Thursday, October 31, 2013
Judge Looks to Make An Example Out of Florida Sheriff
http://www.youtube.com/v/gGHRP8MLhnM?autohide=1&version=3&attribution_tag=OdJ-DeFpL83DKzoCrLhsHg&feature=share&autoplay=1&autohide=1&showinfo=1
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Monday, October 28, 2013
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Monday, October 21, 2013
Hezbollah will pay a heavy price in Qalamoun, FSA warns
October 21, 2013
Source: Yaliban.com
The Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite party Hezbollah is preparing for a decisive battle in Syria’a Al-Qalamoun, sources told Al-Watan newspaper in remarks published on Sunday.
The sources added that the battle will begin before the Geneva 2 conference, set to take place towards the end of November.
“Hezbollah has been trying to recruit more than fifteen thousand militants and is seeking to make it a short battle… since winter season will not be in the Syrian regime troops’ favor,” the sources were quoted as saying.
The sources said a booby-trapped vehicle discovered in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahieh was the handiwork of Al-Qaida-affiliated militias operating in the Al-Qalamoun villages, located on the slopes of the east Lebanon mountains.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) , the main alliance of anti-government rebels, warned Hezbollah that it would pay a heavy price if it went ahead with its campaign, since the rebels in the Al-Qalamoun region number in the thousands and hold major strategic ground, local media reported.
Thousands of Hezbollah fighters are fighting alongside the forces loyal to president Assad against the Syrian rebels who are seeking to overthrow the 40 year old regime despite the Baabda agreement that calls for distancing Lebanon from regional and international conflicts.
The Al-Qalamoun battle could return Lebanon to the atmosphere that prevailed during the Qusair battle, according to local media reports
The consequences of the Al-Qalamoun battle, which has been on hold for months, may have already started, according to a report by to AL Monitor.
The report added that controlling Al-Qalamoun was one of the objectives of the broad operation the Syrian army was preparing for the Damascus countryside and Ghouta last August. But the chemical weapons imbroglio delayed the operation. So Al-Qalamoun became a refuge for the armed opposition, after many opposition fighters were forced to withdraw from east and west Ghouta as the Syrian army made progress there for two months.
The AL Monitor report added the Al-Qalamoun battle may have repercussions on the Lebanese interior because Liwa al-Islam, which is led by Zahran Alloush, has become the main opposition force on Lebanon’s eastern slopes in Arsal al-Ward, the Rankous Plain, and Hawsh al-Arab. That threat is serious because Alloush, who has set up his base of operations in the area, has returned from a visit to Saudi Arabia last week, where he met his financial and military authority, the director of Saudi intelligence Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
Link: http://www.yalibnan.com/2013/10/21/hezbollah-will-pay-a-heavy-price-in-qalamoun-fsa-warns/.
Source: Yaliban.com
The Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite party Hezbollah is preparing for a decisive battle in Syria’a Al-Qalamoun, sources told Al-Watan newspaper in remarks published on Sunday.
The sources added that the battle will begin before the Geneva 2 conference, set to take place towards the end of November.
“Hezbollah has been trying to recruit more than fifteen thousand militants and is seeking to make it a short battle… since winter season will not be in the Syrian regime troops’ favor,” the sources were quoted as saying.
The sources said a booby-trapped vehicle discovered in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahieh was the handiwork of Al-Qaida-affiliated militias operating in the Al-Qalamoun villages, located on the slopes of the east Lebanon mountains.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) , the main alliance of anti-government rebels, warned Hezbollah that it would pay a heavy price if it went ahead with its campaign, since the rebels in the Al-Qalamoun region number in the thousands and hold major strategic ground, local media reported.
Thousands of Hezbollah fighters are fighting alongside the forces loyal to president Assad against the Syrian rebels who are seeking to overthrow the 40 year old regime despite the Baabda agreement that calls for distancing Lebanon from regional and international conflicts.
The Al-Qalamoun battle could return Lebanon to the atmosphere that prevailed during the Qusair battle, according to local media reports
The consequences of the Al-Qalamoun battle, which has been on hold for months, may have already started, according to a report by to AL Monitor.
The report added that controlling Al-Qalamoun was one of the objectives of the broad operation the Syrian army was preparing for the Damascus countryside and Ghouta last August. But the chemical weapons imbroglio delayed the operation. So Al-Qalamoun became a refuge for the armed opposition, after many opposition fighters were forced to withdraw from east and west Ghouta as the Syrian army made progress there for two months.
The AL Monitor report added the Al-Qalamoun battle may have repercussions on the Lebanese interior because Liwa al-Islam, which is led by Zahran Alloush, has become the main opposition force on Lebanon’s eastern slopes in Arsal al-Ward, the Rankous Plain, and Hawsh al-Arab. That threat is serious because Alloush, who has set up his base of operations in the area, has returned from a visit to Saudi Arabia last week, where he met his financial and military authority, the director of Saudi intelligence Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
Link: http://www.yalibnan.com/2013/10/21/hezbollah-will-pay-a-heavy-price-in-qalamoun-fsa-warns/.
Hezbollah recruiting 15,000 militants to fight rebels in Syria: paper
October 21, 2013
Source:Panarmenian
PanARMENIAN.Net - Hezbollah is recruiting 15,000 militants to fight anti-government rebels in Syria, according to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan. The forces are wanted for Kalamoun, a region near the Syrian-Lebanese border, where thousands of the rebels are located.
As Haaretz reports, sources near Hezbollah told the paper that the Lebanese militia plans to attack the rebels’ main supply lines.
The sources said a booby-trapped vehicle discovered in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiya, a Shi’ite suburb south of Beirut, was the handiwork of Al-Qaida-affiliated militias operating in the Kalamoun region.
The Free Syrian Army, a Western-backed alliance of anti-government rebels, warned Hezbollah that it would pay a heavy price if it went ahead with its campaign, since the rebels in the Kalamoun region number in the thousands and hold major strategic ground, Arabic media reported.
Reports said residents of cities and villages in the border area are preparing for serious fighting and have expressed concern that the violence will quickly seep into Lebanon.
For the past several months, Hezbollah has been carrying out surgical strikes against anti-government forces deep in Syrian territory, especially militia forces belonging to the Nusra Front and other groups linked to Al-Qaida.
Fighting in Syria between the government forces and the rebels is expected to intensify in the coming days, as both sides attempt to make as many gains as possible before the so-called Geneva II peace talks, according to Arabic-language reports.
The Arab League has announced the peace conference will be held in Geneva on November 23-24.
Link: http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/171570/.
Source:Panarmenian
PanARMENIAN.Net - Hezbollah is recruiting 15,000 militants to fight anti-government rebels in Syria, according to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan. The forces are wanted for Kalamoun, a region near the Syrian-Lebanese border, where thousands of the rebels are located.
As Haaretz reports, sources near Hezbollah told the paper that the Lebanese militia plans to attack the rebels’ main supply lines.
The sources said a booby-trapped vehicle discovered in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiya, a Shi’ite suburb south of Beirut, was the handiwork of Al-Qaida-affiliated militias operating in the Kalamoun region.
The Free Syrian Army, a Western-backed alliance of anti-government rebels, warned Hezbollah that it would pay a heavy price if it went ahead with its campaign, since the rebels in the Kalamoun region number in the thousands and hold major strategic ground, Arabic media reported.
Reports said residents of cities and villages in the border area are preparing for serious fighting and have expressed concern that the violence will quickly seep into Lebanon.
For the past several months, Hezbollah has been carrying out surgical strikes against anti-government forces deep in Syrian territory, especially militia forces belonging to the Nusra Front and other groups linked to Al-Qaida.
Fighting in Syria between the government forces and the rebels is expected to intensify in the coming days, as both sides attempt to make as many gains as possible before the so-called Geneva II peace talks, according to Arabic-language reports.
The Arab League has announced the peace conference will be held in Geneva on November 23-24.
Link: http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/171570/.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Friday, October 18, 2013
Thursday, October 17, 2013
FiSyria: Emir Umar al-Chechen tells about fighting with Kurdish PKK militants
11 October 2013
Source: Kavkaz Center
A correspondent of the Syrian emigrant Mujahideen website FiSyria interviewed Emir Umar al-Chechen in connection with military confrontations in the area of border village Atma between the Mujahideen of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) and criminal gangs of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
FiSyria: Peace be upon you.
Umar al-Chechen: And unto you peace.
FiSyria: There are many talks going on about battles with Kurds near Atma. Typically, each event is a mix of rumors, speculations, and sometimes blatant misinformation. There is a rumor that the ISIS and the PKK have reached a truce, even clauses of the truce are being discussed. We would like to clarify, when the truce was signed, and what clauses have been made?
Umar al-Chechen: There is no truce so far. Therefore, no clauses exist. There is an agreement on temporary cease of fire. And there is a huge difference between a temporary cease of fire and true armistice.
FiSyria: Yes, there is a difference between these concepts. And how did this conflict begin? What was the reason?
Umar al-Chechen: Some time ago, Kurdish militants seized a hill near the village of Atma and started firing at the road beneath. The ISIS Mujahideen reacted quickly to protect the Sunni population. The Kurds were driven off from the hill and suffered losses. Three Kurdish militants were killed. On our side, there were no losses.
Unfortunately, our fighters did not give proper attention to the developments and left the hill without any defensive facilities. As a result, three days later, PKK militants moved freely on these positions and established commanding posts there. And we had to storm the entrenched enemy.
FiSyria: Is there any information about the reason why Kurdish communists show aggression?
Umar al-Chechen: Captured Kurdish militants claim that they had to gain a foothold on the hills, as they were warned that their village is to be attacked by the ISIS Mujahideen. And the claim that alerted allegedly came from a senior officer in the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
FiSyria: Did they disclose the name?
Umar al-Chechen: They did. But naturally, we can not yet reveal it, relying solely on the testimony of prisoners. A Sharia investigation should be carried out
FiSyria: What combat troops participated in the storm of Kurdish positions and what were the losses on both sides?
Umar al-Chechen: In addition to our Mujahideen, units from Ahrar Sham, Al-Nusra Front and Levayat Dawood also participated. Our losses were 15 martyrs, not counting the wounded. Of these, 9 martyrs were from the Army of Emigrants and Supporters (AES).
As for the Kurdish side, we can not give fully accurate figures. On the positions after the storm, we found 3 dead women. One of them had a notebook on her body, in which the names of killed and wounded were listed. According to these data, 85 of them were killed. It is unclear who the woman was,
a commander or a person, responsible for medical care of the militants.
FiSyria: Yes, these figures are roughly consistent with our data. One of our Mujahideen, a Kurd by origin, told us that a relative from the village gave a figure of about 90 killed.
So, the participation of Kurdish women in the military units of the PKK is not a rumour?
Umar al-Chechen: Yes, it is not a rumour. The PKK imposed a tough system on Kurdish population. It is a policy that could be called a "war communism". The communists keep a record on each individual family and impose different taxes.
In addition, each family must supply to the PKK military young men and women. If a family has 4 daughters, one of them has to go to serve in their army. In case of refusal, the house and property of the family is burned.
Here's a true mafia-communist system.
FiSyria: Military conflict in the Atma is not the only case of battles with PKK militants?
Umar al-Chechen: Yes, this is not the first clash. There are other cases. For example, when there was a conflict between the ISIS and a unit of the FSA, The Northern Storm, in Azaz, PKK militants fired from their checkpoint at Mujahideen in their back when they went on offensive.
About a month ago, there was a clash between the ISIS and the PKK in the area of Hasaka on the border with Iraq. Incidentally, it was there where 7 women were captured among other militants.
FiSyria: Yes, global infidelity uses against our Mujahideen any organization that professes a non-Islamic ideology. May Allah reward you with goodness, Umar.
Umar al-Chechen: You too.
Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2013/10/11/18393.shtml
Source: Kavkaz Center
A correspondent of the Syrian emigrant Mujahideen website FiSyria interviewed Emir Umar al-Chechen in connection with military confrontations in the area of border village Atma between the Mujahideen of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) and criminal gangs of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
FiSyria: Peace be upon you.
Umar al-Chechen: And unto you peace.
FiSyria: There are many talks going on about battles with Kurds near Atma. Typically, each event is a mix of rumors, speculations, and sometimes blatant misinformation. There is a rumor that the ISIS and the PKK have reached a truce, even clauses of the truce are being discussed. We would like to clarify, when the truce was signed, and what clauses have been made?
Umar al-Chechen: There is no truce so far. Therefore, no clauses exist. There is an agreement on temporary cease of fire. And there is a huge difference between a temporary cease of fire and true armistice.
FiSyria: Yes, there is a difference between these concepts. And how did this conflict begin? What was the reason?
Umar al-Chechen: Some time ago, Kurdish militants seized a hill near the village of Atma and started firing at the road beneath. The ISIS Mujahideen reacted quickly to protect the Sunni population. The Kurds were driven off from the hill and suffered losses. Three Kurdish militants were killed. On our side, there were no losses.
Unfortunately, our fighters did not give proper attention to the developments and left the hill without any defensive facilities. As a result, three days later, PKK militants moved freely on these positions and established commanding posts there. And we had to storm the entrenched enemy.
FiSyria: Is there any information about the reason why Kurdish communists show aggression?
Umar al-Chechen: Captured Kurdish militants claim that they had to gain a foothold on the hills, as they were warned that their village is to be attacked by the ISIS Mujahideen. And the claim that alerted allegedly came from a senior officer in the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
FiSyria: Did they disclose the name?
Umar al-Chechen: They did. But naturally, we can not yet reveal it, relying solely on the testimony of prisoners. A Sharia investigation should be carried out
FiSyria: What combat troops participated in the storm of Kurdish positions and what were the losses on both sides?
Umar al-Chechen: In addition to our Mujahideen, units from Ahrar Sham, Al-Nusra Front and Levayat Dawood also participated. Our losses were 15 martyrs, not counting the wounded. Of these, 9 martyrs were from the Army of Emigrants and Supporters (AES).
As for the Kurdish side, we can not give fully accurate figures. On the positions after the storm, we found 3 dead women. One of them had a notebook on her body, in which the names of killed and wounded were listed. According to these data, 85 of them were killed. It is unclear who the woman was,
a commander or a person, responsible for medical care of the militants.
FiSyria: Yes, these figures are roughly consistent with our data. One of our Mujahideen, a Kurd by origin, told us that a relative from the village gave a figure of about 90 killed.
So, the participation of Kurdish women in the military units of the PKK is not a rumour?
Umar al-Chechen: Yes, it is not a rumour. The PKK imposed a tough system on Kurdish population. It is a policy that could be called a "war communism". The communists keep a record on each individual family and impose different taxes.
In addition, each family must supply to the PKK military young men and women. If a family has 4 daughters, one of them has to go to serve in their army. In case of refusal, the house and property of the family is burned.
Here's a true mafia-communist system.
FiSyria: Military conflict in the Atma is not the only case of battles with PKK militants?
Umar al-Chechen: Yes, this is not the first clash. There are other cases. For example, when there was a conflict between the ISIS and a unit of the FSA, The Northern Storm, in Azaz, PKK militants fired from their checkpoint at Mujahideen in their back when they went on offensive.
About a month ago, there was a clash between the ISIS and the PKK in the area of Hasaka on the border with Iraq. Incidentally, it was there where 7 women were captured among other militants.
FiSyria: Yes, global infidelity uses against our Mujahideen any organization that professes a non-Islamic ideology. May Allah reward you with goodness, Umar.
Umar al-Chechen: You too.
Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center
Link: http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2013/10/11/18393.shtml
Tunisian MPs refuse to dissolve parliament
Tunisian MPs refuse to dissolve
parliament
11 October 2013
Source: Middle East Monitor
Mustafa Ben Jaafar The Tunisian
Prime Ministry has issued a statement saying that the deputies of the
parliament are refusing to dissolve it, claiming that this would lead to
"chaos".
Meanwhile
other deputies have threatened to withdraw their confidence from the current
Head of Parliament, Mustafa Ben Jaafar, after he cancelled a session scheduled
to discuss the national dialogue initiative.
According to the ministry's
statement, during a meeting between MPs and Prime Minister Ali Laarayed, the
MPs expressed their support for the national dialogue initiative "as long
as it supports legitimacy and commits to serving the people's trust in elected
officials". The MPs stressed that they will only "surrender the
Constituent Assembly (parliament) Secretariat to those entrusted by the people
through elections and will continue to draw up required laws that ensure the
state's continuity."
Under the national dialogue
initiative put forward by the General Union of Tunisian Workers, the Tunisian
League for Human Rights, the National Bar Association, the Federation of
Industry and Commerce and others, the government and the parliament would be
dissolved and an election commission formed to schedule the next elections.
Meanwhile, on Thursday the MPs
protested a decision by Ben Jaafar to cancel a scheduled public meeting to
discuss the national dialogue initiative, according to one MP. The MP, who
preferred to remain anonymous, said that dozens of MPs have threatened to withdraw
their confidence from Ben Jaafar's role as Head of Parliament due to his
decision to cancel the meeting, and they have given him a list of 60 deputies
who had already agreed to sign on.
According to parliamentary law, in
order to withdraw confidence from the Head of the Parliament, at least 70
deputies must sign onto a list to be presented for discussion at a plenary
session and then voted on with the majority supporting the vote.
Meanwhile, preliminary hearings to
initiate the national dialogue continue while the participating political
forces are still looking into the legal obstacles facing the formation of a new
body called the Independent Elections High Authority, which would replace the
Interior Ministry's role to oversee future elections.
- See more at:
http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/africa/7790-tunisian-mps-refuse-to-dissolve-parliament-#sthash.uETEeXx0.JEQj31m5.dpuf
11 October 2013
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
President Morsi Family Message: Coup Failing Despite Traitorous Junta Scorched-Earth Approach
October 14,2013
Source: Ikhwanweb
The family of President Mohamed Morsi offers sincere congratulations to all Egyptians on the special occasion of Eid Al-Adha, stressing that the coup is falling apart and will soon come to a crashing defeat.
In the name of God, Most Merciful, Most Gracious
An open letter to all honorable, patriotic people
“Lose not heart, nor fall into despair; for you are the ultimate victors, if you are true in faith” (Quran 3:139).
A very special salute and greetings from us and from the legitimate President of Egypt, who has been abducted by those who betrayed the people and repressed freedoms, on the occasion of a glorious Eid that comes to Egyptians as they stand steadfast like mighty mountains in the face of the failed military coup’s suppression, which is certainly coming to an inevitable defeat, with the will of the people and the power and Grace of God.
Greetings from the legitimate President of Egypt who would certainly not miss the opportunity to go out to congratulate Egyptians, all Egyptians, and renew his pledge to his great people who bear witness to the crimes committed by the traitorous junta against democracy, freedom and the economy.
Although coup commanders and collaborators think they can reinstate the repressive dictatorial Mubarak regime, their plots are falling apart like the frailest of all houses – the spider's web (as described by God in Quran 29:41), and the will of the people will prevail.
Special greetings from the legitimate President of Egypt to each and every grieving family, under the dark shadow of this treasonous coup – to every family who lost a breadwinner, a son or a daughter now missed either because they were killed, injured, detained or are missing due to the ferocious fascists’ insatiable appetite for death and destruction and the coup that will certainly end soon.
We truly believe that your collective will and your peaceful protest actions are the most effective and the most powerful, with the will of Almighty God, to defeat this vain fascist coup.
Every day, people of conscience discover the falsity and the evil of the bloody coup and its heinous plots against Egypt, its people and its democratic transformation. The junta’s acting, pretense and false promises no longer deceive the people, who stand steadfast against the coup and its brutal practices.
The President, too, stands steadfast to the last breath. He will not back down on the fair demands of reinstating constitutional and democratic legitimacy. He will not be defeated by illegitimate abduction and detention or by invalid farcical trials that blatantly violate the Constitution and the law.
Furthermore, the President will not back down from the demand to return to the democratic process, even if his souls is the price for returning to the path of democratic transition chosen by the people as they regained their freedoms – sacrificing in the process many honorable martyrs and much precious blood.
The people will not lay to waste those great sacrifices by cowering or compromising, not with all the martyrs they miss and the wounded, detainees and the loved ones who have disappeared.
No-one can break the will of your legitimate President, because it is of your popular will, and it derives from your own steadfastness, courage and noble character.
Let the peaceful Revolution continue in Egypt’s liberty squares, not simply in support of the president as a person, but in defense of the homeland whose present is being demolished and future stolen by a gang of enemies of the people.
"They say: ‘When will that be?’ Say: ‘Sooner than you think’!" (Quran 17:51)… Then, the tyrants will realize the falsity of their fortifications, and the brave who stand steadfast will realize how great and honorable the sacrifices they made for their homeland were.
"God's command has been written. Do not hasten it" (Quran 16, 1).
Osama Mohamed Morsi
Official spokesman for the family of the legitimate President.
Link: http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=31360
Source: Ikhwanweb
The family of President Mohamed Morsi offers sincere congratulations to all Egyptians on the special occasion of Eid Al-Adha, stressing that the coup is falling apart and will soon come to a crashing defeat.
In the name of God, Most Merciful, Most Gracious
An open letter to all honorable, patriotic people
“Lose not heart, nor fall into despair; for you are the ultimate victors, if you are true in faith” (Quran 3:139).
A very special salute and greetings from us and from the legitimate President of Egypt, who has been abducted by those who betrayed the people and repressed freedoms, on the occasion of a glorious Eid that comes to Egyptians as they stand steadfast like mighty mountains in the face of the failed military coup’s suppression, which is certainly coming to an inevitable defeat, with the will of the people and the power and Grace of God.
Greetings from the legitimate President of Egypt who would certainly not miss the opportunity to go out to congratulate Egyptians, all Egyptians, and renew his pledge to his great people who bear witness to the crimes committed by the traitorous junta against democracy, freedom and the economy.
Although coup commanders and collaborators think they can reinstate the repressive dictatorial Mubarak regime, their plots are falling apart like the frailest of all houses – the spider's web (as described by God in Quran 29:41), and the will of the people will prevail.
Special greetings from the legitimate President of Egypt to each and every grieving family, under the dark shadow of this treasonous coup – to every family who lost a breadwinner, a son or a daughter now missed either because they were killed, injured, detained or are missing due to the ferocious fascists’ insatiable appetite for death and destruction and the coup that will certainly end soon.
We truly believe that your collective will and your peaceful protest actions are the most effective and the most powerful, with the will of Almighty God, to defeat this vain fascist coup.
Every day, people of conscience discover the falsity and the evil of the bloody coup and its heinous plots against Egypt, its people and its democratic transformation. The junta’s acting, pretense and false promises no longer deceive the people, who stand steadfast against the coup and its brutal practices.
The President, too, stands steadfast to the last breath. He will not back down on the fair demands of reinstating constitutional and democratic legitimacy. He will not be defeated by illegitimate abduction and detention or by invalid farcical trials that blatantly violate the Constitution and the law.
Furthermore, the President will not back down from the demand to return to the democratic process, even if his souls is the price for returning to the path of democratic transition chosen by the people as they regained their freedoms – sacrificing in the process many honorable martyrs and much precious blood.
The people will not lay to waste those great sacrifices by cowering or compromising, not with all the martyrs they miss and the wounded, detainees and the loved ones who have disappeared.
No-one can break the will of your legitimate President, because it is of your popular will, and it derives from your own steadfastness, courage and noble character.
Let the peaceful Revolution continue in Egypt’s liberty squares, not simply in support of the president as a person, but in defense of the homeland whose present is being demolished and future stolen by a gang of enemies of the people.
"They say: ‘When will that be?’ Say: ‘Sooner than you think’!" (Quran 17:51)… Then, the tyrants will realize the falsity of their fortifications, and the brave who stand steadfast will realize how great and honorable the sacrifices they made for their homeland were.
"God's command has been written. Do not hasten it" (Quran 16, 1).
Osama Mohamed Morsi
Official spokesman for the family of the legitimate President.
Link: http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=31360
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Television and the hive mind
Feb 15, 2008
by Mack White
Source: 911 forum.org.uk
http://www.ar.utexas.edu/Staff/White/tv.html
Sixty-four years ago this month, six million Americans became unwitting subjects in an experiment in psychological warfare.
It was the night before Halloween, 1938. At 8 p.m. CST, the Mercury Radio on the Air began broadcasting Orson Welles' radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. As is now well known, the story was presented as if it were breaking news, with bulletins so realistic that an estimated one million people believed the world was actually under attack by Martians. Of that number, thousands succumbed to outright panic, not waiting to hear Welles' explanation at the end of the program that it had all been a Halloween prank, but fleeing into the night to escape the alien invaders.
Later, psychologist Hadley Cantril conducted a study of the effects of the broadcast and published his findings in a book, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. This study explored the power of broadcast media, particularly as it relates to the suggestibility of human beings under the influence of fear. Cantril was affiliated with Princeton University's Radio Research Project, which was funded in 1937 by the Rockefeller Foundation. Also affiliated with the Project was Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) executive Frank Stanton, whose network had broadcast the program. Stanton would later go on to head the news division of CBS, and in time would become president of the network, as well as chairman of the board of the RAND Corporation, the influential think tank which has done groundbreaking research on, among other things, mass brainwashing.
Two years later, with Rockefeller Foundation money, Cantril established the Office of Public Opinion Research (OPOR), also at Princeton. Among the studies conducted by the OPOR was an analysis of the effectiveness of "psycho-political operations" (propaganda, in plain English) of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Then, during World War II, Cantril and Rockefeller money assisted CFR member and CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow in setting up the Princeton Listening Centre, the purpose of which was to study Nazi radio propaganda with the object of applying Nazi techniques to OSS propaganda. Out of this project came a new government agency, the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS). The FBIS eventually became the United States Information Agency (USIA), which is the propaganda arm of the National Security Council.
Thus, by the end of the 1940s, the basic research had been done and the propaganda apparatus of the national security state had been set up--just in time for the Dawn of Television ...
Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal that, when a person watches television, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the seat of logical thought. Here, information is broken down into its component parts and critically analyzed. The right brain, however, treats incoming data uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical, responses. The shift from left to right brain activity also causes the release of endorphins, the body's own natural opiates--thus, it is possible to become physically addicted to watching television, a hypothesis borne out by numerous studies which have shown that very few people are able to kick the television habit.
This numbing of the brain's cognitive function is compounded by another shift which occurs in the brain when we watch television. Activity in the higher brain regions (such as the neo-cortex) is diminished, while activity in the lower brain regions (such as the limbic system) increases. The latter, commonly referred to as the reptile brain, is associated with more primitive mental functions, such as the "fight or flight" response. The reptile brain is unable to distinguish between reality and the simulated reality of television. To the reptile brain, if it looks real, it is real. Thus, though we know on a conscious level it is "only a film," on a conscious level we do not--the heart beats faster, for instance, while we watch a suspenseful scene. Similarly, we know the commercial is trying to manipulate us, but on an unconscious level the commercial nonetheless succeeds in, say, making us feel inadequate until we buy whatever thing is being advertised--and the effect is all the more powerful because it is unconscious, operating on the deepest level of human response. The reptile brain makes it possible for us to survive as biological beings, but it also leaves us vulnerable to the manipulations of television programmers.
It is not just commercials that manipulate us. On television news as well, image and sound are as carefully selected and edited to influence human thought and behaviour as in any commercial. The news anchors and reporters themselves are chosen for their physical attractiveness--a factor which, as numerous psychological studies have shown, contributes to our perception of a person's trustworthiness. Under these conditions, then, the viewer easily forgets--if, indeed, the viewer ever knew in the first place--that the worldview presented on the evening news is a contrivance of the network owners--owners such as General Electric (NBC) and Westinghouse (CBS), both major defence contractors. By molding our perception of the world, they mold our opinions. This distortion of reality is determined as much by what is left out of the evening news as what is included--as a glance at Project Censored's yearly list of top 25 censored news stories will reveal. If it's not on television, it never happened. Out of sight, out of mind.
Under the guise of journalistic objectivity, news programs subtly play on our emotions--chiefly fear. Network news divisions, for instance, frequently congratulate themselves on the great service they provide humanity by bringing such spectacles as the September 11 terror attacks into our living rooms. We have heard this falsehood so often, we have come to accept it as self-evident truth. However, the motivation for live coverage of traumatic news events is not altruistic, but rather to be found in the central focus of Cantril's War of the Worlds research--the manipulation of the public through fear.
There is another way in which we are manipulated by television news. Human beings are prone to model the behaviours they see around them, and avoid those which might invite ridicule or censure, and in the hypnotic state induced by television, this effect is particularly pronounced. For instance, a lift of the eyebrow from Peter Jennings tells us precisely what he is thinking--and by extension what we should think. In this way, opinions not sanctioned by the corporate media can be made to seem disreputable, while sanctioned opinions are made to seem the very essence of civilized thought. And should your thinking stray into unsanctioned territory despite the trusted anchor's example, a poll can be produced which shows that most persons do not think that way--and you don't want to be different do you? Thus, the mental wanderer is brought back into the fold.
This process is also at work in programs ostensibly produced for entertainment. The "logic" works like this: Archie Bunker is an idiot, Archie Bunker is against gun control, therefore idiots are against gun control. Never mind the complexities of the issue. Never mind the fact that the true purpose of the Second Amendment is not to protect the rights of deer hunters, but to protect the citizenry against a tyrannical government (an argument you will never hear voiced on any television program). Monkey see, monkey do--or, in this case, monkey not do.
Notice, too, the way in which television programs depict conspiracy researchers or anti-New World Order activists. On situation comedies, they are buffoons. On dramatic programs, they are dangerous fanatics. This imprints on the mind of the viewer the attitude that questioning the official line or holding "anti-government" opinions is crazy, therefore not to be emulated.
Another way in which entertainment programs mold opinion can be found in the occasional television movie, which "sensitively" deals with some "social" issue. A bad behaviour is spotlighted--"hate" crimes, for instance--in such a way that it appears to be a far more rampant problem than it may actually be, so terrible in fact that the "only" cure for it is more laws and government "protection." Never mind that laws may already exist to cover these crimes--the law against murder, for instance. Once we have seen the well-publicized murder of the young gay man Matthew Shepherd dramatized in not one, but two, television movies in all its heartrending horror, nothing will do but we pass a law making the very thought behind the crime illegal.
People will also model behaviours from popular entertainment which are not only dangerous to their health and could land them in jail, but also contribute to social chaos. While this may seem to be simply a matter of the producers giving the audience what it wants, or the artist holding a mirror up to society, it is in fact intended to influence behaviour.
Consider the way many films glorify drug abuse. When a popular star playing a sympathetic character in a mainstream R-rated film uses hard drugs with no apparent health or legal consequences (John Travolta's use of heroin in Pulp Fiction, for instance--an R-rated film produced for theatrical release, which now has found a permanent home on television, via cable and video players), a certain percentage of people--particularly the impressionable young--will perceive hard drug use as the epitome of anti-Establishment cool and will model that behaviour, contributing to an increase in drug abuse. And who benefits?
As has been well documented by Gary Webb in his award-winning series for the San Jose Mercury New, former Los Angeles narcotics detective Michael Ruppert, and many other researchers and whistleblowers--the CIA is the main purveyor of hard drugs in this country. The CIA also has its hand in the "prison-industrial complex." Wackenhut Corporation, the largest owner of private prisons, has on its board of directors many former CIA employees, and is very likely a CIA front. Thus, films which glorify drug abuse may be seen as recruitment ads for the slave labour-based private prison system. Also, the social chaos and inflated crime rate which result from the contrived drug problem contributes to the demand from a frightened society for more prisons, more laws, and the further erosion of civil liberties. This effect is further heightened by television news segments and documentaries which focus on drug abuse and other crimes, thus giving the public the misperception that crime is even higher than it really is.
There is another socially debilitating process at work in what passes for entertainment on television these days. Over the years, there has been a steady increase in adult subject matter on programs presented during family viewing hours. For instance, it is common for today's prime-time situation comedies to make jokes about such matters as masturbation (Seinfeld once devoted an entire episode to the topic), or for daytime talk shows such as Jerry Springer's to showcase such topics as bestiality. Even worse are the "reality" programs currently in vogue. Each new offering in this genre seems to hit a new low. MTV, for instance, recently subjected a couple to a Candid Camera-style prank in which, after winning a trip to Las Vegas, they entered their hotel room to find an actor made up as a mutilated corpse in the bathtub. Naturally, they were traumatized by the experience and sued the network. Or, consider a new show on British television in which contestants compete to see who can infect each other with the most diseases--venereal diseases included.
It would appear, at the very least, that these programs serve as a shill operation to strengthen the argument for censorship. There may also be an even darker motive. These programs contribute to the general coarsening of society we see all around us--the decline in manners and common human decency and the acceptance of cruelty for its own sake as a legitimate form of entertainment. Ultimately, this has the effect of debasing human beings into savages, brutes--the better to herd them into global slavery.
For the first decade or so after the Dawn of Television, there were only a handful of channels in each market--one for each of the three major networks and maybe one or two independents. Later, with the advent of cable and more channels, the population pie began to be sliced into finer pieces--or "niche markets." This development has often been described as representing a growing diversity of choices, but in reality it is a fine-tuning of the process of mass manipulation, a honing-in on particular segments of the population, not only to sell them specifically-targeted consumer products but to influence their thinking in ways advantageous to the globalist agenda.
One of these "target audiences" is that portion of the population which, after years of blatant government cover-up in areas such as UFOs and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, maintains a cynicism toward the official line, despite the best efforts of television programmers to depict conspiracy research in a negative light. How to reach this vast, disenfranchised target audience and co-opt their thinking? One way is to put documentaries before them which mix of fact with disinformation, thereby confusing them. Another is to take the X Files approach.
The heroes of X Files are investigators in a fictitious paranormal department of the FBI whose adventures sometimes take them into parapolitical territory. On the surface this sounds good. However, whatever good X Files might accomplish by touching on such matters as MK-ULTRA or the JFK assassination is cancelled out by associating them with bug-eyed aliens and ghosts. Also, on X Files, the truth is always depicted as "out there" somewhere--in the stars, or some other dimension, never in brainwashing centres such as the RAND Corporation or its London counterpart, the Tavistock Institute. This has the effect of obscuring the truth, making it seem impossibly out-of-reach, and associating reasonable lines of political inquiry with the fantastic and other-wordly.
Not that there is no connection between the parapolitical and the paranormal. There is undoubtedly a cover-up at work with regard to UFOs, but if we accept uncritically the notion that UFOs are anything other than terrestrial in origin, we are falling headfirst into a carefully-set trap. To its credit, X Files has dealt with the idea that extraterrestrials might be a clever hoax by the government, but never decisively. The labyrinthine plots of the show somehow manage to leave the viewer wondering if perhaps the hoax idea is itself a hoax put out there to cover up the existence of extraterrestrials. This is hardly helpful to a true understanding of UFOs and associated phenomena, such as alien abductions and cattle mutilations.
Extraterrestrials have been a staple of popular entertainment since The War of the Worlds (both the novel and its radio adaptation). They have been depicted as invaders and benefactors, but rarely have they been unequivocally depicted as a hoax. There was an episode of Outer Limits which depicted a group of scientists staging a mock alien invasion to frighten the world's population into uniting as one--but, again, such examples are rare. Even in UFO documentaries on the Discovery Channel, the possibility of a terrestrial origin for the phenomenon is conspicuous by its lack of mention.
UFO researcher Jacques Vallee, the real-life model for the French scientist in Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, attempted to interest Spielberg in a terrestrial explanation for the phenomenon. In an interview on Conspire.com, Vallee said, "I argued with him that the subject was even more interesting if it wasn't extraterrestrials. If it was real, physical, but not ET. So he said, 'You're probably right, but that's not what the public is expecting--this is Hollywood and I want to give people something that's close to what they expect.'"
How convenient that what Spielberg says the people expect is also what the Pentagon wants them to believe.
In Messengers of Deception, Vallee tracks the history of a wartime British Intelligence unit devoted to psychological operations. Code-named (interestingly) the "Martians," it specialized in manufacturing and distributing false intelligence to confuse the enemy. Among its activities were the creation of phantom armies with inflatable tanks, simulations of the sounds of military ships maneuvering in the fog, and forged letters to lovers from phantom soldiers attached to phantom regiments.
Vallee suggests that deception operations of this kind may have extended beyond World War II, and that much of the "evidence" for "flying saucers" is no more real than the inflatable tanks of World War II. He writes: "The close association of many UFO sightings with advanced military hardware (test sites like the New Mexico proving grounds, missile silos of the northern plains, naval construction sites like the major nuclear facility at Pascagoula and the bizarre love affairs ... between contactee groups, occult sects, and extremist political factions, are utterly clear signals that we must exercise extreme caution."
Many people find it fantastic that the government would perpetrate such a hoax, while at the same time having no difficulty entertaining the notion that extraterrestrials are regularly travelling light years to this planet to kidnap people out of their beds and subject them to anal probes.
Link: http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=13624
by Mack White
Source: 911 forum.org.uk
http://www.ar.utexas.edu/Staff/White/tv.html
Sixty-four years ago this month, six million Americans became unwitting subjects in an experiment in psychological warfare.
It was the night before Halloween, 1938. At 8 p.m. CST, the Mercury Radio on the Air began broadcasting Orson Welles' radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. As is now well known, the story was presented as if it were breaking news, with bulletins so realistic that an estimated one million people believed the world was actually under attack by Martians. Of that number, thousands succumbed to outright panic, not waiting to hear Welles' explanation at the end of the program that it had all been a Halloween prank, but fleeing into the night to escape the alien invaders.
Later, psychologist Hadley Cantril conducted a study of the effects of the broadcast and published his findings in a book, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. This study explored the power of broadcast media, particularly as it relates to the suggestibility of human beings under the influence of fear. Cantril was affiliated with Princeton University's Radio Research Project, which was funded in 1937 by the Rockefeller Foundation. Also affiliated with the Project was Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) executive Frank Stanton, whose network had broadcast the program. Stanton would later go on to head the news division of CBS, and in time would become president of the network, as well as chairman of the board of the RAND Corporation, the influential think tank which has done groundbreaking research on, among other things, mass brainwashing.
Two years later, with Rockefeller Foundation money, Cantril established the Office of Public Opinion Research (OPOR), also at Princeton. Among the studies conducted by the OPOR was an analysis of the effectiveness of "psycho-political operations" (propaganda, in plain English) of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Then, during World War II, Cantril and Rockefeller money assisted CFR member and CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow in setting up the Princeton Listening Centre, the purpose of which was to study Nazi radio propaganda with the object of applying Nazi techniques to OSS propaganda. Out of this project came a new government agency, the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS). The FBIS eventually became the United States Information Agency (USIA), which is the propaganda arm of the National Security Council.
Thus, by the end of the 1940s, the basic research had been done and the propaganda apparatus of the national security state had been set up--just in time for the Dawn of Television ...
Experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman reveal that, when a person watches television, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the seat of logical thought. Here, information is broken down into its component parts and critically analyzed. The right brain, however, treats incoming data uncritically, processing information in wholes, leading to emotional, rather than logical, responses. The shift from left to right brain activity also causes the release of endorphins, the body's own natural opiates--thus, it is possible to become physically addicted to watching television, a hypothesis borne out by numerous studies which have shown that very few people are able to kick the television habit.
This numbing of the brain's cognitive function is compounded by another shift which occurs in the brain when we watch television. Activity in the higher brain regions (such as the neo-cortex) is diminished, while activity in the lower brain regions (such as the limbic system) increases. The latter, commonly referred to as the reptile brain, is associated with more primitive mental functions, such as the "fight or flight" response. The reptile brain is unable to distinguish between reality and the simulated reality of television. To the reptile brain, if it looks real, it is real. Thus, though we know on a conscious level it is "only a film," on a conscious level we do not--the heart beats faster, for instance, while we watch a suspenseful scene. Similarly, we know the commercial is trying to manipulate us, but on an unconscious level the commercial nonetheless succeeds in, say, making us feel inadequate until we buy whatever thing is being advertised--and the effect is all the more powerful because it is unconscious, operating on the deepest level of human response. The reptile brain makes it possible for us to survive as biological beings, but it also leaves us vulnerable to the manipulations of television programmers.
It is not just commercials that manipulate us. On television news as well, image and sound are as carefully selected and edited to influence human thought and behaviour as in any commercial. The news anchors and reporters themselves are chosen for their physical attractiveness--a factor which, as numerous psychological studies have shown, contributes to our perception of a person's trustworthiness. Under these conditions, then, the viewer easily forgets--if, indeed, the viewer ever knew in the first place--that the worldview presented on the evening news is a contrivance of the network owners--owners such as General Electric (NBC) and Westinghouse (CBS), both major defence contractors. By molding our perception of the world, they mold our opinions. This distortion of reality is determined as much by what is left out of the evening news as what is included--as a glance at Project Censored's yearly list of top 25 censored news stories will reveal. If it's not on television, it never happened. Out of sight, out of mind.
Under the guise of journalistic objectivity, news programs subtly play on our emotions--chiefly fear. Network news divisions, for instance, frequently congratulate themselves on the great service they provide humanity by bringing such spectacles as the September 11 terror attacks into our living rooms. We have heard this falsehood so often, we have come to accept it as self-evident truth. However, the motivation for live coverage of traumatic news events is not altruistic, but rather to be found in the central focus of Cantril's War of the Worlds research--the manipulation of the public through fear.
There is another way in which we are manipulated by television news. Human beings are prone to model the behaviours they see around them, and avoid those which might invite ridicule or censure, and in the hypnotic state induced by television, this effect is particularly pronounced. For instance, a lift of the eyebrow from Peter Jennings tells us precisely what he is thinking--and by extension what we should think. In this way, opinions not sanctioned by the corporate media can be made to seem disreputable, while sanctioned opinions are made to seem the very essence of civilized thought. And should your thinking stray into unsanctioned territory despite the trusted anchor's example, a poll can be produced which shows that most persons do not think that way--and you don't want to be different do you? Thus, the mental wanderer is brought back into the fold.
This process is also at work in programs ostensibly produced for entertainment. The "logic" works like this: Archie Bunker is an idiot, Archie Bunker is against gun control, therefore idiots are against gun control. Never mind the complexities of the issue. Never mind the fact that the true purpose of the Second Amendment is not to protect the rights of deer hunters, but to protect the citizenry against a tyrannical government (an argument you will never hear voiced on any television program). Monkey see, monkey do--or, in this case, monkey not do.
Notice, too, the way in which television programs depict conspiracy researchers or anti-New World Order activists. On situation comedies, they are buffoons. On dramatic programs, they are dangerous fanatics. This imprints on the mind of the viewer the attitude that questioning the official line or holding "anti-government" opinions is crazy, therefore not to be emulated.
Another way in which entertainment programs mold opinion can be found in the occasional television movie, which "sensitively" deals with some "social" issue. A bad behaviour is spotlighted--"hate" crimes, for instance--in such a way that it appears to be a far more rampant problem than it may actually be, so terrible in fact that the "only" cure for it is more laws and government "protection." Never mind that laws may already exist to cover these crimes--the law against murder, for instance. Once we have seen the well-publicized murder of the young gay man Matthew Shepherd dramatized in not one, but two, television movies in all its heartrending horror, nothing will do but we pass a law making the very thought behind the crime illegal.
People will also model behaviours from popular entertainment which are not only dangerous to their health and could land them in jail, but also contribute to social chaos. While this may seem to be simply a matter of the producers giving the audience what it wants, or the artist holding a mirror up to society, it is in fact intended to influence behaviour.
Consider the way many films glorify drug abuse. When a popular star playing a sympathetic character in a mainstream R-rated film uses hard drugs with no apparent health or legal consequences (John Travolta's use of heroin in Pulp Fiction, for instance--an R-rated film produced for theatrical release, which now has found a permanent home on television, via cable and video players), a certain percentage of people--particularly the impressionable young--will perceive hard drug use as the epitome of anti-Establishment cool and will model that behaviour, contributing to an increase in drug abuse. And who benefits?
As has been well documented by Gary Webb in his award-winning series for the San Jose Mercury New, former Los Angeles narcotics detective Michael Ruppert, and many other researchers and whistleblowers--the CIA is the main purveyor of hard drugs in this country. The CIA also has its hand in the "prison-industrial complex." Wackenhut Corporation, the largest owner of private prisons, has on its board of directors many former CIA employees, and is very likely a CIA front. Thus, films which glorify drug abuse may be seen as recruitment ads for the slave labour-based private prison system. Also, the social chaos and inflated crime rate which result from the contrived drug problem contributes to the demand from a frightened society for more prisons, more laws, and the further erosion of civil liberties. This effect is further heightened by television news segments and documentaries which focus on drug abuse and other crimes, thus giving the public the misperception that crime is even higher than it really is.
There is another socially debilitating process at work in what passes for entertainment on television these days. Over the years, there has been a steady increase in adult subject matter on programs presented during family viewing hours. For instance, it is common for today's prime-time situation comedies to make jokes about such matters as masturbation (Seinfeld once devoted an entire episode to the topic), or for daytime talk shows such as Jerry Springer's to showcase such topics as bestiality. Even worse are the "reality" programs currently in vogue. Each new offering in this genre seems to hit a new low. MTV, for instance, recently subjected a couple to a Candid Camera-style prank in which, after winning a trip to Las Vegas, they entered their hotel room to find an actor made up as a mutilated corpse in the bathtub. Naturally, they were traumatized by the experience and sued the network. Or, consider a new show on British television in which contestants compete to see who can infect each other with the most diseases--venereal diseases included.
It would appear, at the very least, that these programs serve as a shill operation to strengthen the argument for censorship. There may also be an even darker motive. These programs contribute to the general coarsening of society we see all around us--the decline in manners and common human decency and the acceptance of cruelty for its own sake as a legitimate form of entertainment. Ultimately, this has the effect of debasing human beings into savages, brutes--the better to herd them into global slavery.
For the first decade or so after the Dawn of Television, there were only a handful of channels in each market--one for each of the three major networks and maybe one or two independents. Later, with the advent of cable and more channels, the population pie began to be sliced into finer pieces--or "niche markets." This development has often been described as representing a growing diversity of choices, but in reality it is a fine-tuning of the process of mass manipulation, a honing-in on particular segments of the population, not only to sell them specifically-targeted consumer products but to influence their thinking in ways advantageous to the globalist agenda.
One of these "target audiences" is that portion of the population which, after years of blatant government cover-up in areas such as UFOs and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, maintains a cynicism toward the official line, despite the best efforts of television programmers to depict conspiracy research in a negative light. How to reach this vast, disenfranchised target audience and co-opt their thinking? One way is to put documentaries before them which mix of fact with disinformation, thereby confusing them. Another is to take the X Files approach.
The heroes of X Files are investigators in a fictitious paranormal department of the FBI whose adventures sometimes take them into parapolitical territory. On the surface this sounds good. However, whatever good X Files might accomplish by touching on such matters as MK-ULTRA or the JFK assassination is cancelled out by associating them with bug-eyed aliens and ghosts. Also, on X Files, the truth is always depicted as "out there" somewhere--in the stars, or some other dimension, never in brainwashing centres such as the RAND Corporation or its London counterpart, the Tavistock Institute. This has the effect of obscuring the truth, making it seem impossibly out-of-reach, and associating reasonable lines of political inquiry with the fantastic and other-wordly.
Not that there is no connection between the parapolitical and the paranormal. There is undoubtedly a cover-up at work with regard to UFOs, but if we accept uncritically the notion that UFOs are anything other than terrestrial in origin, we are falling headfirst into a carefully-set trap. To its credit, X Files has dealt with the idea that extraterrestrials might be a clever hoax by the government, but never decisively. The labyrinthine plots of the show somehow manage to leave the viewer wondering if perhaps the hoax idea is itself a hoax put out there to cover up the existence of extraterrestrials. This is hardly helpful to a true understanding of UFOs and associated phenomena, such as alien abductions and cattle mutilations.
Extraterrestrials have been a staple of popular entertainment since The War of the Worlds (both the novel and its radio adaptation). They have been depicted as invaders and benefactors, but rarely have they been unequivocally depicted as a hoax. There was an episode of Outer Limits which depicted a group of scientists staging a mock alien invasion to frighten the world's population into uniting as one--but, again, such examples are rare. Even in UFO documentaries on the Discovery Channel, the possibility of a terrestrial origin for the phenomenon is conspicuous by its lack of mention.
UFO researcher Jacques Vallee, the real-life model for the French scientist in Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, attempted to interest Spielberg in a terrestrial explanation for the phenomenon. In an interview on Conspire.com, Vallee said, "I argued with him that the subject was even more interesting if it wasn't extraterrestrials. If it was real, physical, but not ET. So he said, 'You're probably right, but that's not what the public is expecting--this is Hollywood and I want to give people something that's close to what they expect.'"
How convenient that what Spielberg says the people expect is also what the Pentagon wants them to believe.
In Messengers of Deception, Vallee tracks the history of a wartime British Intelligence unit devoted to psychological operations. Code-named (interestingly) the "Martians," it specialized in manufacturing and distributing false intelligence to confuse the enemy. Among its activities were the creation of phantom armies with inflatable tanks, simulations of the sounds of military ships maneuvering in the fog, and forged letters to lovers from phantom soldiers attached to phantom regiments.
Vallee suggests that deception operations of this kind may have extended beyond World War II, and that much of the "evidence" for "flying saucers" is no more real than the inflatable tanks of World War II. He writes: "The close association of many UFO sightings with advanced military hardware (test sites like the New Mexico proving grounds, missile silos of the northern plains, naval construction sites like the major nuclear facility at Pascagoula and the bizarre love affairs ... between contactee groups, occult sects, and extremist political factions, are utterly clear signals that we must exercise extreme caution."
Many people find it fantastic that the government would perpetrate such a hoax, while at the same time having no difficulty entertaining the notion that extraterrestrials are regularly travelling light years to this planet to kidnap people out of their beds and subject them to anal probes.
Link: http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=13624
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Egypt Anti-Coup National Alliance Rejects Putschist Regime Financial, Economic Agreements
October 9,2013
Source: Ikhwanweb
Egypt’s coalition of parties and movements opposed to the military coup warns all local, regional and international banks and other financial institutions and authorities that it deems void all the military-appointed so-called interim government's financial and economic dealings and agreements.
Under the July 3 coup military-appointed regime, Egypt faces a very serious economic situation as a result of declining foreign exchange reserves in the country, rising prices, the collapse of tourism and investment, the rampant and persistent problem of unemployment and the closure of many factories and companies.
The putschist government has failed to provide any economic vision or a specific vision of any fiscal policy through which they can address the growing economic losses faced by the country because of the brutal treasonous coup.
Therefore, the Anti-Coup, Pro-Legitimacy National Alliance declares its unequivocal rejection of any financial dealings or agreements signed by the military coup government. The Alliance also affirms that it does not recognize any dealings or agreements signed by any authority or ministry belonging to this government.
The Alliance warns all financial institutions and economic organizations not to deal with an illegitimate government that does not represent the Egyptian people. The Alliance emphasizes that procedures or decisions made by the coup government are void in form and content, and any consequences thereof are also void.
The Alliance urges all international, regional and local institutions from falling into the trap of economic dealings with this government.
In this regard, the Alliance points that the Finance Ministry of the coup government issuing bonds and treasury bills today (October 8th, 2013) for the total amount of LE10 Bn - according to the ministry's official web site - is void, and is by an illegitimate government that does not represent the Egyptian people.
The Anti-Coup, Pro-Legitimacy National Alliance
http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=31353
Source: Ikhwanweb
Egypt’s coalition of parties and movements opposed to the military coup warns all local, regional and international banks and other financial institutions and authorities that it deems void all the military-appointed so-called interim government's financial and economic dealings and agreements.
Under the July 3 coup military-appointed regime, Egypt faces a very serious economic situation as a result of declining foreign exchange reserves in the country, rising prices, the collapse of tourism and investment, the rampant and persistent problem of unemployment and the closure of many factories and companies.
The putschist government has failed to provide any economic vision or a specific vision of any fiscal policy through which they can address the growing economic losses faced by the country because of the brutal treasonous coup.
Therefore, the Anti-Coup, Pro-Legitimacy National Alliance declares its unequivocal rejection of any financial dealings or agreements signed by the military coup government. The Alliance also affirms that it does not recognize any dealings or agreements signed by any authority or ministry belonging to this government.
The Alliance warns all financial institutions and economic organizations not to deal with an illegitimate government that does not represent the Egyptian people. The Alliance emphasizes that procedures or decisions made by the coup government are void in form and content, and any consequences thereof are also void.
The Alliance urges all international, regional and local institutions from falling into the trap of economic dealings with this government.
In this regard, the Alliance points that the Finance Ministry of the coup government issuing bonds and treasury bills today (October 8th, 2013) for the total amount of LE10 Bn - according to the ministry's official web site - is void, and is by an illegitimate government that does not represent the Egyptian people.
The Anti-Coup, Pro-Legitimacy National Alliance
http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=31353
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Epic fail: 99% of Obamacare applications can’t be processed, ‘nightmare scenario’ coming in January
October 7, 2013
Mike Adams
Natural News
Source:Infowars.com
Obamacare is going to crash and burn from technical issues more than political concerns, it seems. You’ve probably already heard that virtually no one can sign up using the online Obamacare exchanges. The web forms are broken. The code is buggy. The data integration is a jaw-dropping failure.
This is why, all over the country and across the media, no one can seem to locate anyone who has successfully signed up through Healthcare.gov. Even the one person the Obama administration rolled out as a “success case” turns out to be completely staged and fabricated.
But there’s even more shocking news about Obamacare that could utterly destroy any credibility the system might have remaining: Of those applications who somehow make it through the broken online sign-up system, 99% can’t be processed and will fail.
99% can’t be processed
According to insurance industry insiders who spoke to CNBC, 99 out of 100 applications don’t contain enough information to result in enrollment.
“…federal officials could face a situation in January in which relatively large numbers of people believe they have coverage starting that month, but whose enrollment applications are have not been processed,” reports CNBC.
“We’re getting incomplete data,” says one source from the insurance industry who goes on to describe the data as “corrupted.”
That’s fitting, of course, as the entire Obama administration is also corrupted. And incompetent. The Obamacare socialism dream turns out to be one big job-destroying frag fest that deceived Americans on every level. Although called the Affordable Care Act, it isn’t “affordable,” the system doesn’t CARE about you, and even when you want it, it’s almost impossible to get the online applications to ACT properly.
Healthcare.gov tricks people into thinking they’re enrolled
The problem is that the Healthcare.gov website doesn’t ask users for sufficient information needed to process their enrollment. The website, in other words, is a joke. It’s a public relations facade. Even when people think they’ve signed up, the system doesn’t have enough information about them to actually complete the enrollment.
So between now and January, even those people who somehow make it through the broken Healthcare.gov website and think they have enrolled will find themselves without any health insurance when January rolls around. Somehow, federal workers are going to have to contact these individuals one at a time and ask them for additional information to process their enrollment.
That process, of course, is fraught with nightmarish scenarios of failure and incompetence. Why? For starters, because the masses of government workers needed to carry out such a follow-up program have never been hired! And that’s because no one anticipated the Obamacare online exchanges would be such a nightmare of technical incompetence in the first place.
Secondly, even if you could hire all these people in the next few weeks, the simple fact of the matter is that support-level people who work for the federal government tend to be people who are really just there for the paycheck and who don’t actually give a crap about whether they are effective in their jobs. This is going to be worse than DMV workers. It’s going to be an office full of extremely unhealthy, over-paid, under-educated, “I-don’t-give-a-s#@t!” workers whose only real mission is to log enough hours to collect a paycheck, not to actually solve problems with Obamacare enrollment. Think TSA workers sitting behind computers all day long…
Obamacare is the ultimate vaporware
More and more people are now realizing that Obamacare is D.O.A. (Dead On Arrival). Most Americans don’t want it and most employers absolutely despise it. Even the few Americans who are interested in the program can’t seem to sign up because the websites are broken (and will remain broken for months). Of those who somehow do manage to complete the enrollment process, 99% will NOT actually be enrolled due to a lack of required information.
This is headed for an absolute P.R. disaster for the Obama administration, which has so far been running on nothing but lies and vapor. Obamacare is, in fact, the ultimate “vaporware” because it makes promises the software simply can’t deliver.
No wonder the Republicans are trying to delay it or defund it. The public cry for precisely such action is only going to gain strength from here forward, especially as January rolls around and potentially millions of people who think they have health insurance suddenly find out they have none whatsoever (even though they signed up and were told they had enrolled).
This is going to create a nightmare scenario with doctors and hospitals, where Obamacare enrollees show up demanding health care services but they don’t actually have insurance. This mess is going to be dumped right in the laps of medical clinics and hospitals, both of which are already suffocating under a tar pit of health insurance paperwork. Add to that a failed, incompetent system of non-coverage courtesy of the Affordable Care Act, and you get a system infested with so many critical failures that it just can’t function.
That’s where Obamacare is headed: An epic fail at every level. Obamacare will long be remembered as the perfect example of what can go wrong when irrational Big Government worshippers shove complex socialist programs down everyone’s throats. It also shows the danger of taking an industry which should be based on a free market and instead trying to force it into a Soviet-style centralized command system run by a corrupt, incompetent government dominated by tyrants and fools.
Defund Obamacare now!
Link: .infowars.com/epic-fail-99-of-obamacare-applications-cant-be-processed-nightmare-scenario-coming-in-january/
Mike Adams
Natural News
Source:Infowars.com
Obamacare is going to crash and burn from technical issues more than political concerns, it seems. You’ve probably already heard that virtually no one can sign up using the online Obamacare exchanges. The web forms are broken. The code is buggy. The data integration is a jaw-dropping failure.
This is why, all over the country and across the media, no one can seem to locate anyone who has successfully signed up through Healthcare.gov. Even the one person the Obama administration rolled out as a “success case” turns out to be completely staged and fabricated.
But there’s even more shocking news about Obamacare that could utterly destroy any credibility the system might have remaining: Of those applications who somehow make it through the broken online sign-up system, 99% can’t be processed and will fail.
99% can’t be processed
According to insurance industry insiders who spoke to CNBC, 99 out of 100 applications don’t contain enough information to result in enrollment.
“…federal officials could face a situation in January in which relatively large numbers of people believe they have coverage starting that month, but whose enrollment applications are have not been processed,” reports CNBC.
“We’re getting incomplete data,” says one source from the insurance industry who goes on to describe the data as “corrupted.”
That’s fitting, of course, as the entire Obama administration is also corrupted. And incompetent. The Obamacare socialism dream turns out to be one big job-destroying frag fest that deceived Americans on every level. Although called the Affordable Care Act, it isn’t “affordable,” the system doesn’t CARE about you, and even when you want it, it’s almost impossible to get the online applications to ACT properly.
Healthcare.gov tricks people into thinking they’re enrolled
The problem is that the Healthcare.gov website doesn’t ask users for sufficient information needed to process their enrollment. The website, in other words, is a joke. It’s a public relations facade. Even when people think they’ve signed up, the system doesn’t have enough information about them to actually complete the enrollment.
So between now and January, even those people who somehow make it through the broken Healthcare.gov website and think they have enrolled will find themselves without any health insurance when January rolls around. Somehow, federal workers are going to have to contact these individuals one at a time and ask them for additional information to process their enrollment.
That process, of course, is fraught with nightmarish scenarios of failure and incompetence. Why? For starters, because the masses of government workers needed to carry out such a follow-up program have never been hired! And that’s because no one anticipated the Obamacare online exchanges would be such a nightmare of technical incompetence in the first place.
Secondly, even if you could hire all these people in the next few weeks, the simple fact of the matter is that support-level people who work for the federal government tend to be people who are really just there for the paycheck and who don’t actually give a crap about whether they are effective in their jobs. This is going to be worse than DMV workers. It’s going to be an office full of extremely unhealthy, over-paid, under-educated, “I-don’t-give-a-s#@t!” workers whose only real mission is to log enough hours to collect a paycheck, not to actually solve problems with Obamacare enrollment. Think TSA workers sitting behind computers all day long…
Obamacare is the ultimate vaporware
More and more people are now realizing that Obamacare is D.O.A. (Dead On Arrival). Most Americans don’t want it and most employers absolutely despise it. Even the few Americans who are interested in the program can’t seem to sign up because the websites are broken (and will remain broken for months). Of those who somehow do manage to complete the enrollment process, 99% will NOT actually be enrolled due to a lack of required information.
This is headed for an absolute P.R. disaster for the Obama administration, which has so far been running on nothing but lies and vapor. Obamacare is, in fact, the ultimate “vaporware” because it makes promises the software simply can’t deliver.
No wonder the Republicans are trying to delay it or defund it. The public cry for precisely such action is only going to gain strength from here forward, especially as January rolls around and potentially millions of people who think they have health insurance suddenly find out they have none whatsoever (even though they signed up and were told they had enrolled).
This is going to create a nightmare scenario with doctors and hospitals, where Obamacare enrollees show up demanding health care services but they don’t actually have insurance. This mess is going to be dumped right in the laps of medical clinics and hospitals, both of which are already suffocating under a tar pit of health insurance paperwork. Add to that a failed, incompetent system of non-coverage courtesy of the Affordable Care Act, and you get a system infested with so many critical failures that it just can’t function.
That’s where Obamacare is headed: An epic fail at every level. Obamacare will long be remembered as the perfect example of what can go wrong when irrational Big Government worshippers shove complex socialist programs down everyone’s throats. It also shows the danger of taking an industry which should be based on a free market and instead trying to force it into a Soviet-style centralized command system run by a corrupt, incompetent government dominated by tyrants and fools.
Defund Obamacare now!
Link: .infowars.com/epic-fail-99-of-obamacare-applications-cant-be-processed-nightmare-scenario-coming-in-january/
Vandana Shiva on the Problem with Genetically Modified Seeds | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com
July 13, 2012
Source: Moyers and Co.
BILL MOYERS: We turn now from one champion of the public interest to another. From Sheila Bair fighting for greater oversight of the big banks to a global advocate for social justice named Vandana Shiva.
Vandana Shiva on the Problem with Genetically Modified Seeds | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com
Source: Moyers and Co.
BILL MOYERS: We turn now from one champion of the public interest to another. From Sheila Bair fighting for greater oversight of the big banks to a global advocate for social justice named Vandana Shiva.
VANDANA SHIVA:
We need a new paradigm for living on the earth because the old one is clearly not working.
BILL MOYERS: The last time we spoke with her, she was battling Coca-Cola and other multinational giants over the privatization of water in her native India—including the waters of the sacred river Ganges. Since then, Vandana Shiva has become a rock star in the worldwide battle over genetically modified seeds. Those are seeds aggressively marketed around the world by big companies like Monsanto to not only increase, but also to monopolize food production and profits. Opponents challenge their safety, claim they harm the environment, are more costly, and leave local farmers deep in debt and dependent on suppliers.
Following Europe’s example, many American consumers are demanding that food products made from genetically modified seeds be labeled. Monsanto, the world’s largest supplier, claims intellectual property rights over its seeds and usually wins when it takes farmers to court for patent infringement. But in India, Monsanto claimed its seeds would produce bountiful crops and when the results fell short, many bankrupted farmers reportedly killed themselves.
Vandana Shiva, founded India’s Navdanya movement to promote the use of native seeds, and she has become a formidable figure in all these battles. Trained in physics, she’s an activist and prolific author whose books include “Earth Democracy,” “Soil Not Oil,” “Water Wars,” and her latest, “Making Peace With The Earth.” I talked with her again recently, when she came to New York to be honored by Union Theological Seminary.
Welcome back.
VANDANA SHIVA: Wonderful to be back with you.
BILL MOYERS: It's an uphill battle you're waging. How do you keep doing it? What drives you really?
VANDANA SHIVA: You know, we have this very beautiful text in India. We have the Gita.
BILL MOYERS: Bhagavad Gita?
VANDANA SHIVA: The Bhagavad Gita. And there's a very simple lesson that Krishna gives. That you do not measure the fruit of your action. You have to measure your obligation of action. You have to find out what's the right thing to do. That is your duty. Whether you win or lose is not the issue. The obligation to do the right thing, for me, you know, I've grown up as an ecologist in a major level, from my very childhood.
And for me, the diversity of species, their intrinsic value, their integrity is vital. The rights of our farmers to be able to have seed, the most fundamental source of livelihood in a poor country. Eighty percent of the food of the world is even, today, produced by those small farmers of the kind that we have in India. Our small farmers are feeding 1.2 billion Indians. We forget the scale of what smallness means multiplied many times. Because we've got used to the dinosaur mentality. We only see the big. We forget that dinosaurs go extinct.
BILL MOYERS: You have obviously seen things differently. Because you studied nuclear physics, right?
VANDANA SHIVA: I studied nuclear physics. But I also studied quantum theory. My thesis was on non-separability and non-locality in quantum theory.
BILL MOYERS: Which means?
VANDANA SHIVA: Which basically means everything is connected. Because the industrial revolution and the scientific revolution gave us a very mechanistic idea of the universe. First, we were told “Nature is dead. There's no living Earth. How can you even imagine the Earth lives? How can other species-- they're just inferior creatures of God. And you've got to have man's empire over God, over the Earth."
The idea that everything is this hard matter, unrelated to each other is still guiding a lot of science. And genetic engineering is based on that hard matter, genes in isolation, you know? Genes determine everything. There's a master molecule that gives orders. Old patriarchal stuff. The real science--
BILL MOYERS: Patriarchal?
VANDANA SHIVA: The real science is the science of interconnection. Whether it's going to--
BILL MOYERS: Of what?
VANDANA SHIVA: Of interconnectedness, of non-separation. That everything is related.
Farming, for example, you must see the soil, the plants, the pollinators, the food that's produced, all of it in the whole.
BILL MOYERS: Let's take that to the system of economics. Because some people have said that globalization, the movement of ideas, of people, of money, across arbitrary boundaries, as if they didn't exist, also reflects the interconnectedness of everything. That globalization is an economic equivalent of what happens in the world of nature in that everything is connected. And you can't stop it Vandana Shiva. This is the way the world rocks.
VANDANA SHIVA: First of all, this is not interconnectedness of the ecological level. It's an extremely artificial, corporate rule on a planetary scale. Some corporations get to control the world. And then all that's flowing around is commodities. Commodities that don't have to be moving. It's still the old, hard, billiard ball model. You know?
You load the ships from China for cheap consumer products in Wal-Mart here. That is not a world of interconnectedness. The world of interconnectedness would recognize that the rivers of China need to flow, clean and free. It would recognize that the people of China need to exercise in work, in freedom, not as slave labor in factories to produce cheap goods.
This corporate globalization, based on more, higher, a deeper reach of corporations in fields where they had no role, food, water, the air, all into commodities—you know, transforming the Earth into commodities. That flow is not a flow of interconnectedness. And in fact, it is leading to a disconnection. If you look at the violence being perpetuated.
The reason I've written my new book, “Making Peace with the Earth,” is because I'm watching every day. I get calls every day from remote areas. "Please come down. They're shooting us. They're trying to tear down our sacred mountain of Niamgri, which has-- for aluminum. We have an iron ore in our mountains. They're displacing us." Every day there's a land war. Every day there's a water war. Because of the appetite of this global commodity-producing, consumption-based interconnection.
And I often say that what we have is an interconnectedness of the world through greed, which is not how nature works, which is not how humanity works. And an exclusion of people, a killing of their humanity. It is not an accident that with the rise of corporate globalization and economic globalization, we have seen the rise of religious conflict, ethnic conflicts, where people get divided, more and more and more.
So we're seeing human divisions. You're seeing a deeper division between human beings and the Earth. And all you see is a global reach. We are seeing a drop in our sense of a common humanity, and definitely a collapse in the planetary consciousness that we need to have. And for me, those are the two elements of making peace with the Earth. Reclaiming our common humanity and reclaiming our recognition that we are Earth’s citizens.
BILL MOYERS: The last time you were here, you were fighting Coca-Cola in India over the privatization of water. Now your bulls-eye is on Monsanto. Why is Monsanto so crucial to this fight overseas?
VANDANA SHIVA: Monsanto is crucial to this fight because they are the biggest seed company now. Monsanto is privatizing the seed. They control 95 percent of the cotton in India, 90 percent of the soy in this country. They've taken over most of the seed companies of the world.
BILL MOYERS: You say it's all about seeds. And that it comes down to corporations wanting to patent seeds. How does that work? What do you mean it comes down to seeds?
VANDANA SHIVA: Well, it comes down to seeds for the simple reason everything begins a seed. The food on our plate. You and me were seed at one point. The little calf that becomes the cow. Seed is the source of life. And seed is the source of renewal of life. That is where life gets renewed in perpetuity.
BILL MOYERS: So what does it mean when a corporation patents the seed?
VANDANA SHIVA: The first thing it means is a lie. That "I have created it. I have created life."
BILL MOYERS: "I, the corporation."
VANDANA SHIVA: The corporations claim that-- and, you know, we joke and say, a G.M.O., a genetically modified organization, which was the path to get patenting on seeds-- I sat at meetings where the corporations said, "The reason we've got to do genetically modified organisms is because it’s the only way we can claim a patent. A patent is a claim to invention, a claim to creation. And it brings with it an exclusive right to exclude anyone else from using, having, distributing the patented product."
BILL MOYERS: What's the claim? Speak from their side. What are they claiming?
VANDANA SHIVA: Well, they're claiming intellectual property. And they changed the language. They say the seed is no more a seed. It's an intellectual property. They make the society shift its thinking of what is at stake. Seed is the first link in the food chain. And therefore, when you control seed, you control food.
BILL MOYERS: You say that corporations have hijacked our food system. How so?
VANDANA SHIVA: Well I come from a country where there were no corporations in the food system until 20 years ago. They weren't allowed to be. Our rules said food was too precious. It was an important source of livelihood. So we had to protect our small farmers. Every law protected the small farmer, land rights, markets, prices, everything worked so a small farmer could have a living. Food processing stayed in what we call the cottage sector, the small scale sector. That's why we didn't have junk food and processed food. Globalization changes the rules. And agriculture agreement is written by a former official of Cargill to represent the U.S. public.
BILL MOYERS: Cargill--
VANDANA SHIVA: Is the world's biggest grain trader. The second is the intellectual property treaty controlled and written by Monsanto. And then you have the so-called food safety agreement called The Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement. Every one of these are very highly complex names. Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights, Sanitary and Phytosanitary. All of them are basically saying, "Let there be a monopoly of a corporation to have-- to write the rules so that only they can be players in the food system."
And the final step is the retail, where food reaches our table, Wal-Mart wanting to have foreign direct investment in retail. A big issue in India's parliament, a very big issue on the streets of India. So from the seed to the table, corporations are saying, "We want to be the only players." Five in seed, five in grain trade, five in processing, and five in retail. That is a corporate hijack of our food and a corporate dictatorship over our food system.
BILL MOYERS: But here’s what you’re up against. Several activist organizations—some seed businesses, some farmers, organizations like yours—filed a suit here in New York, challenging Monsanto's seed patents. And the U.S. district judge here in New York threw it out, saying it was “a transparent effort to create a controversy where none exists.”
VANDANA SHIVA: Yes, that case has been a sad ruling, a very sad ruling. In my view, it's the same kind of status that says corporations have freedom of speech and therefore they can hijack our democracy. Let them spend as much money as they can to literally buy elections. But for every case of this kind, there are other cases being won.
We have won cases against Monsanto in India.
BILL MOYERS: But if something like this is as bad as you describe it. If it's a monster roaming the countryside. How is it getting away with it?
VANDANA SHIVA: Well, it's getting away for two reasons. First, freedom, democracy, and choice is taken away. It's taken away from the farmer, by not allowing them to have their seed. It's taken away from the consumer by not letting them have labeling to say what they're eating. If there was labeling of G.M. foods, no one would eat it.
BILL MOYERS: Genetically modified--
VANDANA SHIVA: Genetically modified foods. The second deeper tragedy, which is why I link this always to democracy, is the fact that governments are being hijacked and governments are being influenced.
We stopped a whole agreement in Nepal by building a movement. Haitian farmers said, "We don't want this stuff." And they took it after the earthquake. The French have said, "We don't want this stuff." And the WikiLeaks show the ambassador saying, "We need retaliation.” This is a seed war. This is a war.
President Bush and our prime minister signed an agreement on agriculture, on the board of which sit Monsanto and Wal-Mart. And they then sit and dictate the policies. That means that much more work for us to reclaim our democracy and our freedom. So they're getting away, because they're using governments to shut down alternatives and push seed against the will of people.
And President Bush is on record in a film called “The World According to Monsanto,” senior President Bush, asking Monsanto, "What do you want us to do?"
MAN 1 in The World According to Monsanto: And I would say quite frankly, we have no complaints about the way the USDA has handled it. They’re going through an orderly process. They’re making sure as they deal with these new things they do them properly. No, uh, if we’re waiting until September and if we don’t have our authorization we may say something different.
VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH SR. in The World According to Monsanto: Call me. We’re in the dereg business. Maybe we can help.
VANDANA SHIVA: In India, Monsanto, in effect, controls our agricultural ministry and our prime minister's office. And so very, very often, we have to work very closely with our state governments, which are our regional governments, to defend our constitutional rights.
To say, "Why should we be force fed a genetically engineered B.T. eggplant, when we have the most delicious eggplants, 4,000 varieties?" It took a movement, 13 governments, 7 public hearings to put a moratorium. The advisors from here flew in to try and undo that moratorium.
BILL MOYERS: Monsanto advisors?
VANDANA SHIVA: U.S. Government advisors.
BILL MOYERS: On the side of Monsanto?
VANDANA SHIVA: On the side--the White House, the USDA--
BILL MOYERS: Department of Agriculture?
VANDANA SHIVA: And the Department of Agriculture and the FDA all have a revolving door with Monsanto. And this is all on record. So on the top, there's Monsanto, hijacking all our governments. And through that, trying to hijack our food supply. And from the ground, farmers, consumers, regional governments saying, "We want a Monsanto-free food system. We want Monsanto-free, G.M.O.-free, patent-free seed."
BILL MOYERS: Now Vandana, the other side of the argument is made by people like Bill Gates. Bill Gates says that genetically modified seeds are necessary to prevent starvation in poor countries because they enable farmers to double and triple their productivity.
VANDANA SHIVA: Unfortunately, he's so totally wrong on this assumption that genetically modified seeds produce more. In India, Monsanto came in with a claim of 1,500 kilograms of cotton per acre with their genetically engineered cotton. The average yields are 400 kilograms. Our studies show that. The government studies confirm this.
When you grow just genetically modified cotton, you destroy all the associate crops that were feeding the poor families. So it actually leads to less food. When you spray roundup and kill the greens that are necessary for women to have iron, for children to have vitamin A, you're creating hunger. You're creating disease.
Super weeds taking over your fields are a recipe for hunger. Pests overtaking your fields are a recipe for hunger. But worse, seed, patents are a way of getting money out of poor people. This is not a solution to hunger and poverty. This is aggravating the crisis poor people already face.
BILL MOYERS: You know, many people will hear you as they have the others who come on this, at the table and describe what's going wrong in the world. And they always-- they often write me on the web or stop me on the street and say, I heard that diagnosis. But what can I do?
VANDANA SHIVA: I think first thing is each of us has to daily ask a question, "Where am I complicit in a war against the Earth? Where are my daily actions part of a devastation of the planet and with it, a devastation of the lives of people." Because the two go hand in hand. A war against the Earth is a war against people. Peace with the Earth is peace among people.
Getting rid of the inequalities, the violence, the exclusions. And I realize that food is a place where we can all begin. Food is a place which is so loaded with dishonesty and is what keeps a false economy of food alive. The subsidies that go to industrial agriculture.
BILL MOYERS: Subsidies we taxpayers--
VANDANA SHIVA: Taxpayers pay. A high-cost system, which uses a lot of wealth of society, then uses our wealth to cheat on the prices and make costly food look cheap. So our choices are distorted. We go and eat the junk food that then creates the high cost of disease, the high cost of obesity, the high cost of diabetes at an early stage, the high cost of environmental devastation.
And so we need an honest system. And we can begin by creating that honesty and that peace by relating more directly to the food we eat, to the people who grow our food.
To me, the beauty is, every time I come back to this country, there are more farmer's markets. There is more commitment to local food supply. Even in the city of New York, people are saying, "We'll make local food. We'll grow local food." It is an easy step, but it is a very far-reaching step.
BILL MOYERS: You’ve spent time in this country, you know that in inner cities it’s almost impossible to buy fresh fruits and fresh vegetables.
VANDANA SHIVA: That's the challenge we have. It's not that there isn't a food stamp system. Public money is being spent on feeding the poor. But then it's insuring that the only access the poor have with the money they get, again from public money, is to bad food. We could divert this to good food. There's no rule in the book that says healthy food should be a luxury for the rich. Healthy food is a right for all.
BILL MOYERS: For the last 20 years, we've heard and read report after report of progress in India, the creation of a middleclass enjoying its new prosperity. At the same time, we read and hear and see stories of people deprived of their livelihood and their homes from huge environmental projects, big dams, big mines, big infrastructure. I mean, it's always been a lot of poverty there. But are you becoming-- is that great gulf becoming a permanent feature of India in this modern world?
VANDANA SHIVA: Well, you know, my small effort is to not allow it to become a permanent feature. But it's not that these are two separate worlds. They're separated in terms of the status of people, their dignity, their rights. But they are deeply connected at the levels of the Earth's resources.
The reason you have a few families joining the ten richest billionaires of the world in the Forbes list is because they've grabbed the land, the electricity, the resources, the oil, and that is what has left the other India poorer. It wasn't that the other India was left out. They've been pushed out. And that's why while we have some of the highest growth rates in the conventional measure of economic progress, which in my view is not a very reliable measure, we also have two of the most outrageous indicators that are linked to that model. The first is the quarter million farm suicides. If a quarter million farm--
BILL MOYERS: Those have been documented?
VANDANA SHIVA: They're documented. This is Government of India data. This is not our data. It's official statistics. And you can do an overlay. And the highest rates of suicides are in the cotton belt, 95 percent of the cotton today is Monsanto's cotton. So there is a link.
Today ever fourth Indian is hungry and every second Indian child is wasted or stunted, which in effect means that half of India is being robbed of its future. And to me, this is not acceptable. That is why we try and build a kind of agriculture that allows farmers to have a livelihood, for the poorest child or the poorest household to have nutritious food. It is not easy because the whole system is weighed against alternatives that would work for everyone.
It's partly because of the pressure of the corporations, but partly because of not thinking, of just being blind, of having been so fed by what I have called monocultures of the mind, you know, just turning to recipes from somewhere else. And of course the chemical industry will tell you only chemicals grow food. Chemicals grow toxics. Chemicals don't grow food.
That only Monsanto seeds will be able to remove hunger. And all of this new mythology becomes part of the policy framework. But I am deeply committed to make sure that this terrible brainwashing that is robbing our present generation and our future generations, that we are able to work collectively to change it. Because while in your parents’ generation, your generation, and in my generation, the doors of a growing economy were constantly opening up, today we are in a period, where for the majority, the doors are shutting down.
I work with people in Spain, with people in Italy. I advise the governments there, work with the movements there, or Greece, or the Occupy movement right here. They are realizing that what has been created is not going to provide opportunities for all.
BILL MOYERS: As you talk, I remember reading somewhere that Einstein had a big influence on you, right?
VANDANA SHIVA: Yes, I became a physicist because of him. I mean, you know, even as children, you get to, you know, if you read Nightingale, you want to be a doctor or a nurse. I read stuff Einstein wrote and he wrote simple stuff that you could read it. That's why I wanted to be a physicist.
BILL MOYERS: And he said once, I'm paraphrasing it, but "Unless an idea is at first absurd, it has no chance of success."
VANDANA SHIVA: Absolutely. He also said that you cannot solve the problems you face through the same mindset that caused those problems.
BILL MOYERS: Vandana Shiva, thank you very much for being with me again.
VANDANA SHIVA: Thank you, Bill. It's always such a pleasure.
BILL MOYERS: The last time we spoke with her, she was battling Coca-Cola and other multinational giants over the privatization of water in her native India—including the waters of the sacred river Ganges. Since then, Vandana Shiva has become a rock star in the worldwide battle over genetically modified seeds. Those are seeds aggressively marketed around the world by big companies like Monsanto to not only increase, but also to monopolize food production and profits. Opponents challenge their safety, claim they harm the environment, are more costly, and leave local farmers deep in debt and dependent on suppliers.
Following Europe’s example, many American consumers are demanding that food products made from genetically modified seeds be labeled. Monsanto, the world’s largest supplier, claims intellectual property rights over its seeds and usually wins when it takes farmers to court for patent infringement. But in India, Monsanto claimed its seeds would produce bountiful crops and when the results fell short, many bankrupted farmers reportedly killed themselves.
Vandana Shiva, founded India’s Navdanya movement to promote the use of native seeds, and she has become a formidable figure in all these battles. Trained in physics, she’s an activist and prolific author whose books include “Earth Democracy,” “Soil Not Oil,” “Water Wars,” and her latest, “Making Peace With The Earth.” I talked with her again recently, when she came to New York to be honored by Union Theological Seminary.
Welcome back.
VANDANA SHIVA: Wonderful to be back with you.
BILL MOYERS: It's an uphill battle you're waging. How do you keep doing it? What drives you really?
VANDANA SHIVA: You know, we have this very beautiful text in India. We have the Gita.
BILL MOYERS: Bhagavad Gita?
VANDANA SHIVA: The Bhagavad Gita. And there's a very simple lesson that Krishna gives. That you do not measure the fruit of your action. You have to measure your obligation of action. You have to find out what's the right thing to do. That is your duty. Whether you win or lose is not the issue. The obligation to do the right thing, for me, you know, I've grown up as an ecologist in a major level, from my very childhood.
And for me, the diversity of species, their intrinsic value, their integrity is vital. The rights of our farmers to be able to have seed, the most fundamental source of livelihood in a poor country. Eighty percent of the food of the world is even, today, produced by those small farmers of the kind that we have in India. Our small farmers are feeding 1.2 billion Indians. We forget the scale of what smallness means multiplied many times. Because we've got used to the dinosaur mentality. We only see the big. We forget that dinosaurs go extinct.
BILL MOYERS: You have obviously seen things differently. Because you studied nuclear physics, right?
VANDANA SHIVA: I studied nuclear physics. But I also studied quantum theory. My thesis was on non-separability and non-locality in quantum theory.
BILL MOYERS: Which means?
VANDANA SHIVA: Which basically means everything is connected. Because the industrial revolution and the scientific revolution gave us a very mechanistic idea of the universe. First, we were told “Nature is dead. There's no living Earth. How can you even imagine the Earth lives? How can other species-- they're just inferior creatures of God. And you've got to have man's empire over God, over the Earth."
The idea that everything is this hard matter, unrelated to each other is still guiding a lot of science. And genetic engineering is based on that hard matter, genes in isolation, you know? Genes determine everything. There's a master molecule that gives orders. Old patriarchal stuff. The real science--
BILL MOYERS: Patriarchal?
VANDANA SHIVA: The real science is the science of interconnection. Whether it's going to--
BILL MOYERS: Of what?
VANDANA SHIVA: Of interconnectedness, of non-separation. That everything is related.
Farming, for example, you must see the soil, the plants, the pollinators, the food that's produced, all of it in the whole.
BILL MOYERS: Let's take that to the system of economics. Because some people have said that globalization, the movement of ideas, of people, of money, across arbitrary boundaries, as if they didn't exist, also reflects the interconnectedness of everything. That globalization is an economic equivalent of what happens in the world of nature in that everything is connected. And you can't stop it Vandana Shiva. This is the way the world rocks.
VANDANA SHIVA: First of all, this is not interconnectedness of the ecological level. It's an extremely artificial, corporate rule on a planetary scale. Some corporations get to control the world. And then all that's flowing around is commodities. Commodities that don't have to be moving. It's still the old, hard, billiard ball model. You know?
You load the ships from China for cheap consumer products in Wal-Mart here. That is not a world of interconnectedness. The world of interconnectedness would recognize that the rivers of China need to flow, clean and free. It would recognize that the people of China need to exercise in work, in freedom, not as slave labor in factories to produce cheap goods.
This corporate globalization, based on more, higher, a deeper reach of corporations in fields where they had no role, food, water, the air, all into commodities—you know, transforming the Earth into commodities. That flow is not a flow of interconnectedness. And in fact, it is leading to a disconnection. If you look at the violence being perpetuated.
The reason I've written my new book, “Making Peace with the Earth,” is because I'm watching every day. I get calls every day from remote areas. "Please come down. They're shooting us. They're trying to tear down our sacred mountain of Niamgri, which has-- for aluminum. We have an iron ore in our mountains. They're displacing us." Every day there's a land war. Every day there's a water war. Because of the appetite of this global commodity-producing, consumption-based interconnection.
And I often say that what we have is an interconnectedness of the world through greed, which is not how nature works, which is not how humanity works. And an exclusion of people, a killing of their humanity. It is not an accident that with the rise of corporate globalization and economic globalization, we have seen the rise of religious conflict, ethnic conflicts, where people get divided, more and more and more.
So we're seeing human divisions. You're seeing a deeper division between human beings and the Earth. And all you see is a global reach. We are seeing a drop in our sense of a common humanity, and definitely a collapse in the planetary consciousness that we need to have. And for me, those are the two elements of making peace with the Earth. Reclaiming our common humanity and reclaiming our recognition that we are Earth’s citizens.
BILL MOYERS: The last time you were here, you were fighting Coca-Cola in India over the privatization of water. Now your bulls-eye is on Monsanto. Why is Monsanto so crucial to this fight overseas?
VANDANA SHIVA: Monsanto is crucial to this fight because they are the biggest seed company now. Monsanto is privatizing the seed. They control 95 percent of the cotton in India, 90 percent of the soy in this country. They've taken over most of the seed companies of the world.
BILL MOYERS: You say it's all about seeds. And that it comes down to corporations wanting to patent seeds. How does that work? What do you mean it comes down to seeds?
VANDANA SHIVA: Well, it comes down to seeds for the simple reason everything begins a seed. The food on our plate. You and me were seed at one point. The little calf that becomes the cow. Seed is the source of life. And seed is the source of renewal of life. That is where life gets renewed in perpetuity.
BILL MOYERS: So what does it mean when a corporation patents the seed?
VANDANA SHIVA: The first thing it means is a lie. That "I have created it. I have created life."
BILL MOYERS: "I, the corporation."
VANDANA SHIVA: The corporations claim that-- and, you know, we joke and say, a G.M.O., a genetically modified organization, which was the path to get patenting on seeds-- I sat at meetings where the corporations said, "The reason we've got to do genetically modified organisms is because it’s the only way we can claim a patent. A patent is a claim to invention, a claim to creation. And it brings with it an exclusive right to exclude anyone else from using, having, distributing the patented product."
BILL MOYERS: What's the claim? Speak from their side. What are they claiming?
VANDANA SHIVA: Well, they're claiming intellectual property. And they changed the language. They say the seed is no more a seed. It's an intellectual property. They make the society shift its thinking of what is at stake. Seed is the first link in the food chain. And therefore, when you control seed, you control food.
BILL MOYERS: You say that corporations have hijacked our food system. How so?
VANDANA SHIVA: Well I come from a country where there were no corporations in the food system until 20 years ago. They weren't allowed to be. Our rules said food was too precious. It was an important source of livelihood. So we had to protect our small farmers. Every law protected the small farmer, land rights, markets, prices, everything worked so a small farmer could have a living. Food processing stayed in what we call the cottage sector, the small scale sector. That's why we didn't have junk food and processed food. Globalization changes the rules. And agriculture agreement is written by a former official of Cargill to represent the U.S. public.
BILL MOYERS: Cargill--
VANDANA SHIVA: Is the world's biggest grain trader. The second is the intellectual property treaty controlled and written by Monsanto. And then you have the so-called food safety agreement called The Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement. Every one of these are very highly complex names. Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights, Sanitary and Phytosanitary. All of them are basically saying, "Let there be a monopoly of a corporation to have-- to write the rules so that only they can be players in the food system."
And the final step is the retail, where food reaches our table, Wal-Mart wanting to have foreign direct investment in retail. A big issue in India's parliament, a very big issue on the streets of India. So from the seed to the table, corporations are saying, "We want to be the only players." Five in seed, five in grain trade, five in processing, and five in retail. That is a corporate hijack of our food and a corporate dictatorship over our food system.
BILL MOYERS: But here’s what you’re up against. Several activist organizations—some seed businesses, some farmers, organizations like yours—filed a suit here in New York, challenging Monsanto's seed patents. And the U.S. district judge here in New York threw it out, saying it was “a transparent effort to create a controversy where none exists.”
VANDANA SHIVA: Yes, that case has been a sad ruling, a very sad ruling. In my view, it's the same kind of status that says corporations have freedom of speech and therefore they can hijack our democracy. Let them spend as much money as they can to literally buy elections. But for every case of this kind, there are other cases being won.
We have won cases against Monsanto in India.
BILL MOYERS: But if something like this is as bad as you describe it. If it's a monster roaming the countryside. How is it getting away with it?
VANDANA SHIVA: Well, it's getting away for two reasons. First, freedom, democracy, and choice is taken away. It's taken away from the farmer, by not allowing them to have their seed. It's taken away from the consumer by not letting them have labeling to say what they're eating. If there was labeling of G.M. foods, no one would eat it.
BILL MOYERS: Genetically modified--
VANDANA SHIVA: Genetically modified foods. The second deeper tragedy, which is why I link this always to democracy, is the fact that governments are being hijacked and governments are being influenced.
We stopped a whole agreement in Nepal by building a movement. Haitian farmers said, "We don't want this stuff." And they took it after the earthquake. The French have said, "We don't want this stuff." And the WikiLeaks show the ambassador saying, "We need retaliation.” This is a seed war. This is a war.
President Bush and our prime minister signed an agreement on agriculture, on the board of which sit Monsanto and Wal-Mart. And they then sit and dictate the policies. That means that much more work for us to reclaim our democracy and our freedom. So they're getting away, because they're using governments to shut down alternatives and push seed against the will of people.
And President Bush is on record in a film called “The World According to Monsanto,” senior President Bush, asking Monsanto, "What do you want us to do?"
MAN 1 in The World According to Monsanto: And I would say quite frankly, we have no complaints about the way the USDA has handled it. They’re going through an orderly process. They’re making sure as they deal with these new things they do them properly. No, uh, if we’re waiting until September and if we don’t have our authorization we may say something different.
VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH SR. in The World According to Monsanto: Call me. We’re in the dereg business. Maybe we can help.
VANDANA SHIVA: In India, Monsanto, in effect, controls our agricultural ministry and our prime minister's office. And so very, very often, we have to work very closely with our state governments, which are our regional governments, to defend our constitutional rights.
To say, "Why should we be force fed a genetically engineered B.T. eggplant, when we have the most delicious eggplants, 4,000 varieties?" It took a movement, 13 governments, 7 public hearings to put a moratorium. The advisors from here flew in to try and undo that moratorium.
BILL MOYERS: Monsanto advisors?
VANDANA SHIVA: U.S. Government advisors.
BILL MOYERS: On the side of Monsanto?
VANDANA SHIVA: On the side--the White House, the USDA--
BILL MOYERS: Department of Agriculture?
VANDANA SHIVA: And the Department of Agriculture and the FDA all have a revolving door with Monsanto. And this is all on record. So on the top, there's Monsanto, hijacking all our governments. And through that, trying to hijack our food supply. And from the ground, farmers, consumers, regional governments saying, "We want a Monsanto-free food system. We want Monsanto-free, G.M.O.-free, patent-free seed."
BILL MOYERS: Now Vandana, the other side of the argument is made by people like Bill Gates. Bill Gates says that genetically modified seeds are necessary to prevent starvation in poor countries because they enable farmers to double and triple their productivity.
VANDANA SHIVA: Unfortunately, he's so totally wrong on this assumption that genetically modified seeds produce more. In India, Monsanto came in with a claim of 1,500 kilograms of cotton per acre with their genetically engineered cotton. The average yields are 400 kilograms. Our studies show that. The government studies confirm this.
When you grow just genetically modified cotton, you destroy all the associate crops that were feeding the poor families. So it actually leads to less food. When you spray roundup and kill the greens that are necessary for women to have iron, for children to have vitamin A, you're creating hunger. You're creating disease.
Super weeds taking over your fields are a recipe for hunger. Pests overtaking your fields are a recipe for hunger. But worse, seed, patents are a way of getting money out of poor people. This is not a solution to hunger and poverty. This is aggravating the crisis poor people already face.
BILL MOYERS: You know, many people will hear you as they have the others who come on this, at the table and describe what's going wrong in the world. And they always-- they often write me on the web or stop me on the street and say, I heard that diagnosis. But what can I do?
VANDANA SHIVA: I think first thing is each of us has to daily ask a question, "Where am I complicit in a war against the Earth? Where are my daily actions part of a devastation of the planet and with it, a devastation of the lives of people." Because the two go hand in hand. A war against the Earth is a war against people. Peace with the Earth is peace among people.
Getting rid of the inequalities, the violence, the exclusions. And I realize that food is a place where we can all begin. Food is a place which is so loaded with dishonesty and is what keeps a false economy of food alive. The subsidies that go to industrial agriculture.
BILL MOYERS: Subsidies we taxpayers--
VANDANA SHIVA: Taxpayers pay. A high-cost system, which uses a lot of wealth of society, then uses our wealth to cheat on the prices and make costly food look cheap. So our choices are distorted. We go and eat the junk food that then creates the high cost of disease, the high cost of obesity, the high cost of diabetes at an early stage, the high cost of environmental devastation.
And so we need an honest system. And we can begin by creating that honesty and that peace by relating more directly to the food we eat, to the people who grow our food.
To me, the beauty is, every time I come back to this country, there are more farmer's markets. There is more commitment to local food supply. Even in the city of New York, people are saying, "We'll make local food. We'll grow local food." It is an easy step, but it is a very far-reaching step.
BILL MOYERS: You’ve spent time in this country, you know that in inner cities it’s almost impossible to buy fresh fruits and fresh vegetables.
VANDANA SHIVA: That's the challenge we have. It's not that there isn't a food stamp system. Public money is being spent on feeding the poor. But then it's insuring that the only access the poor have with the money they get, again from public money, is to bad food. We could divert this to good food. There's no rule in the book that says healthy food should be a luxury for the rich. Healthy food is a right for all.
BILL MOYERS: For the last 20 years, we've heard and read report after report of progress in India, the creation of a middleclass enjoying its new prosperity. At the same time, we read and hear and see stories of people deprived of their livelihood and their homes from huge environmental projects, big dams, big mines, big infrastructure. I mean, it's always been a lot of poverty there. But are you becoming-- is that great gulf becoming a permanent feature of India in this modern world?
VANDANA SHIVA: Well, you know, my small effort is to not allow it to become a permanent feature. But it's not that these are two separate worlds. They're separated in terms of the status of people, their dignity, their rights. But they are deeply connected at the levels of the Earth's resources.
The reason you have a few families joining the ten richest billionaires of the world in the Forbes list is because they've grabbed the land, the electricity, the resources, the oil, and that is what has left the other India poorer. It wasn't that the other India was left out. They've been pushed out. And that's why while we have some of the highest growth rates in the conventional measure of economic progress, which in my view is not a very reliable measure, we also have two of the most outrageous indicators that are linked to that model. The first is the quarter million farm suicides. If a quarter million farm--
BILL MOYERS: Those have been documented?
VANDANA SHIVA: They're documented. This is Government of India data. This is not our data. It's official statistics. And you can do an overlay. And the highest rates of suicides are in the cotton belt, 95 percent of the cotton today is Monsanto's cotton. So there is a link.
Today ever fourth Indian is hungry and every second Indian child is wasted or stunted, which in effect means that half of India is being robbed of its future. And to me, this is not acceptable. That is why we try and build a kind of agriculture that allows farmers to have a livelihood, for the poorest child or the poorest household to have nutritious food. It is not easy because the whole system is weighed against alternatives that would work for everyone.
It's partly because of the pressure of the corporations, but partly because of not thinking, of just being blind, of having been so fed by what I have called monocultures of the mind, you know, just turning to recipes from somewhere else. And of course the chemical industry will tell you only chemicals grow food. Chemicals grow toxics. Chemicals don't grow food.
That only Monsanto seeds will be able to remove hunger. And all of this new mythology becomes part of the policy framework. But I am deeply committed to make sure that this terrible brainwashing that is robbing our present generation and our future generations, that we are able to work collectively to change it. Because while in your parents’ generation, your generation, and in my generation, the doors of a growing economy were constantly opening up, today we are in a period, where for the majority, the doors are shutting down.
I work with people in Spain, with people in Italy. I advise the governments there, work with the movements there, or Greece, or the Occupy movement right here. They are realizing that what has been created is not going to provide opportunities for all.
BILL MOYERS: As you talk, I remember reading somewhere that Einstein had a big influence on you, right?
VANDANA SHIVA: Yes, I became a physicist because of him. I mean, you know, even as children, you get to, you know, if you read Nightingale, you want to be a doctor or a nurse. I read stuff Einstein wrote and he wrote simple stuff that you could read it. That's why I wanted to be a physicist.
BILL MOYERS: And he said once, I'm paraphrasing it, but "Unless an idea is at first absurd, it has no chance of success."
VANDANA SHIVA: Absolutely. He also said that you cannot solve the problems you face through the same mindset that caused those problems.
BILL MOYERS: Vandana Shiva, thank you very much for being with me again.
VANDANA SHIVA: Thank you, Bill. It's always such a pleasure.
Vandana Shiva on the Problem with Genetically Modified Seeds | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com
Freedom and Justice Party Legal Committee: Commissioners Decision Not Binding
Freedom and Justice Party Legal Committee: Commissioners Decision Not Binding
October 7,2013
FJP affirms that the Commissioners’ recommendation to dissolve the largest popular party in the country is an escalation of exclusion endeavors by the military-appointed regime.
A source in the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP)'s Legal Committee said that the decision by the State Affairs Council’s College of Commissioners on the dissolution of the party can only be deemed a non-binding recommendation to the court.
The same source added that the FJP’s Legal Committee will consider the legal merits of this recommendation, and then respond to them accordingly.
"We will defend the legal position of the party, which was founded on the true essence of the rule of law and did not commit any offense to cause any court to issue orders to disband it."
Separately, Hamza Zawbaa, FJP leading member, described recent maneuvers as an attempt to further exclude the Egyptian people, and not just the Muslim Brotherhood, from the political sphere, "The putschists are moving their coup tools to counter constitutional legitimacy"
http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=31350
October 7,2013
FJP affirms that the Commissioners’ recommendation to dissolve the largest popular party in the country is an escalation of exclusion endeavors by the military-appointed regime.
A source in the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP)'s Legal Committee said that the decision by the State Affairs Council’s College of Commissioners on the dissolution of the party can only be deemed a non-binding recommendation to the court.
The same source added that the FJP’s Legal Committee will consider the legal merits of this recommendation, and then respond to them accordingly.
"We will defend the legal position of the party, which was founded on the true essence of the rule of law and did not commit any offense to cause any court to issue orders to disband it."
Separately, Hamza Zawbaa, FJP leading member, described recent maneuvers as an attempt to further exclude the Egyptian people, and not just the Muslim Brotherhood, from the political sphere, "The putschists are moving their coup tools to counter constitutional legitimacy"
http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=31350
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