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Destabilizing Venezuela Pre-Election
by Stephen Lendman
On October 7, Venezuelans get to choose between Bolivarianism under Chavez and Henrique Capriles Radonski's corporatism they rejected resoundingly in 1998.
Polls show they'll do it again. IVAD late August results show Chavez ahead 55% to 34%. Only 10% of Venezuelans are undecided.
Eight major July polls showed Chavez leading by 15 - 27%. Subsequent ones weeks later revealed his support remains strong. Few doubt October's outcome. At issue is only by how much. On December 16, regional elections follow.
In late August, Chavez warned that opposition forces plan to declare victory before electoral results are announced. They'll say they won, reject National Electoral Council (CNE) totals, and claim fraud.
The Republicrat political circus: Distractions, lies, war and austerity
By Larry Pinkney
“What better way to enslave a man than to give him a vote and tell him he is free. — Albert Camus
The Democrats and the Republicans (i.e. the Republicrats) are once again ratcheting up to a fever pitch, in this phony, four year cycle, yet another corporate-stream media feeding frenzy, known as ‘elections’ in the United States. This pathetic state of affairs continues to be the bane of everyday ordinary people in this nation and the ultimate mockery of democracy in the 21st century.
Like little caged, tamed hamsters, the masses of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow women and men are being herded onto the political plantations/reservations of the Democrat and Republican parties. Once again, distractions and outright lies take center stage even as the reality and horror of perpetual war and economic austerity plagues, consumes and destroys the people of this nation and Mother Earth.
Is Palestine a lost cause?
Alan Hart
A long version of the headline question would be something like this: Given that in the 46th year of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank Jewish settlers are continuing to consolidate their hold on the territory’s land and water resources by stealing more and more of both, thus demonstrating not only Zionism’s contempt for international law but, also, that the only peace Israel’s leaders are interested in is one that requires a complete Palestinian surrender to Zionism’s will, is there any real prospect, in any foreseeable future, of justice for the Palestinians?
It is probably still the case that, in the name of Arafat-like pragmatism, a majority of the oppressed Palestinians would regard the establishment of a state of their own on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem its capital as an acceptable minimum amount of justice.
What’s Romney Really Up To? Softball Nationalism
Ian Fletcher
In my 2010 book Free Trade Doesn’t Work, I speculated that the following might occur:
Both political parties are feeling the heat of an intensifying global economic challenge to the U.S. and are looking for ways to take the pressure off their voters.
Withdrawing from free trade (to an as yet undefined extent) is emerging as the consensus Democratic response, even if the party’s leadership doesn’t yet realize how deep are the forces driving this or how far it is likely to go.
The emerging Republican response seems to be keeping free trade while opposing immigration—which does not enlarge America’s shrinking economic pie, but does cut it into fewer slices per voter and is therefore politically salable.
Organic Food Debunker was Tobacco Institute Researcher in 1976
By Michael Collins
A widely publicized study claiming that there is no demonstrated difference in nutritional value between organically and conventionally grown foods just appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Broad mainstream media coverage produced headlines like Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce. The media failed to mention one point that may be of major interest.
The study relied on a statistical technique called meta-analysis. Over 200 plus scientific journal articles were combined as the data set for the study. The article co-author with recognized expertise in meta-analysis, Ingram Olkin, applied for a grant from Council of Tobacco Research (CTR) in 1976.
CTR was part of the infamous Tobacco Institute, an industry group of cigarette manufacturers. Ingram was on the faculty of Stanford University at the time. The authors of the current study diminishing the value of organic foods are also from Stanford University, with Olkin listed as a professor emeritus.
Olkin applied to the CTR to conduct a project on the statistical methods used in the Framingham Heart Study, the landmark project linking cigarette smoking with increased risk of heart disease. From publicly available tobacco industry documents, we find this from cigarette manufacturer lawyers:
"I met with Dr. Olkin and Dr. Marvin Kastenbaum [Tobacco Institute Statistics Director] on December 17, 1975, .at which time we discussed Dr. Olkin's interest in multivariate analysis statistical models. Dr. Olkin is well qualified and is very articulate. I learned, in visiting with Dr. Olkin, that he would like to examine the theoretical structure of the "multivariate logistic risk function."
The Tobacco Documents describe Katzenbaum as knowledgeable of "the tobacco industry's participation in the public disinformation regarding the health hazards of tobacco use …"
Mitt and Mormonism: Does It Matter?
by Stephen Lendman
Romney is America's first non-Christian presidential nominee. He's a Mormon (aka Latter Day Saints Church member - LDS). Does it matter? More on that below.
Before he entered politics, he spent years as a Massachusetts Mormon leader. He began in the mid-1970s. From 1986 - 1994, he was president of the Boston Stake. It's similar to a Catholic diocese. Before that he was a Belmont and Cambridge bishop. His duties involved organizational work and counseling.
Later he taught Sunday school and oversaw church programs for teenagers. He overstepped by lecturing women on their sex lives and roles as homemakers. A 1994 Boston Phoenix cited an anonymous woman. As bishop, Romney discouraged her from having an abortion vital for health reasons.
Fars News Agency Interviews Lendman
Stephen Lendman
Stephen Lendman
Iranian journalist Kourosh Ziabari conducted the interview. Topics included Tehran's successful NAM summit, Iranian/US/Israeli relations, Syria, potential war against both countries, and related issues.
Fars (FNA) calls itself "Iran's leading independent news agency." Its reports shame what appears in Western media.
Questions and answers are below. Some final comments follow.
US Radio Host: Iran's International Profile Raised through Hosting NAM Summit
TEHRAN (FNA)- American writer and radio host Stephen Lendman believes that the successful arrangement and hosting of the 16th heads-of-state Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran was diplomatically a triumph for the Islamic Republic, which disappointed Israel and the United States and helped Iran improve its political profile on the international scene.
The Myth That Japan Is Broke: The World’s Largest “Debtor” Is Now the World’s Largest Creditor
by Ellen Brown
Japan’s massive government debt conceals massive benefits for the Japanese people, with lessons for the U.S. debt “crisis.”
In an April 2012 article in Forbes titled “If Japan Is Broke, How Is It Bailing Out Europe?”, Eamonn Fingleton pointed out the Japanese government was by far the largest single non-eurozone contributor to the latest Euro rescue effort. This, he said, is “the same government that has been going round pretending to be bankrupt (or at least offering no serious rebuttal when benighted American and British commentators portray Japanese public finances as a trainwreck).” Noting that it was also Japan that rescued the IMF system virtually single-handedly at the height of the global panic in 2009, Fingleton asked:
How can a nation whose government is supposedly the most overborrowed in the advanced world afford such generosity? . . .
9/11 & Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
By Robert Singer
Below is an animated image of Flight 175 "crashing" into the south tower.
Plato’s allegory of the Cave
Plato wrote his allegory of the cave when he realized that the general run of humankind can think, and speak, etc., without (so far as they acknowledge) any awareness that we are living in an alternate reality or a Matrix. For Plato there is certain truth but it is to be found elsewhere, in an alternate reality, on a different plane, in the non-material world of ideas or forms. [1]
In the allegory, Plato likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. As you watch Flight 175 "crashing" (actually disappearing) into the south tower you can see there is no break in the building wall between the port engine and fuselage, but because you are sure Bush, Cheney and the Neocons are guilty of something you ignore this certain truth.
Back to the allegory.
Behind the people in the allegory burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppet [masters] can walk. The puppet [masters], who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, that pass behind them.
What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see.
Here is an illustration of Plato’s Cave from the Great Dialogues of Plato.
"Such prisoners would mistake appearance for reality.
They would think the things they see on the wall (the shadows) were real; they would know nothing of the real causes of the shadows. So when the prisoners talk, what are they talking about?
If an object (a plane, let us say) is carried past behind them, and it casts a shadow on the wall, and a prisoner says “I see a [plane],” what is he talking about? He thinks he is talking about a [plane], but he is really talking about a shadow. But he uses the word “plane.” What does that refer to?
Plato gives his answer at line (515b2). The text here has puzzled many editors, and it has been frequently emended.
The translation in Grube/Reeve gets the point correctly:
“And if they could talk to one another, don’t you think they’d suppose that the names they used applied to the things they see passing before them?”
Plato’s point is that the prisoners would be mistaken. For they would be taking the terms in their language to refer to the shadows that pass before their eyes, rather than (as is correct, in Plato’s view) to the real things that cast the shadows. If a prisoner says “That’s a plane” he thinks that the word “plane” refers to the very thing he is looking at. But he would be wrong.
He’s only looking at a shadow. The real referent of the word “plane” he cannot see. To see it, he would have to turn his head around.
Plato’s point: the general terms of our language are not “names” of the physical objects that we can see. They are actually names of things that we cannot see, things that we can only grasp with the mind.
When the prisoners are released, they can turn their heads and see the real objects. Then they realize their error.
What can we do that is analogous to turning our heads and seeing the causes of the shadows? We can come to grasp the Forms with our minds.
Plato’s aim in the Republic is to describe what is necessary for us to achieve this reflective understanding. But even without it, it remains true that our very ability to think and to speak depends on the Forms. For the terms of the language we use get their meaning by “naming” the Forms that the objects we perceive participate in.
The prisoners may learn what a plane is by their experience with shadows of planes. But they would be mistaken if they thought that the word “plane” refers to something that any of them has ever seen.
Likewise, we may acquire concepts by our perceptual experience of physical objects. But we would be mistaken if we thought that the concepts that we grasp were on the same level as the things we perceive." [2]
9/11 Truth?
The 9/11 Truth movement is aware that planes did not crash into WTC 1 & 2 but they don’t want to confuse the masses while they are trying to wake them up.
Plato, if alive today would ask , “If you don’t know why the buildings collapsed, how can you be sure you are waking the people up from the right dream? “
Click here for a 9/11 Video and Radar Analysis of Flight 175 and/or read why Pictures of Mini Nukes at PakAlert Prove 9-11 was a Metaphysical Catechism (Test)
My attempt at 9/11 satire mixed with investigative journalism is 9/11 Breaking News: Nikola Tesla Testifies at NY Grand Jury on 9/11.
Robert Singer writes about Secrets, Sentient Creatures and The Federal Reserve at The Peoples Voice and The Market Oracle (rds2301@gmail.com)
Stealth Corporate Coup d'Etat
by Stephen Lendman
Obama and other Washington extremists support an alphabet soup of federal and international freedom-destroying measures.
SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, ACTA, and now TPP are stealth pro-corporate, anti-populist hellish schemes.
Two previous articles by this writer called TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) ACTA 2.0 and a trade deal from hell. Another one said ACTA is worse than SOPA and PIPA.
Public Citizen's Lori Wallach heads its Global Trade Watch division. It monitors destructive trade deals like TPP.
On June 27, she headlined her Nation magazine article "NAFTA on Steroids," saying:
TPP, like other destructive trade deals, is being secretly negotiated. Most people never heard of it. Media scoundrels ignore it. Whatever corporations want they support.
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