Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Imposing a Gender Neutral Gender Fluid World Order?

Immediately after a baby is born, before it is even handed over to the mother, "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl!" is exclaimed in celebration of a precious new life. Why? Because it's so obvious at first glance and really it's the only thing we can determine at this point, all the immutable rest--height, shoe size, etc.-- about this new life will slowly unfold over time. But if external genitalia is not enough--as it's not in incredibly rare cases of hermaphroditic anatomy (0.02% of newborns)--to convince one of the biological reality of males and females, different chromosomes, genes (new study finds 6,500 genes expressed differently according to biological sex), hormones, and internal reproductive organs or lack thereof, and later on, secondary sex characteristics (body shape, voice pitch, breasts, facial hair, etc.) should. Yet, we're told otherwise because...

...gender is irrelevant, yet, at the same time, more relevant than ever before, in the 21st century!

And so it is that gender identity has blossomed into an inescapable frontline issue. You can't turn on your TV, radio, Internet, or open a magazine or newspaper without being confronted with massively-funded gender politics, or more accurately, gender propaganda that cloaks itself in virtue, tolerance, social-justice and anti-bullying campaigns. This so-called fight for gender justice calls for new legislation, educational reform, and a total attitude readjustment for the masses that obliterates fundamental biological differences and once again, tries to redefine nature and turn creation on its head.

'Theybies': Letting Children Decide Their Gender

Is your baby a boy or a girl? Maybe, it’s a “theyby,” or maybe it's a dog or a cat or a labrat. Yes, there is a movement that wants to impose unisêx existence on children keeping their sêx a secret from everyone and referring to individuals in the plural. If this isn't an example of how a post-truth culture of personal conviction evolving into an Alice in Wonderland world, I don't know what is. "Theybies" is the result of the soft-headed, tender-minded ideology and post-modern imaginary thinking world of the coming global civilization as observational and scientifically proven reality is replaced with globally-dictated fantasies that are projected into the immense void that was created when Truth was obliterated. In this case, children become labrats when the will of God is replaced with the will of those who think they are gods or wannabe gods.

Please don't misunderstand.  Like so many people, I was a prime target for bullies throughout my childhood. I was bullied for being too tall, for wearing glasses, for being too shy, for having curly hair, for squinting in the sun, etc., etc. It has left me with my own scars to bear, with a nebulous sense that something was/is wrong with me, with an internalized sense of otherness, and with a sense of disempowerment, because the damage continues even after the bullying has stopped. After a while, children constantly intimidated, harassed and bullied for who they are perceived to be can't help but start to believe their bullies. On the other hand, being bullied in childhood has given me great compassion, sympathy, and empathy for victims of bullies, for underdogs, and the marginalized. In other words, I am in no way condoning bullying behavior, and/or overlooking the plight of those who can't conform to gender stereotypes nor those who are attracted to their own gender. But feelings and beliefs do not determine reality. If that were so I guess I'm 5'8" instead of 6'6". I guess I'm 34-years old instead of 56-years old. I guess I'm black instead of white.  I guess I'm a giraffe instead of a human being....

Although this is changing, most people know  that children  who don't conform to gender roles/norms are at highest risk of abuse by not only their peers but by adults--teachers, parents, coaches, bus drivers,, etc.-- as well. These children are punished every day for failing to fit the ideals of the traditional gender binary. To simply say this is wrong--punishing children for failure to conform to biological sex-- is woefully understated. However, the answer is not to eliminate gender as if that is even possible. The answer is not to encourage children to change their gender at will or replace the gender binary with an array of choices that boggles even the most mature mind. The answer is not to educate children about various forms of sexuality before they even understand sexuality itself. The answer is not to punish those who identify as male or female, and/or punish those who "maintain that there are men and there are women and that the difference between them is fundamental." Well, you get the picture.

My point is that the bullying issue--an issue that's been around since the dawn of man--should not be fodder for cultural and political agendas, because, you see, national "anti-bullying" campaigns and educational reform and adding more laws to the books  have very little to do with stopping bad behavior or with protecting the traditional targets of bullies and everything to do with creating an Orwellian postmodern society that denies objective and immutable reality; it has everything to do with socially engineering dysfunction because in doing so, they create an indoctrinated, traumatized population  that will accept the illusion they call "reality," where hate is love, war is peace, white is black (see Rachel Dolezal’s claim to identify as a black woman when she is clearly not) and people are genderless, like robots.

Under the guise of "social justice" and "anti-bullying", the political elite use the machinery of state education, the mainstream media, and their power to craft legislation to compel children and adults alike into adopting "politically correct" attitudes that supplant objective reality with the supremacy of the subjective desire of elite globalists who push extreme egalitarianism to the point that anyone who states evidence of difference is considered a bigot and/or prejudiced. Today, even to question the notion of gender fluidity is considered a hate crime in a growing number of  circles, despite the fact that it leaves children confused or distressed as the political elite endeavor to "undo" normative concepts of fixed, binary gender identities within our culture.

Gender politics continues to escalate despite the fact that incidents of bullying and intimidation have dropped markedly in recent years, according to surveys by the Department of Justice, yet the transgender or gender neutralizing ideological propaganda continues.  People who don't feel comfortable identifying with their biology are real human beings and should be taken seriously, they should not be marginalized, however transforming the problems of an infinitesimally small fraction of the population into an ideology, a movement that in reality is cover for a much more sinister agenda is not the solution.
And while the task force gives the impression that LGBT students are a primary focus of bullying, evidence suggests that the vast majority of bullying is directed at other students. The DOJ surveys indicate that the percentage of 12- to 18-year-old students who reported being targets of hate-related words based on their sexual orientation fell from 1.0 percent in 2007 to 0.6 percent in 2009.
You see, this is why modern day "scientists"  claim "philosophy is dead" because by eliminating philosophical and critical thinking,  it allows them to recreate reality on their own terms  and push it on a highly brainwashable population who has been taught what to think, not how to think.
Philosophy is dead is the declaration of scientific materialists because it leaves the individual epistemologically stymied because you’re only left with what is quantifiable and empirically demonstrable. Because philosophy is dependent on terminological exactitude and definitional clarity, by eliminating philosophy it allows them to play fast and loose with the terms they invoke such as evolution. They invoke these terms with a great deal of interpretive elasticity. Without terminological exactitude, they invoke this esoteric vernacular that can mean whatever happens to be advantageous to them, the masters of the Anglosphere or Anglo-American empire whose operating system or doctrine is Darwinism, materialism."-- Phillip/Paul Collins
 Despite the fact that bullying is decreasing, the most powerful sectors of our society are bullying us into accepting a prescribed orthodoxy--by using the buzzwords of identity politics to trump both clear thinking and civic disagreement--in this case, muddling gender, claiming it is mutable, irrelevant, and strictly a social construct. We are being bullied into accepting state-approved views of sexuality with sweeping new statewide antibullying regimes that bully because using classic indoctrination techniques to pressure children into adopting the curriculum designers' attitudes and beliefs is bullying. Any differentiation in value between behavior or attitudes from this orthodoxy is considered bigoted and strictly prohibited. Moreover, by pushing extreme gender ideological agendas on the masses, they're not only failing to adequately address the real issue of LGBTQ rights in employment, housing, healthcare, government services, and the military, they're playing divide and conquer games.

The bottom line is that gender identity issues that promote philosophical postulates "Cogito, ergo sum" are best left to, well, philosophy, not science because there is more than enough scientific evidence that proves biological sex is a scientific reality.
...the central issue is not to determine whether one says yes or no to sex…but to account for the fact that it is spoken about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from which they speak, the institutions which prompt people to speak about it...

...one had to speak of it [sexuality] as of a thing to be not simply condemned or tolerated but managed, inserted into systems of utility, regulated for the "greater good" of society. Sex was not something one simply judged; it was a thing one administered."

“We must not think that by saying yes to sex, one says no to power; on the contrary, one tracks along the course laid out by the general deployment of sexuality”-- Michel Focault   (emphasis mine)
I know I have not fully answered, why, as Michel Foucault asserts, campaigns are whipped up by the ruling class and its middle-class allies to impose family structures and values, [or lack thereof,] upon the masses," as that would require, at the very least, a book that fully explores all of the reasons, but to put it very simply: destruction of God + destruction of family + destruction of objective reality including a total rewrite of the biosphere (HG Well wrote of the complete control of all biological forms of life) = personal and state power-motive to arbitrarily define and or create "reality" without any regard for Truth.

Links/Sources:

It’s dangerous and wrong to tell all children they’re ‘gender fluid’

Legalised lying and gender engineering. This is conservative?

Cultural homogenization

The real agenda behind antibullying campaign

Why is the political class is obsessed by gender issues?

The Philosophical Contradictions of the Transgender Worldview

When Harry Became Sally

New Israeli Research Reveals that Men Are Men and Women Are Women
The researchers also found that biological sex also plays a role in preventing specific illnesses. For example, some genes expressed only in the left ventricle of the heart in women work to protect their hearts from disease until the women reach menopause. Another gene, in the liver, processes drugs differently according to the gender.

6,500 genes biased toward one sex or the other
6,500 genes with activity that was biased toward one sex or the other in at least one tissue, adding to the already major biological differences between men and women.’

'Language Is So Important': Non-Binary/Trans Listener Weighs In On 'Theyby' Discussion


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Saturday, December 21, 2013

Who Owns Your Congressman?

From Masters in Accounting:

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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

The Bought and Paid For Black Misleadership Class and the Neutraization of Black Politics

Glen Ford, creator of Black Agenda Report, who so often writes about the "Obama delusional state", where Black politics has been essentially neutralized, presented “The Black Misleadership Class Versus the Movement and its Legacy," to friends of Black Agenda Report gathered at New York City’s historic Riverside Church to celebrate the publication’s 7th anniversary on Friday, October 18.

The "Black Mis-Leadership Class", according to Glen Ford, "sees its own personal financial and social interests as being synonymous with the progress of black people as a whole. This class does not seek transformation of society, it seeks only their own elevation within the existing structures. The rest of Black Amereica,, as far as they're concerned, is supposed to applaud their individual success no matter what is actually happening to the masses of black people at the bottom. It is the politics of putting black faces in high places and to hell with those of us stuck at the bottom, or those of us who are below the bottom in the U.S. prison gulag."

Ford used the examples of rising political star, Cory Booker and already established political star President Barack Obama, who, in reality, are both front men for capital, front men for "the man" and front men for the empire, to illustrate the inherent danger of the black establishment to the American black population. What danger? The disastrous consequences that will result if these self-serving politicians succeed--and it appears as if they most certainly are-- at eliminating the mass movement of African Americans who traditionally acted as a "countervailing force to the power of capital," becoming even more influential internally in Black America, leaving "little hope of effective progressive resistance to the rule of Wall Street, its servants in government, and for peace."

Has the fake-progressive, fake-liberal and in fact deeply conservative FTBP not been granted far too much of a pass on the power-friendly and authoritarian content of his character by those who have been bamboozled into thinking there was something inherently and magically progressive, egalitarian, and democratic about the initially and outwardly startling fact of a black family entering the White House in the land of chattel slavery? As some of us on the Left said from the beginning of Obama’s celebrity, the real story behind the Obama phenomenon has been the ruling class playing the race card in a different way than in King’s time, flipping it, so to speak – a winning strategy for the Democrats at the national level in the post-Civil Rights era, when changing demographics and the more superficial victories of the Civil Rights Movement have made victory possible for nonwhite candidates in national elections. -- Paul Street
Martin Luther King, Jr. is, undoubtedly, rolling in his grave, ironically,  at the election of the first "Black" President, who has managed to crush MLK's dream of:
“...forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws – racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of out society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction society of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”


Going "Beyond Obama" requires successfully passing through and politically defeating that ancient black American political current that holds that achieving the maximum number of black faces in high places is thee root to black progress, to black upward mobility, to black nirvana."



Links:


Black is Back Coalition

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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Are the Beltway Elites Intentionally Throwing the U.S. Under the Bus?

Or just us Americans?  Between the on-going disaster of the incredibly complex Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, roll-out, which Nancy Pelosi famously said they have to pass to find out what it is;  the partial government shut-down spearheaded by a man married to a VP at Goldman Sachs; the threat of the first default in American history, which it appears will be ongoing (see quote below); the firing of top military leaders for what seem like trivial matters, not to mention, S&P rating downgrade of U.S. debt;  the fiscal cliff episode; sequestration, Wall Street provoked financial collapse in 2008, etc., the U.S. is a buffoon on the befuddled world stage right now, a continuous unfolding spectacle, and no one in power seems to give a damn. If anything, they're promoting that image for all it's worth. 

Like the House GOP bill, the emerging Senate measure -- though not finalized -- would reopen the government through Jan. 15 and permit the Treasury to borrow normally until early to mid-February, easing dual crises that have sapped confidence in the economy and taken a sledgehammer to the GOP's poll numbers.
At the same time, beltway politicians have no problem allocating billions, if not trillions of dollars to fight unwanted, undeclared wars that extend  to nearly every corner of the globe; to supposedly "aid" other countries;  to prop up/bail out Wall Street; to fund the Department of Homeland Security, the NSA, the TSA, fusion centers, unconstitutional spying programs, etc,  yet we can't pay our own workers, feed our own people, or pay our troops?

From Asia Times:
Instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies.
This is a nation that claims the moral high ground? American Exceptionalism? Hardly. Murder has become routine as civilians are slayed all over the world via remote-control drone attacks. Torturing prisoners of war is seen as par for the course. Covertly, or not so covertly, spying on American citizens is becoming normalized and a giant casino is what stands in as thee economy of choice. 

It seems the motive here is to pave the way for endless future extortion, plunder, fear-mongering, and the continuous subversion of the middle-class.

In Ted Cruz's own words:
Everyone agrees that the debt ceiling is going to be raised,” Cruz told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow in an interview tonight.

“The question,” he continued, “is whether Harry Reid and the president will maintain the same negotiating position they have on the continuing resolution, which is we will bargain for nothing, give us 100 percent of what we want or we will threaten a default.” 
So, in my humble opinion, there is no question that the powers that be are throwing we, the Americans under the bus, but what about America, the nation?  What could possibly motivate the ruling class to do such a thing?  Well, in a nutshell, globalization.  Our privileged leaders are no longer loyal to our nation, only to the wealthy and powerful corporate elite, which has, "in effect, seceded". These magnates, capitalists, moguls, and banksters are global in every sense of the word, their only loyalty is to their ever-growing immense wealth, as they seek out the most beneficial havens with no regard for national boundaries. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a transnational agreement brokered by corporations and negotiated largely in secret, that President Obama is pushing, is very good evidence that this is indeed, true.

I think the following, by bullingdonmorons sums it up much better than I ever could:
ALL our politicians know exactly what they are doing.

Our politicians are simply service managers for the banks and corporations who now rule the world. We have been shafted. We were never given any choice, no-one ever put it in any manifesto, we never voted for it, but we got it all the same. The bankrupt ideology of Neo-Liberalism, with its dogma of economic liberalization, free trade, privatization and deregulation, and its mantra that all human activity is a market from which a profit can be made.

The ruling elite now own our land, gas, electricity, railways, water and media. They have corrupted our politicians and our police. They are now coming for our pensions, our NHS, our roads, our schools and our green spaces. They have systematically destroyed the unions, dismantled our protections, created mass unemployment and are dismembering the welfare state, They caused an economic crash which bankrupted our economy and yet they walked away with their wealth intact.

And what do we get in return? Austerity, recessions, huge debts and deficits. A government conducting a systematic assault upon the sick, the poor and the disabled, slashing welfare budgets and forcing people off benefits. 500,000 of us now use food banks. They make it easier to sack us, make us work longer hours for less pay, force our kids to work for nothing, raise the retirement age whilst cutting our pensions and weaken our health and safety laws. And all just so a handful of people can be immensely rich. Frankly, it's sickening.

But by far the worst damage they have inflicted upon us is that they have destroyed our children's futures.

My generation grew up under governments that believed in full employment and a welfare state. We benefited from decades of struggle, hard won rights that enabled us to have a decent standard of living, own our homes and be cared for when we got old or sick.

However, for 30 years, we have let them slowly dismantle everything my parents and grandparents had fought for. For the millions born since 1980, the only assets they will own will be the ones passed on by their parents. They live in rented accommodation, or negative equity or have interest only mortgages. Their pensions are worthless. They spend every penny they earn, have no savings and buy everything with credit.

But it's even worse for our grandchildren. 50% of them are now loaded with debt before they even leave education. If they are lucky enough to have a job, it's on minimum wage, on zero hour contracts, or part time work, or stacking shelves for nothing. They have no protections, no rights. Pensions are just a pipe-dream. None of them have any hope of getting a mortgage. This is the true cost of the last 30 years. In our lifetime, they have managed to strip away everything our forefathers built for our kids, reducing them to the level of medieval serfs, possessing NOTHING. It's heartbreaking.

So, It's time to get angry, and we need someone to express that anger, because none of our politicians are going to do it. Someone to speak for the millions of hard working people who only want a decent life for themselves and for their kids to have a decent future. Someone that speaks up for all of us, not just a privileged few. Someone that tells us that our worth is not measured by our wealth, but our value as human beings. Someone that tells us that compassion and empathy are not bullshit. Someone that tells us that ordinary people can expect to have a decent job, a decent house and decent healthcare. Someone that tells us our elderly can live out their final years in a degree of comfort. Someone that tells us our sick and disabled should be allowed to exist with a shred of dignity. Someone that tells us that the most disadvantaged will not be looked down upon as scum.

Someone that tells us that our kids can still have hopes and dreams.

We should all be born equal, with an equal chance to develop, to achieve, to succeed. But far too many are now condemned to a life of struggle by a system that creates so many losers for the benefit of so few winners. It is not only unfair and unjust, it is unsustainable.

And it's time we all stood up and said, enough is enough.



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Monday, October 14, 2013

Merely the Method to Continue the Lie of a Fictitious Political Paradigm.

Americans are being treated to political theater at its finest. It's not a theater of entertainment, however, but a coliseum of enslavement where in the world of deception, perception becomes reality. This theater requires audience participation, where we, the theater-goers, become part of the play. We are a truly captive audience, entranced into mindlessly choosing sides at the frenzied urging of the corporate media and partisan cheerleaders firmly seated behind the microphones and television cameras of the nationally syndicated media.

As the play progresses, we, the American people, become part of each act, believing that we actually have a voice in this pre-scripted performance. We are bombarded with lie after lie, each worse than the previous in an attempt to convince us that we can making a difference by choosing and cheering seemingly opposing sides on the stage before us. The biggest lie of them all is that there are not two sides, but just one. It’s “them versus us” in a fight to the death playing out before us in this 21st century Shakespearean tragedy. It’s not just death, but the premeditated murder of the middle class and anyone without a reservation at the globalists’ table. And the space at that table is limited.

The actors of this play are ostensibly at odds over funding the Affordable Care Act while a peek behind the curtain tells a different story altogether. Like any play, the ending of this has already been determined. The ending, however, is not the same as written in the commemorative program you were given upon your arrival at this theater.

The house lights have been dimmed not just for the performance, but to induce us into a hypnotic trance further enabled by the media mouthpieces of malice. As you gradually become accustomed to the theater lighting, you’ll see that it’s not just a play, but you’re being played. You’re being manipulated into believing that the government shutdown is the actual plot of the play, while it is merely the method to continue the lie of a fictitious political paradigm.

Audience members who remain seated and captivated by the stellar performances of the actors, while maintaining a mental death-grip on the media cheering “their side,” are sadly in the majority. They are yelling at just above a throaty whisper at us and others who see beyond and behind the curtain, telling us to sit down and shut up, as we are reaching a critical moment in the performance.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking toward the October 17th deadline when we the U.S. will officially run out of money in this scripted, manufactured crisis. As the play builds up to its epilogue of evil, it serves its critical purpose of entertaining the masses and diverting our attention from the real issue, which is the killing of the U.S. dollar. The premeditated murder of the United States Petro-dollar is the real act taking place behind the velvet curtain. The play merely buys the actors, the murderers of the working class and the world as we will have once known it, time to arrange their own exodus from this coliseum turned theater.

The actors. aided by the media of malice, continue to perform brilliantly and are effectively distracting the majority of us through the final curtain call. Then, as the actors take their bows amid thunderous applause by the uninitiated, the majority of the audience will never see “it” coming.

They will not see the stagehands open the cages of the lions while simultaneously closing the doors and blocking the exits. The thunderous applause at the curtain call will hide the sound of the engines on the Lear jets and the rotor noise on the helicopters that will whisk the actors to safety, away from the unspeakable carnage that was planned from the beginning.

By the time the screams from those who remained dutifully seated become unbearable, the globalist bankers, the money changers, the power brokers pulling the strings of the political puppets, will be far from earshot. When the house lights are turned on, the remaining theatergoers who survived will suddenly awaken to a different life. For it was never about what was seen, but always about what was hidden. It was never about the government shutdown, but the shutdown of the majority. The same majority that continues to cheer for their side, unable or unwilling to comprehend that there is only one side. Their side." -- -- Global Research

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Tuesday, August 06, 2013

The Toughest Guy in Sicily is Gay.

Governor Rosario Crocetta--or Presidente della Regione Siciliana--elected in October 2012, is the unlikeliest man  to govern the testosterone-fueled Mafiosi Sicily as he is not only anti-mafia, but  openly gay.. Yet, despite the two strikes against him, he won the  support of the people with his accomplishments during his anti-mafia crusade as Gela’s mayor for seven years (2003-2009).  During that time, Crocetta purged the city government of  this dangerous entity, and persuaded many shopkeepers to quit paying extortion fees.  In addition, as Gela's mayor, he put the brakes on the single-bidding contract system that left the city’s garbage collection under Stidda control. He also served on the EU’s Anti-Mafia Commission. Needless to say, he's made a very dangerous enemy, and has fortunately survived three assassination attempts.  Still, Crocetta said his election victory as Sicily's governor means "the Mafia can pack its bags."
Back when he was mayor of a coastal town plagued by mob violence, Crocetta took on the dons, combating the ingrained practice of pizzo, or forced protection payments, while helping put hundreds of gangsters behind bars. His anti-mafia revolution led crime boss Daniele Emmanuello to call for his assassination, with police subsequently arresting a series of mobsters for plots against his life.

A devoted Catholic, Crocetta claims that southern Italy is "less homophobic than the north." His sexuality rarely became a dominant issue during his governor’s campaign, but it was there, just beneath the surface, and on occasion, even made the headlines. Nevertheless, as a matter of contention, homophobia paled in comparison to the act of declaring "war" on La Cosa Nostra. Not too long ago, anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino attempted to serve a far-reaching blow to the Mafia with the introduction of 'mafia association' as a charge before they were murdered in 1992.
Freedom is about the moment you stand up and rebel. Sicily has stood up and is on its feet. What is happening here? A cultural revolution. I don’t know if we’ll succeed, but it’s about time we tried.” -- Rosario Crocetta
Links:

Inside The Sicilian Mafia's Drug Empire

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Friday, November 09, 2012

Profit and Politics of Genocide in Central Africa.

What is the real agenda of AFRICOM? Is there a massive loss of life in central Africa orchestrated by western powers? Are Bono, Ben Affleck, and CFR members: Angelina Jolie and George Clooney (Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP)) really the good guys they purport to be? Or merely propaganda tools used in an effort to legitimize the U.S. military’s AFRICOM unit in the region through “humanitarian” interventions?

Keith Harmon Snow, now an independent journalist, after working as a researcher/consultant and investigator of war crimes, human rights and genocide for the United Nations, Genocide Watch and Survivors Rights International--who will never work for the "system" again because he dared to expose what lurks behind the establishment narrative--says there is a massive loss of life in central Africa orchestrated by western powers, that Washington’s corporate interests--vast potential wealth in mining, agricultural commodities and oil--are hidden behind “humanitarian interventions,” and let's not forget, "promoting freedom and democracy." The US has recently invaded Libya, Uganda, Somalia, Sudan. Next up: Mali.

A 2010 UN report charged Rwanda’s army with “committing atrocities that could be classified as crimes of genocide,” backing up a report that came out in 1997. Although, keep in mind, the aforementioned "leaked" U.N. Report on Atrocities in Congo 1993-2003 is a major whitewash of western interests and their involvement in brutalization and mass murder of nearly ten million in the Congo. The primary violence in the Congo began in 1996 with the invasion of the U.S. supporting these forces

In fact, the genocide in the mineral rich Congo is the deliberate result of American and British policy. Since 1996, almost 10 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been slaughtered by Rwandan and Ugandan mercenaries, financed and protected by the United States and Great Britain. Why? The plundering of Congo’s mineral resources in order to sell to multinational corporations, most of them based in the United States and Europe.

Moreover, there is a new, but deceptive, drive to end hunger in Africa through large-scale agribusiness. Needless to say, helping poor households in rural Africa feed themselves in an affordable manner is not the goal. Corporate interests have hijacked African food and agricultural policy.

"These companies and foreign governments are primarily interested in producing food for export. Their interventions have done little to improve household food security amongst poor Zambians.

It is time we realised that, amid all the fanfare for a new green revolution in Africa, and the upsurge in donor and corporate interest in African agricultural production, the best way to address food insecurity for the poor — emphasising access and not production — has regressed. Why? The big money, for input providers, agro-processors and traders, is in building more capital-intensive and market-integrated African farming systems. There is little to no profit to be made from eradicating hunger.
The politics of genocide, genocide accusation, genocide denial, and genocide inflation are very important concepts to understand before you can truly grasp the reality of genocide. Then, we can challenge, for example, the officially sanctioned narrative in Rwanda. The people of Central Africa continue to suffer under brutal terrorism. We should be asking: who are the real victims and who are the real criminals, and what really happened in Rwanda? What is happening now in the Democratic Republic of Congo? The genocide that keeps on going, without end in sight.

More at The Real News  

Links:

 Raise Hope for Congo  

PENTAGON PRODUCES SATELLITE PHOTOS OF 1994 RWANDA GENOCIDE

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Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Voting Charade

As someone commented on the George Carlin video below, "Fuck this illusory nonsense. It's hypocrisy disguised as righteousness and I'm sick of it."

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Thursday, October 25, 2012

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss.

The genius of our current plutocratic power structure is their ability to present the illusion of change on the surface, while maintaining continuity just beneath the surface. In other words, despite change in leadership, despite change in political party, despite promises to make a difference in the state or condition of things, despite promises to reform, nothing deviates from the status quo, wealth and privilege continue to reign supreme and our leaders, regardless of party affiliation, remain faithful to imperialist aims and objectives.

Of course, this should come as no surprise, since it's the wealthy and privileged--whether individually, or corporately--who provide most, if not all the funding for both the National Democratic Party and National Republican Party. The same wealthy who who demand free enterprise, at the same time that they totally support monopoly and vested interest. They use the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously in order to keep "we the people" in eternal subjugation.

If you don't believe the two-party system is a sham, consider the continuing escalation of economic inequality, economic insecurity, economic exploitation, corporatized media, military intervention, assault on our civil liberties, "Big Brother", educational indoctrination, not to mention the ever-increasing prison population (since the 1970’s our prison population has increased by over 500%, with over 2.2 million people in prison, 900,000 of them, black) over the last four decades.

What is the point of voting when the outcome is the same?

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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Continuous Cycle of Child Poverty: US 2nd Highest Rate In the Developed World

After hearing the US is #2, to be sure, Mitt Romney exclaimed, "Why aren't we #1, dammit?!?"  while, under his breath,  President Obama mutters, "I got Osama."  Anyway.......... 

Child Poverty Rates in Developed World
The most recent U.S. Census Bureau  poverty data shows millions of families struggling fiercely to keep their heads above water.  According to the census, fourteen states saw statistically significant increases in their child poverty rates, 26 states saw small increases, and nine states and the District of Columbia saw small declines in child poverty rates last year. The bottom line is that 16.1 million children are living in poverty in our wealthy nation with more than 7 million living in extreme poverty.

Moreover, if you use the definition of poverty used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which states a child is living in poverty if he or she is growing up in a household where disposable income, when adjusted for family size and compensation, is less than 50% of the median disposable income, 30 million children are living in relative poverty.

So, given America's immense wealth, the U.S. has/has had unusually high rates of child poverty and income inequality, even prior to the 2008 financial meltdown. In fact, the U.S. has one of the highest child poverty rates in the developed world.  Only Romania surpasses the U.S.

One of the problems is that the U.S. does little to assist low-income working families who, despite each adult working 40 hours per week or more, do not earn enough to make ends meet. 

Yet despite the toxic toll a high child poverty rate takes on a nation as wealthy as the U.S., our political leaders rarely if ever mention it.  It's only very recently that  President Obama broke his silence on child poverty while Mitt Romney ignores the issue completely.  After all, children do not vote and they do not pay taxes. 



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Monday, October 08, 2012

Genocidal Juggernaut

9/11/2001 is the catalyst for many of the events shaping our world today, so it's very important to fully understand what took place on that fateful day, and even more importantly, the response. Long time researcher and political investigator of the hidden or stolen history of the United States, John Judge (video below) says it's essential that you comprehend that since the end of WWII--and even during WWII--there have been two governments operating simultaneously: one that's visible and one that's not.

He goes on to say that since WWII, the creation of a permanent war economy and the inception of a national security state have carried out and carry out covert and overt operations and wars that have led to the deaths of at least 10 million people, and intervention into the politics of hundreds of countries around the world.

Moreover, the history of the concentration of wealth and technological developments has contributed to the transformation of the industrial age into the information age. The end of WWII marked the end of the colonial period and eventually the neo-colonial period to the period we’re now in, commonly referred to as the neo-liberal model of control. This type of control is much more indirect, through economic manipulations—loans, structural adjustment plans, etc—that let you maintain an illusion of what the powers that be like to call a free market, and/or the democratic state as long as it doesn’t interfere with the economic concentrations or as Buckminster Fuller called it in his last book, GRUNCH Gross Universal Cash Heist.

When you have this type of development in capital economies- an ever growing concentration of wealth and a leap forward in the technological capabilities--labor becomes expendable. Add to that the devaluation of currency and the transformation of a production economy into a service/speculation economy where unregulated derivatives are more than ten times the size of the stock market, basically, an economy of theft, and you get a tremendous pressure for genocide.

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Monday, August 20, 2012

Joe Biden: Super Servant of the Super Rich? Or the Working Man?

It wasn't all that long ago that I was gushing like a school girl at a Justin Bieber concert over Joe Biden, as if he were somehow above the political fray, when, in fact, he could be the poster boy for the ongoing tug-of-war inside the Beltway.  I truly believed he was a true friend of the working man,  making excuses for his despicable support of the bankruptcy bill, and waxing on about his integrity.

Well, those days are over. I  finally opened my eyes when I put the lovable gaffe-prone persona aside and looked at the most corporate friendly state in the U.S.: Joe Biden's state: Delaware. Not to mention his position in the Continuity of Government (COG) (set up after WWII to ensure continuity of government in case of a nuclear attack. Over the years, each presidential administration has expanded the powers of the Continuity of Government, whose members are permanent and not elected. On 9/11, the COG was officially initiated. Members include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Porter Goss, Joe Biden. The COG is classified Top Secret and neither the public nor Congress is allowed to review it. It is, in effect, a completely secret government that operates at the highest levels of national security, intelligence, military, and industry, with full authority to do whatever it wants without accountability) and last but certainly not least, learning that he drafted the core provisions of the Patriot Act in 1995.

CNET reported:
It previewed the 2001 Patriot Act by allowing secret evidence to be used in prosecutions, expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and wiretap laws, creating a new federal crime of “terrorism” that could be invoked based on political beliefs, permitting the U.S. military to be used in civilian law enforcement, and allowing permanent detention of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review.* The Center for National Security Studiessaid the bill would erode “constitutional and statutory due process protections” and would “authorize the Justice Department to pick and choose crimes to investigate and prosecute based on political beliefs and assocblank Joe Biden Drafted the Core of the Patriot Act in 1995 ... Before the Oklahoma City Bombingiations.”
Russ Baker believes his gaffes are secretly brilliant. I'm inclined to agree.
All this makes me wonder if something else is not going on. It makes me wonder if these remarks were intended to have the exact effect they did.

Let me explain.

There is no question that Joseph Biden has a long history of putting his foot in his mouth. But the mere expectation that everything he says is accidental or ill-conceived also puts him in a good position to put out material that actually helps Obama. And it is not as if Biden is completely incapable of memorizing his lines—or at least reading them off a teleprompter.

Maybe these most recent remarks were mistakes. But mistakes tend to come in debates, in response to questions, not in prepared speeches. And these seem to have been prepared remarks, a carefully calculated effort, as with all good speeches, to create some theatre—and to include at least one “hot” phrase that will get picked up by the electronic media. There is simply no point to having Biden speak to a live audience without considering how to multiply the ultimate audience by a factor of thousands. And no point to having him speak at all unless he has some zinger that will appeal to news producers and headline writers.
So, is Joe Biden merely an "average Joe", a champion of the common man?  Or, an executor of plutocrat policy, who although his allegiance to capitalist imperialism, and neo-liberalism? Who can carry out his mission without provoking the wrath of the progressives, the liberals?

If nothing else, gotta wonder how he's lasted so long inside the beltway.

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Saturday, August 04, 2012

In Lies We Trust: CIA Hollywood and Bioterrorism

One has to wonder why the more technologically advanced we become, the more our quality of life declines, from health to loss of freedoms.  The marriage between economic and political interests, government and private industry, directed secretly by covert intelligence is one explanation. 

We inherited Hitler's biological warfare program through "Operation Paperclip" doctors and scientists who went to work for the military to continue the work they started under Hitler.  One of those doctors, was Eric Traub, Hitler's top biological weapons developer.

In the early 1990s, from the US Army War College, came "Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)." Two decades after the 1963 Iron Mountain Report came out, this document asks the question, How do we control the American people and beyond if we move to an era of permanent peace?
Command and Control Warfare (C2W). Iraq, starting with Desert Storm, became a sort of 'battle laboratory' for the RMA.

The big concern was that these new systems of control may run contrary to American values. So, they employed the media to do their dirty work: condition we, the people to accept their value system; thus, accept their new wars, and methods of conducting war.

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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Our Two Party System: Ideological Divide-and-Conquer

British political dialectic
The false left-right continuum in political discourse, more often than not, is economic: equality as opposed to inequality, government intervention as opposed to free market, tolerance as opposed to status quo. This political spectrum, in existence for over 200 years, has significantly moved to the right. To understand just how far it's shifted to the right, consider former Republican President Eisenhower's farewell address  warning against the dangers of the military industrial complex, and the "potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power [that] exists and will persist.” Not to mention, Eisenhower invested heavily in our national infrastructure, and the marginal tax rate on wealthiest American, at the time, was 91%!

So, right now, the Democratic Party is more conservative than many former Republican presidents. Moreover, the two parties have become almost indistinguishable.

The Hegelian dynamic (Thesis v. Antithesis = Synthesis) at the core of American politics.

No matter what the issue, this invisible dialectic controls both the conflict and the resolution, leading everyone into a new cycle of conflicts, often involving violence and bloodshed, endless war. This constant conflict and continual merging of opposite ideologies, established by extreme right or left groups, is supposed to lead to unification, global order..

Our left-right political paradigm  is a great example of this dynamic as the governing class has always created artificial extremes ("thesis" and "antithesis") to superficially conflict with each other to create "synthesis", which is made to appear to be the product of consensus. The dirty little secret about the consensus process is that any and all issues discussed usually have a pre-determined outcome.

In other words, the conflict between political left and the political right eventually causes the two sides to compromise toward "group think", forming a center ground. Over time, this process has all but removed any significant difference between the two parties; however, at the same time, plays up insignificant and/or created differences - gay marriage, abortion - to perpetuate continuous conflict. And because power, by nature is conservative — it wants to protect its current privileged position - it follows that this "center ground" is disposed to preserve existing conditions.

Most of us totally oblivious to the fact that we're voting for basically the same ideas regardless of our political affiliation, yet we're totally unaware that we do not have a choice at the polls. To become aware, step outside the dialectic and release yourself from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Attorney General Tom Corbett Did Not Want to Pursue Sandusky Pedophile Case

Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett made it clear to his staff that he did not want to pursue the pedophile case against former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky.

“Tom didn’t want to do it,” one Corbett associate explains.

A separate investigation involving AG office narcotics Agent Anthony Sassano in November 2010 finally broke the "Corbett-imposed logjam" in the Sandusky case.

On his PACE computer database system, he discovered that the former football coach was also supposedly under investigation for a pedophile complaint by Corbett’s heretofore-inactive state trooper, and prosecutor.

Centre County District Attorney Michael Madeira referred the Sandusky pedophile investigation to Attorney General Tom Corbett in March 2009. DA Maderia cited a personal conflict of interest between himself and Sandusky.

AG Corbett told key members of his staff that he did not want to actively pursue the Sandusky case.

"Tom didn't want to do it," one Corbett associate explains.

The case, per standard procedure, was assigned to a state trooper, and a prosecutor. Nevertheless, without Corbett's approval, and without the active shepherding of the AG, the investigation went nowhere.

At the time the pedophile case was first received by the AG's office in 2009, particulars of the case were, by routine procedure, entered into the Office of Attorney General's PACE computer system database. PACE is an acronym for Police Automated Computer Entry.

The PACE system is a computerized indexing and intelligence system. It allows law enforcement personnel to discover if a potential target is under investigation by other law enforcement officers or agencies.

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Friday, December 23, 2011

Ron Paul and the Multi-Trillion Dollar a Year System of Wealth Generation for the Inside Players

We've all heard, "He who controls the gold makes the rules", as well as the famous quote, “Those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.” Yet, most of us do not fully comprehend who owns all the gold, and we're conditioned to believe that the only pertinent history is stored on our Twitter, Facebook, and/or cell phone.

Meanwhile, in our ignorance of history, without any idea who really owns all the gold, war on the middle class; war on our civil liberties; a widening inequality gap; unemployment and underemployment; Washington gridlock, and wars, proxy wars, and secret drone wars continue to escalate, supposedly on our behalf.

What's the answer? Why, Ron Paul, of course.

But, first, before settling on Ron Paul as a savior, who will deliver "We the People", from evil, don't you think it's important to understand not only history, but who really owns the gold, and its implications? Because, one thing for certain, it's not us. Over 80% of the physical gold is owned by the "ruling elite". "We the People" own less than 10%, with independent commercial interests owning the rest.

As I have posted before, here, and here,  according to the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) the Federal Reserve, despite what Ron Paul says, is already audited, and the currency is already backed, at least, in part, by gold, and, in part, by us - our labor.  Moreover, the market price of gold on the London Fixing ranges between $1600 to $1800 per oz; however, the statutory price of gold is $42.22 per fine troy ounce. As of 9/30/11, there were 261,498,900. And most importantly, the  treasury may redeem gold certificates at any time for the statutory price!

Walter Burien, in his article, SO YOU WANT A GOLD BACKED CURRENCY - THE 50-YEAR PLAN IS COMING TO A CLOSE, explains that what we are seeing at this time is the "culmination of a “50 year plan” that began in 1963 - after the assassination of JFK - when we went off the gold and silver standard...that's when the 50-year plan began. At that time, there was an organized effort to "buy all of the gold each and every year. Hundreds of tons per month as they manipulated to keep the price low."

By 1999, their stockpile of gold increased by over 20,000 tons, and continued to do so right up until 2000. By 2001, the stage was set as 9/11 created the sky-is-falling fear, aided by the 2008 financial crisis, needed so that Ron Paul's sound-bite conditioning on the importance of gold-backed currency could really take off.

This promotion by the cartel to make the public believe “it is essential to have a gold backed currency” will continue.  And according to Burien, "international circumstances will be created to bring the fear level to the brink". He goes on to say, in 2013-14, the powers that be will yield to demands for gold backed currency, which will give the cartel the liquidity to unload what they have stockpiled for half a century as the country obtains the physical gold to back the currency at 1000% + profit locked in, leaving the public as the bag-holder.

After the conversion is complete, then the collapse in gold prices begins (2015-16), with the true and real collapse of the dollar now taking place backed by the quickly diminishing value of gold. Hence, the wealth transfer to the cartel, complete.

This should come as no surprise to any of us. The 'Godfather' federal government - or in Burien's words, "wealthiest organized corporate syndicate ever known who out of self interest selectively spoon feeds the population the parameters of how and what to think due to the money involved. They have the best psychologists; market strategists; and create the curve of public opinion that money can buy" - has been making us an offer we can't refuse for quite some time, as one man summed it up so well:. 

alljammedup wrote:

"...here's my BAD dream as the owner of a small business...(speaking of the Federal Government) they'd like to make me a business offer. Seriously. This is a real offer. In fact, you really can’t turn them down, as you’ll come to understand in a moment…

Here’s the deal. You’re going to start a business or expand the one you’ve got now. It doesn’t really matter what you do or what you’re going to do. I’ll partner with you no matter what business you’re in – as long as it’s legal.

But I can’t give you any capital – you have to come up with that on your own. I won’t give you any labor – that’s definitely up to you. What I will do, however, is demand you follow all sorts of rules about what products and services you can offer, how much (and how often) you pay your employees, and where and when you’re allowed to operate your business. That’s half of your profits.

Now in return for my rules, I’m going to take roughly half of whatever you make in the business each year. Half seems fair, doesn’t it? I think so. Of course, that’s half of your profits.

You’re also going to have to pay me about 12% of whatever you decide to pay your employees because you’ve got to cover my expenses for promulgating all of the rules about who you can employ, when, where, and how. Come on, you’re my partner. It’s only “fair”.

Now…after you’ve put your hard-earned savings at risk to start this business, and after you’ve worked hard at it for a few decades (paying me my 50% or a bit more along the way each year), you might decide you’d like to cash out – to finally live the good life.

Whether or not this is “fair” – some people never can afford to retire – is a different argument. As you partner, I’m happy for you to sell whenever you’d like…because our agreement says, if you sell, you have to pay me an additional 20% of whatever the capitalized value of the business is at that time.

I know…I know… you put up all the original capital. You took all the risks. You put in all of the labor. That’s all true. But I’ve done my part, too. I’ve collected 50% of the profits each year. And I’ve always come up with more rules for you to follow each year. Therefore, I deserve another, final 20% slice of the business. Oh…and one more thing…

Even after you’ve sold the business and paid all of my fees…I’d recommend buying lots of life insurance. You see, even after you’ve been retired for years, when you die, you’ll have to pay be 50% of whatever you estate is worth.

After all, I’ve got lots of partners and not all of them are as successful as you and your family. We don’t think its “fair” for your kids to have such a big advantage. But if you buy enough life insurance, you can finance this expense for your children.

All in all, if you’re a very successful entrepreneur…if you’re one of the rare, lucky, and hard-working people who can create a new company, employ lots of people, and satisfy the public…you’ll end up paying me more than 75% of your income over your life.

Thanks so much.

I’m sure you’ll think my offer is reasonable and happily partner with me…but it doesn’t really matter how you feel about it because if you ever try to stiff me – or cheat me on any of my fees or rules- I’ll break down your door in the middle of the night, threaten you and your family with heavy, automatic weapons, and throw you in jail.

That’s how civil society is supposed to work right? This is America, isn’t it? That’s the offer America gives its entrepreneurs. And the idiots in Washington wonder why there are no new jobs…LOL.....who wants to be in business today?????

FYI...65% of new jobs were created by small businesses.

http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf
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Sunday, October 30, 2011

The Truth Does Not Fear Investigation


Question the authorities today, and you are labeled a conspiracy theorist...too mentally ill to function, as is stated in the CBC's documentary, Conspiracy Rising (it appears Stephen Harper has made great inroads in co-opting the Canadian mainstream media).

Here's the thing. There is no need to theorize about conspiracy. Given the available data - even from the mainstream news media - it's very simple to formulate very reasonable opinions by asking a few simple questions. For instance, President Obama's Cabinet appointments.  He plucked them from straight from the crew who caused the economic crash! Hello? Is the fox guarding the hen house, or what?

Here's another one. As economic circumstances progressively worsen for the masses,economic circumstances progressively improve for the elite - the perpetrators. Hello? Happy coincidence? I think not. Not to mention, the convergence of an unprecedented era of legal immunity for the elite, during the four decades that the incarceration rate for ordinary Americans - especially, the underclass - increased five-fold, from 93 per 100,000 in 1972 to 491 per 100,000 in 2007. Basically, the destruction of the rule of law, according to Glenn Greenwald, in his new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful.
“Not all ‘conspiracies’ are created equal. The government did kill JFK, and they lied about it. That does not mean there was never a Holocaust, or that the world is run by the Illuminati.” - John Judge
The lawful definition of conspiracy is the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. How can anyone make the claim, in this era of rampant corruption, that this never happens?

So, let's forget about the word, conspiracy, as we've been programmed to associate lunacy with that term. Let's talk about deep politics, the political practices, habits, customs, undertakings, in which every effort is made to prevent publication.

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Friday, August 26, 2011

America Shouldn't Rule Out a Third Bush Administration

Yep, it's true.  An unholy trinity of Bush Presidents is not only possible, it's probable, as the Bush dynasty family - George H.W. the father, George W. the brother, and George P. the son - is urging Jeb Bush to run for President. George P. Bush had the nerve to say said, "Make no mistake about it, I think a lot of people sorely miss and would relish some sort of return of that type of approach to leading our country."

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Friday, August 19, 2011

Bank of America's Dead Drop to Rick Perry and Goldman Sachs VP Changes Name to Lobby From Inside.

Bank of America is cutting 3,500 jobs this quarter according to an internal memo, as the biggest U.S. bank grapples with its $1 trillion problem-loan portfolio and growing economic concerns. Upon wider review, at least 10,000 jobs are likely to be eliminated in total.

Meanwhile, from Zero Hedge:

Right after Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry spoke at a Politics and Eggs breakfast in Bedford, New Hampshire, an unknown gentlemen approaches a casual Perry like an Ian Flemming character, and proceeds to dead drop the following: "Bank of America... We will help you out"... and silently moves on. At least we know now who is funding what, and whose interests potential future president Perry will be paid to defend.



Full event can be found here. Before someone pulls it, that is.

Then, come to find out that a former Goldman Sachs VP, named Peter Simonyi (who previously worked for the SEC) changed his name to Peter Haller to lobby Congress from the inside. He ended up working as a top staffer for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) on the Oversight Committee, and went on to argue against regulations on Wall Street.



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Thursday, August 18, 2011

Studies Suggest Wealthy Are Less Empathetic, More Selfish, and Less Altruistic.

This might not be news to most people, but now studies suggest that the upper classes really are different, and not in a good way. This, according to psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner. Their life experience, or lack thereof, makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish.

In fact, he says, the philosophical battle over economics, taxes, debt ceilings and defaults that are now roiling the stock market is partly rooted in an upper class "ideology of self-interest."

“We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,” he said. “Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.”

In an academic version of a Depression-era Frank Capra movie, Keltner and co-authors of an article called “Social Class as Culture: The Convergence of Resources and Rank in the Social Realm,” published this week in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, argue that “upper-class rank perceptions trigger a focus away from the context toward the self….”

In other words, rich people are more likely to think about themselves. “They think that economic success and political outcomes, and personal outcomes, have to do with individual behavior, a good work ethic,” said Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Because the rich gloss over the ways family connections, money and education helped, they come to denigrate the role of government and vigorously oppose taxes to fund it.

“I will quote from the Tea Party hero Ayn Rand: “‘It is the morality of altruism that men have to reject,’” he said.

Whether or not Keltner is right, there certainly is a “let them cake” vibe in the air. Last week The New York Times reported on booming sales of luxury goods, with stores keeping waiting lists for $9,000 coats and the former chairman of Saks saying, “If a designer shoe goes up from $800 to $860, who notices?”

According to Gallup, Americans earning more than $90,000 per year continued to increase their consumer spending in July while middle- and lower-income Americans remained stalled, even as the upper classes argue that they can’t pay any more taxes. Meanwhile, the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us continues to grow wider, with over 80 percent of the nation’s financial wealth controlled by about 20 percent of the people.

Unlike the rich, lower class people have to depend on others for survival, Keltner argued. So they learn “prosocial behaviors.” They read people better, empathize more with others, and they give more to those in need.

That’s the moral of Capra movies like “You Can’t Take It With You,” in which a plutocrat comes to learn the value of community and family. But Keltner, author of the book “Born To Be Good: The Science of A Meaningful Life,” doesn’t rely on sentiment to make his case.

He points to his own research and that of others. For example, lower class subjects are better at deciphering the emotions of people in photographs than are rich people.

In video recordings of conversations, rich people are more likely to appear distracted, checking cell phones, doodling, avoiding eye contact, while low-income people make eye contact and nod their heads more frequently signaling engagement.

In one test, for example, Keltner and other colleagues had 115 people play the “dictator game,” a standard trial of economic behavior. “Dictators” were paired with an unseen partner, given ten “points” that represented money, and told they could share as many or as few of the points with the partner as they desired. Lower-class participants gave more even after controlling for gender, age or ethnicity.

Keltner has also studied vagus nerve activation. The vagus nerve helps the brain record and respond to emotional inputs. When subjects are exposed to pictures of starving children, for example, their vagus nerve typically becomes more active as measured by electrodes on their chests and a sensor band around their waists. In recent tests, yet to be published, Keltner has found that those from lower-class backgrounds have more intense activation.

Other studies from other researchers have not produced the clear-cut results Keltner uses to advance his argument. In surveys of charitable giving, some show that low-income people give more, but other studies show the opposite.

“The research regarding income and helping behaviors has always been little bit mixed,” explained Meredith McGinley, a professor of psychology at Pittsburgh’s Chatham University.

Then there is the problem of Tea Partiers’ own class position. While they are funded by the wealthy, many do not identify themselves as wealthy (though there is dispute on the real demographics). Still, a strong allegiance to the American Dream can lead even regular folks to overestimate their own self-reliance in the same way as rich people.

As behavioral economist Mark Wilhelm of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis pointed out, most people could quickly tell you how much they paid in taxes last year but few could put a dollar amount on how they benefited from government by, say, driving on interstate highways, taking drugs gleaned from federally funded medical research, or using inventions created by people educated in public schools.

There is one interesting piece of evidence showing that many rich people may not be selfish as much as willfully clueless, and therefore unable to make the cognitive link between need and resources. Last year, research at Duke and Harvard universities showed that regardless of political affiliation or income, Americans tended to think wealth distribution ought to be more equal.

The problem? Rich people wrongly believed it already was.

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