abnormal" - pressure could have been exerted on their trading networks that prohibitted genuine traders from accessing the networks and hence the bourse. "Pressure" suggests that this may have come in the form of extremely high, and fast volumes of trade, that the system, in other words, was about to go into "flash crash" mode perhaps.
If that scenario is in play (and it's a mighty big if), and given the strange ambiguity of the phrase, then the real question becomes "Who" and "why"? Given the extraordinary tension between the West and the BRICSA bloc in the form of Russia and China, it strikes me as odd that Russia was not quick to suggest some western player was involved, and in the context of exploding Chinese chemical plants, disappearing Chinese space mappers, claim and counterclaim over cyber warfare between the USA and China, the silence here is peculiar to say the least. And there's another context to consider as well, and that is the "glitches" experienced recently in US markets. The sell-off on the Chinese stock exchange, mini-flash crashes on Wall Street, glitches from "abnormal pressure" on Moscow's stock market: in this context, to raise the speculative possibility that all this is somehow the result of deliberate action can be interpreted in only two ways: either there is a full scale "covert warfare" taking place between East and West between the usual state and corporate actors, or there is an altogether different and much more covert player (or players) on the block that are neither state nor corporate actors in any conventional sense, and that, perforce, has immense technological resources and cyber-warfare expertise. In that respect, if this wild and wooly scenario is in play at all, then Russia's strange choice of words, and hesitation to present any evidence it may have and point any fingers at "the usual suspects" - Russia's silence - is deafening.

PLANETARY PROSPECTING: EXACTLY WHY DOES EVERYONE WANT TO MINE ASTEROIDS?

Posted on September 13, 2015 by Joseph P. Farrell • http://gizadeathstar.com/2015/09/planetary-prospecting-exactly-why-does-everyone-want-to-mine-asteroids/

As most regular readers here are aware, over the past few years there has been a push, both in media coverage, and in reality, for mining local celestial bodies: asteroid mining. There have been a spate of articles and press releases about this or that private company developing this or that reusable booster, or robotic technology, and even NASA has joined the fun with articles about actually going out there, and grabbing and snabbing an asteroid, parking it in orbit around the Moon, and mining the daylights out of it. (These usually ignore the pesky little problem of what are they going to do with the asteroid once they've denuded it of wealth.) Said articles in some cases have even been accompanied by artist's drawings of the NASA plan to build large "space cups" that will simply catch the roving rocks like a gold ball (no two or three putts allowed).
The real question that has always bothered me, and I'm sure it has bothered a lot of other readers here, is how is all this going to be cost effective, a problem that the following article, shared by Mr. S.D., makes abundantly clear:
Space prospecting: How Planetary Resources selects its asteroid mining targets
So again, how is all of this going to be cost effective? After all, just the technology to prospect for the "right" asteroid to mine is quite expensive. You or I are not going to go to our local Wally World and pull a satellite off the shelf(at least, not yet), and launch it into space(another expensive prospect), and then maintain the facilities and highly skilled technicians that have to watch the satellite and interpret the data it sends back. We've also heard stories about the vast amount of wealth out there to be had, if we can just get to it and mine it.
But again, if it's not cost effective, why bother? The article above informs us that planetary prospectors, besides looking at things like the asteroid's velocity, rate of spin, proximity to Earth, and so on, are also looking at its probable contents, nickel, cobalt, or even lowly iron. But I don't recall hearing any news recently about "peak cobalt" or the looming "titanium shortage" unless "they" have been lying about those things too. So again, why go out there for your cobalt, when it is much cheaper to mine it here?
As we've been watching these stories develop over the years, and following them on this website in the occasional blog, the problem of "cost effectiveness" has always nagged at me and, as I suggest, probably has with most of the readership here. I've said, clearly and unequivocally, that chemical rockets would not seem to be a very cost effective way of mining anything out there. And then there's the problem of what to do with
"it" once you've mined it(another question that these types of articles typically ignore). The implicit assumption has been that it would be brought back to Earth and somehow brought to the surface (yet another very expensive proposition), again, with the current off-the-shelf equivalent of the wood-and-canvas Wright Brothers technological equivalent of the space age: the chemical rocket and space shuttles. I've speculated, along with many here, that the mere talk of mining anything in space is perhaps an indicator of other not-so-public technologies that would make such mining feasible and cost effective. And, if you've a few spare billion in pocket change, on the way to proposing to "nuke" Mars (as Mr. Musk has recently done), you might want to drop a few hundred million in the development of rather different propulsion methods on a much more covert basis. But again, a billion here, and a billion there, and pretty soon - as the old Senator Evrett Dirksen(I believe) once said - you're talking some serious money.
On top of this, I wonder(thanks to a fascinating lunch and discussion recently with a friend in the oil business) just exactly what type of accounting space mining will use? Suffice it to say, that's a subject for another day, but from what I've gathered thus far in my meager attempts to research petroleum industry accounting practices, one of those methods makes eminent sense, and the other is rife with possibilities for, well, fraud.
All these considerations suggest that either the return on investments from asteroid mining must be far greater than initial investment - and some estimates do put the wealth "out there" in the trillions if not quadrillions of dollars (a handy thing to have laying around out there if you're trying to get rid of all those quadrillions of dollars in bad derivatives paper) - or there is(here comes the high octane speculation) something else entirely in play.
That "something else" might be indicated by one very odd statement made in this otherwise "set piece" article, a statement so odd in the context of a rather dry presentation of the general problems of planetary prospecting that it sticks out like a sore thumb, especially in an article that repeatedly suggests the whole problem of "cost effectiveness" and "return on investment":

In the future, Planetary Resources plans to go after metallic (M-type) asteroids containing metals like Iron, Cobalt, and Nickel — which can be used to build structures in space, without having to haul the metal up from Earth’s surface. (Emphasis added)

That, it would seem to me, is a rather large admission, for while such plans to use local celestial bodies to "island hop" from one to the other, building facilities and ships as we go, have been around for years, the mention in the context of mining, of commerce, suggests that it might have been taking place on a small and covert scale for some time.
After all, Ben Rich, who is known to have said "We found an error in the equations and now we can take ET home," might just as well have said "We found an error in the equations, and now we can mine the stars."
Or to put it "country simple": it would seem that returns on investments and cost effectiveness would mandate very different technologies than the wood and canvas of chemical rockets.