Near death, explained

New science is shedding light on what really happens during out-of-body experiences -- with shocking results.
MARIO BEAUREGARD
SATURDAY, APR 21, 2012
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/21/near_death_explained

This article was adapted from the new book "Brain Wars", from Harper One.

In 1991, Atlanta-based singer and songwriter Pam Reynolds felt extremely dizzy, lost her ability to speak, and had difficulty moving her body. A CAT scan showed that she had a giant artery aneurysm—a grossly swollen blood vessel in the wall of her basilar artery, close to the brain stem. If it burst, which could happen at any moment, it would kill her. But the standard surgery to drain and repair it might kill her too.

With no other options, Pam turned to a last, desperate measure offered by neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Spetzler was a specialist and pioneer in hypothermic cardiac arrest—a daring surgical procedure nicknamed “Operation Standstill.” Spetzler would bring Pam’s body down to a temperature so low that she was essentially dead. Her brain would not function, but it would be able to survive longer without oxygen at this temperature. The low temperature would also soften the swollen blood vessels, allowing them to be operated on with less risk of bursting. When the procedure was complete, the surgical team would bring her back to a normal temperature before irreversible damage set in.

Essentially, Pam agreed to die in order to save her life—and in the process had what is perhaps the most famous case of independent corroboration of out of body experience (OBE) perceptions on record. This case is especially important because cardiologist Michael Sabom was able to obtain verification from medical personnel regarding crucial details of the surgical intervention that Pam reported. Here’s what happened.

Pam was brought into the operating room at 7:15 a.m., she was given general anesthesia, and she quickly lost conscious awareness. At this point, Spetzler and his team of more than 20 physicians, nurses, and technicians went to work. They lubricated Pam’s eyes to prevent drying, and taped them shut. They attached EEG electrodes to monitor the electrical activity of her cerebral cortex. They inserted small, molded speakers into her ears and secured them with gauze and tape. The speakers would emit repeated 100-decibel clicks—approximately the noise produced by a speeding express train—eliminating outside sounds and measuring the activity of her brainstem.

At 8:40 a.m., the tray of surgical instruments was uncovered, and Robert Spetzler began cutting through Pam’s skull with a special surgical saw that produced a noise similar to a dental drill. At this moment, Pam later said, she felt herself “pop” out of her body and hover above it, watching as doctors worked on her body.

Although she no longer had use of her eyes and ears, she described her observations in terms of her senses and perceptions. “I thought the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar,” she said. “I expected them to take all of the hair, but they did not.” She also described the Midas Rex bone saw (“The saw thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it … ”) and the dental-drill sound it made with considerable accuracy.

Meanwhile, Spetzler was removing the outermost membrane of Pamela’s brain, cutting it open with scissors. At about the same time, a female cardiac surgeon was attempting to locate the femoral artery in Pam’s right groin. Remarkably, Pam later claimed to remember a female voice saying, “We have a problem. Her arteries are too small.” And then a male voice: “Try the other side.” Medical records confirm this conversation, yet Pam could not have heard them.

The cardiac surgeon was right—Pam’s blood vessels were indeed too small to accept the abundant blood flow requested by the cardiopulmonary bypass machine, so at 10:50 a.m., a tube was inserted into Pam’s left femoral artery and connected to the cardiopulmonary bypass machine. The warm blood circulated from the artery into the cylinders of the bypass machine, where it was cooled down before being returned to her body. Her body temperature began to fall, and at 11:05 a.m. Pam’s heart stopped. Her EEG brain waves flattened into total silence. A few minutes later, her brain stem became totally unresponsive, and her body temperature fell to a sepulchral 60 degrees Fahrenheit. At 11:25 a.m., the team tilted up the head of the operating table, turned off the bypass machine, and drained the blood from her body. Pamela Reynolds was clinically dead.

At this point, Pam’s out-of-body adventure transformed into a near-death experience (NDE): She recalls floating out of the operating room and traveling down a tunnel with a light. She saw deceased relatives and friends, including her long-dead grandmother, waiting at the end of this tunnel. She entered the presence of a brilliant, wonderfully warm and loving light, and sensed that her soul was part of God and that everything in existence was created from the light (the breathing of God). But this extraordinary experience ended abruptly, as Reynolds’s deceased uncle led her back to her body—a feeling she described as “plunging into a pool of ice.”

Meanwhile, in the operating room, the surgery had come to an end. When all the blood had drained from Pam’s brain, the aneurysm simply collapsed and Spetzler clipped it off. Soon, the bypass machine was turned on and warm blood was pumped back into her body. As her body temperature started to increase, her brainsteam began to respond to the clicking speakers in her ears and the EEG recorded electrical activity in the cortex. The bypass machine was turned off at 12:32 p.m. Pam’s life had been restored, and she was taken to the recovery room in stable condition at 2:10 p.m.

Tales of otherworldly experiences have been part of human cultures seemingly forever, but NDEs as such first came to broad public attention in 1975 by way of American psychiatrist and philosopher Raymond Moody’s popular book Life After Life. He presented more than 100 case studies of people who experienced vivid mental experiences close to death or during “clinical death” and were subsequently revived to tell the tale. Their experiences were remarkably similar, and Moody coined the term NDE to refer to this phenomenon. The book was popular and controversial, and scientific investigation of NDEs began soon after its publication with the founding, in 1978, of the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS)—the first organization in the world devoted to the scientific study of NDEs and their relationship to mind and consciousness.

NDEs are the vivid, realistic, and often deeply life-changing experiences of men, women, and children who have been physiologically or psychologically close to death. They can be evoked by cardiac arrest and coma caused by brain damage, intoxication, or asphyxia. They can also happen following such events as electrocution, complications from surgery, or severe blood loss during or after a delivery. They can even occur as the result of accidents or illnesses in which individuals genuinely fear they might die. Surveys conducted in the United States and Germany suggest that approximately 4.2 percent of the population has reported an NDE. It has also been estimated that more than 25 million individuals worldwide have had an NDE in the past 50 years.

People from all walks of life and belief systems have this experience. Studies indicate that the experience of an NDE is not influenced by gender, race, socioeconomic status, or level of education. Although NDEs are sometimes presented as religious experiences, this seems to be a matter of individual perception. Furthermore, researchers have found no relationship between religion and the experience of an NDE. That is, it did not matter whether the people recruited in those studies were Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, or agnostic.

Although the details differ, NDEs are characterized by a number of core features. Perhaps the most vivid is the OBE: the sense of having left one’s body and of watching events going on around one’s body or, occasionally, at some distant physical location. During OBEs, near-death experiencers (NDErs) are often astonished to discover that they have retained consciousness, perception, lucid thinking, memory, emotions, and their sense of personal identity. If anything, these processes are heightened: Thinking is vivid; hearing is sharp; and vision can extend to 360 degrees. NDErs claim that without physical bodies, they are able to penetrate through walls and doors and project themselves wherever they want. They frequently report the ability to read people’s thoughts.

The effects of NDEs on the experience are intense, overwhelming, and real. A number of studies conducted in United States, Western European countries, and Australia have shown that most NDErs are profoundly and positively transformed by the experience. One woman says, “I was completely altered after the accident. I was another person, according to those who lived near me. I was happy, laughing, appreciated little things, joked, smiled a lot, became friends with everyone … so completely different than I was before!”

However different their personalities before the NDE, experiencers tend to share a similar psychological profile after the NDE. Indeed, their beliefs, values, behaviors, and worldviews seem quite comparable afterward. Importantly, these psychological and behavioral changes are not the kind of changes one would expect if this experience were a hallucination. And, as noted NDE researcher Pim van Lommel and his colleagues have demonstrated, these changes become more apparent with the passage of time.

Some skeptics legitimately argue that the main problem with reports of OBE perceptions is that they often rest uniquely on the NDEr’s testimony—there is no independent corroboration. From a scientific perspective, such self-reports remain inconclusive. But during the last few decades, some self-reports of NDErs have been independently corroborated by witnesses, such as that of Pam Reynolds. One of the best known of these corroborated veridical NDE perceptions—perceptions that can be proven to coincide with reality—is the experience of a woman named Maria, whose case was first documented by her critical care social worker, Kimberly Clark.

Maria was a migrant worker who had a severe heart attack while visiting friends in Seattle. She was rushed to Harborview Hospital and placed in the coronary care unit. A few days later, she had a cardiac arrest but was rapidly resuscitated. The following day, Clark visited her. Maria told Clark that during her cardiac arrest she was able to look down from the ceiling and watch the medical team at work on her body. At one point in this experience, said Maria, she found herself outside the hospital and spotted a tennis shoe on the ledge of the north side of the third floor of the building. She was able to provide several details regarding its appearance, including the observations that one of its laces was stuck underneath the heel and that the little toe area was worn. Maria wanted to know for sure whether she had “really” seen that shoe, and she begged Clark to try to locate it.

Quite skeptical, Clark went to the location described by Maria—and found the tennis shoe. From the window of her hospital room, the details that Maria had recounted could not be discerned. But upon retrieval of the shoe, Clark confirmed Maria’s observations. “The only way she could have had such a perspective,” said Clark, “was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis shoe. I retrieved the shoe and brought it back to Maria; it was very concrete evidence for me.”

This case is particularly impressive given that during cardiac arrest, the flow of blood to the brain is interrupted. When this happens, the brain’s electrical activity (as measured with EEG) disappears after 10 to 20 seconds. In this state, a patient is deeply comatose. Because the brain structures mediating higher mental functions are severely impaired, such patients are expected to have no clear and lucid mental experiences that will be remembered. Nonetheless, studies conducted in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States have revealed that approximately 15 percent of cardiac arrest survivors do report some recollection from the time when they were clinically dead. These studies indicate that consciousness, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings can be experienced during a period when the brain shows no measurable activity.

NDEs experienced by people who do not have sight in everyday life are quite intriguing. In 1994, researchers Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper decided to undertake a search for cases of NDE-based perception in the blind. They reasoned that such cases would represent the ultimate demonstration of veridical perceptions during NDEs. If a blind person was able to report on verifiable events that took place when they were clinically dead, that would mean something real was occurring. They interviewed 31 individuals, of whom 14 were blind from birth. Twenty-one of the participants had had an NDE; the others had had OBEs only. Strikingly, the experiences they reported conform to the classic NDE pattern, whether they were born blind or had lost their sight in later life. The results of the study were published in 1997. Based on all the cases they investigated, Ring and Cooper concluded that what happens during an NDE affords another perspective to perceive reality that does not depend on the senses of the physical body. They proposed to call this other mode of perception mindsight.

Despite corroborated reports, many materialist scientists cling to the notion that OBEs and NDEs are located in the brain. In 2002, neurologist Olaf Blanke and colleagues at the University Hospitals of Geneva and Lausanne in Switzerland described in the prestigious scientific journal Nature the strange occurrence that happened to a 43-year-old female patient with epilepsy. Because her seizures could not be controlled by medication alone, neurosurgery was being considered as the next step. The researchers implanted electrodes in her right temporal lobe to provide information about the localization and extent of the epileptogenic zone—the area of the brain that was causing the seizures—which had to be surgically removed. Other electrodes were implanted to identify and localize, by means of electrical stimulation, the areas of the brain that—if removed—would result in loss of sensory capacities, linguistic ability, or even paralysis. Such a procedure is particularly critical to spare important brain areas that are adjacent to the epileptogenic zone.

When they stimulated the angular gyrus—a region of the brain in the parietal lobe that is thought to integrate sensory information related to vision, touch, and balance to give us a perception of our own bodies—the patient reported seeing herself “lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk.” She described herself as “floating” near the ceiling. She also reported seeing her legs “becoming shorter.”

The article received global press coverage and created quite a commotion. The editors of Nature went so far as to declare triumphantly that as a result of this one study—which involved only one patient—the part of the brain that can induce OBEs had been located.

“It’s another blow against those who believe that the mind and spirit are somehow separate from the brain,” said psychologist Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Society, which seeks to debunk all kinds of paranormal claims. “In reality, all experience is derived from the brain.”

In another article published in 2004, Blanke and co-workers described six patients, of whom three had experienced an atypical and incomplete OBE. Four patients reported an autoscopy—that is, they saw their own double from the vantage point of their own body. In this paper, the researchers describe an OBE as a temporary dysfunction of the junction of the temporal and parietal cortex. But, as Pim van Lommel noted, the abnormal bodily experiences described by Blanke and colleagues entail a false sense of reality. Typical OBEs, in contrast, implicate a verifiable perception (from a position above or outside of the body) of events, such as their own resuscitation or a traffic accident, and the surroundings in which the events took place. Along the same lines, psychiatrist Bruce Greyson of the University of Virginia commented that “We cannot assume from the fact that electrical stimulation of the brain can induce OBE-like illusions that all OBEs are therefore illusions.”

Materialistic scientists have proposed a number of physiological explanations to account for the various features of NDEs. British psychologist Susan Blackmore has propounded the “dying brain” hypothesis: that a lack of oxygen (or anoxia) during the dying process might induce abnormal firing of neurons in brain areas responsible for vision, and that such an abnormal firing would lead to the illusion of seeing a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel.

Would it? Van Lommel and colleagues objected that if anoxia plays a central role in the production of NDEs, most cardiac arrest patients would report an NDE. Studies show that this is clearly not the case. Another problem with this view is that reports of a tunnel are absent from several accounts of NDErs. As pointed out by renowned NDE researcher Sam Parnia, some individuals have reported an NDE when they had not been terminally ill and so would have had normal levels of oxygen in their brains.

Parnia raises another problem: When oxygen levels decrease markedly, patients whose lungs or hearts do not work properly experience an “acute confusional state,” during which they are highly confused and agitated and have little or no memory recall. In stark contrast, during NDEs people experience lucid consciousness, well-structured thought processes, and clear reasoning. They also have an excellent memory of the NDE, which usually stays with them for several decades. In other respects, Parnia argues that if this hypothesis is correct, then the illusion of seeing a light and tunnel would progressively develop as the patient’s blood oxygen level drops. Medical observations, however, indicate that patients with low oxygen levels do not report seeing a light, a tunnel, or any of the common features of an NDE we discussed earlier.

During the 1990s, more research indicated that the anoxia theory of NDEs was on the wrong track. James Whinnery, a chemistry professor with West Texas A&M, was involved with studies simulating the extreme conditions that can occur during aerial combat maneuvers. In these studies, fighter pilots were subjected to extreme gravitational forces in a giant centrifuge. Such rapid acceleration decreases blood flow and, consequently, delivery of oxygen to the brain. In so doing, it induces brief periods of unconsciousness that Whinnery calls “dreamlets.” Whinnery hypothesized that although some of the core features of NDEs are found during dreamlets, the main characteristics of dreamlets are impaired memory for events just prior to the onset of unconsciousness, confusion, and disorientation upon awakening. These symptoms are not typically associated with NDEs. In addition, life transformations are never reported following dreamlets.

So, if the “dying brain” is not responsible for NDEs, could they simply be hallucinations? In my opinion, the answer is no. Let’s look at the example of hallucinations that can result from ingesting ketamine, a veterinary drug that is sometimes used recreationally, and often at great cost to the user.

At small doses, the anesthetic agent ketamine can induce hallucinations and feelings of being out of the body. Ketamine is thought to act primarily by inhibiting N-Methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors, which normally open in response to binding of glutamate, the most abundant excitatory chemical messenger in the human brain. Psychiatrist Karl Jensen has speculated that the blockade of NMDA receptors may induce an NDE. But ketamine experiences are often frightening, producing weird images; and most ketamine users realize that the experiences produced by this drug are illusory. In contrast, NDErs are strongly convinced of the reality of what they experienced. Furthermore, many of the central features of NDEs are not reported with ketamine. That being said, we cannot rule out that the blockade of NMDA receptors may be involved in some NDEs.

Neuroscientist Michael Persinger has claimed that he and his colleagues have produced all the major features of the NDE by using weak transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the temporal lobes. Persinger’s work is based on the premise that abnormal activity in the temporal lobe may trigger an NDE. A review of the literature on epilepsy, however, indicates that the classical features of NDEs are not associated with epileptic seizures located in the temporal lobes. Moreover, as Bruce Greyson and his collaborators have correctly emphasized, the experiences reported by participants in Persinger’s TMS studies bear little resemblance with the typical features of NDEs.

The scientific NDE studies performed over the past decades indicate that heightened mental functions can be experienced independently of the body at a time when brain activity is greatly impaired or seemingly absent (such as during cardiac arrest). Some of these studies demonstrate that blind people can have veridical perceptions during OBEs associated with an NDE. Other investigations show that NDEs often result in deep psychological and spiritual changes.

These findings strongly challenge the mainstream neuroscientific view that mind and consciousness result solely from brain activity. As we have seen, such a view fails to account for how NDErs can experience—while their hearts are stopped—vivid and complex thoughts and acquire veridical information about objects or events remote from their bodies.

NDE studies also suggest that after physical death, mind and consciousness may continue in a transcendent level of reality that normally is not accessible to our senses and awareness. Needless to say, this view is utterly incompatible with the belief of many materialists that the material world is the only reality.

Excerpted with permission from “The Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of the Mind and the Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives.” Courtesy of HarperOne.

Mario Beauregard is associate research professor at the Departments of Psychology and Radiology and the Neuroscience Research Center at the University of Montreal. He is the coauthor of "The Spiritual Brain" and more than one hundred publications in neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry.

Tommy Lee Speaks Up for Animal Adoption

'I would highly encourage people not to buy animals from a pet store'
Steve Baltin
April 9, 2012
Full Article:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tommy-lee-speaks-up-for-animal-adoption-20120409

Before heading out on the road for Mötley Crüe and Kiss' joint tour, Crüe drummer Tommy Lee is enjoying some quiet time at home with his new puppy, Bowie. "He’s got these crazy gray-green eyes. I love David Bowie and it was either Bowie or Bam," Lee tells Rolling Stone. "We ended up going with Bowie just 'cause of his eyes. He looks like Bowie, dude."

When Lee and his girlfriend Sofia decided the time was right to bring a four-legged friend into the household, they decided to adopt. "We went to a couple of different shelters and we ended up over at East Valley in Van Nuys and there he was, just sitting there with three other dogs. And we were like, 'Oh my God, we gotta get this guy a home. Who could abandon this fucking thing? This is the cutest thing on the planet. I want to kill whoever let him go,'" Lee says.

Anyone who's ever rescued a dog can empathize with Lee's anger, which is why the drummer is speaking out on behalf of adoption. "The [shelter] is scary. It is loaded with beautiful dogs and I would highly encourage people not to buy animals from a pet store," he explains. "They’re bred for all the wrong reasons, for mostly money and it’s just kind of a bad scene. We ended up going [to the shelter] and I’m so glad we did."

A Question of Human Rights

Keeping the F1 Racing Series Out of Bahrain
by Dave Zirin
Edge of Sports
http://bit.ly/IwCluV

On April 22nd, the royal family of Bahrain is determined to stage its annual Formula 1 Grand Prix race. This might not sound like scintillating news, but whether the event goes off as planned is a question with major ramifications for the royal Khalifa family, as well as for the democracy movement in the Gulf kingdom. It will be viewed closely by the US state department and human rights organizations across the globe. From a renowned prisoner on a two month hunger strike to a British billionaire fascist sympathizer, the sides have been sharply drawn.

For the Bahraini royals, staging the Formula 1 race is a chance to show the people that normalcy has returned following last year’s massive pro-democracy protests. In 2011, the race was cancelled to the rage of the royals. Now, the royal family is hoping that the 60 people slaughtered by Bahraini and Saudi forces, as well as the thousands arrested and tortured can be forgotten in the roar of the engines.

For those protesting in the name of expanded political and personal freedoms, the return of the F1 racing series as a slap in the face, given all they’ve suffered in the last year and continue to suffer today. Now the protest movement and human rights organizations are calling upon Bernie Ecclestone, the CEO of Formula 1 Grand Prix, to cancel the race.

Maryam al-Khawaja, head of the foreign relations office at the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, said:

“The government promised changes last year but no changes have taken place because there is no incentive to make them. And tortures are still taking place. The government want the message to go out that it is business as usual. But today armored vehicles went into residential areas for the first time since last year's martial law ended in June. I have heard reports of protesters being thrown from rooftops and others having legs broken. That it is why Formula One should make a stand and call this race off.”

At a mass anti-F1 rally, Ali Mohammed commented to the AP, “We don’t want Formula [1] in our country. They are killing us every day with tear gas. They have no respect for human rights or democracy. Why would we keep silent? No one will enjoy the F1 in Bahrain with cries for freedom from the inside and outside of the race.”

Then there is prominent activist, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who has been on hunger strike for more than 50 days. Calls for his immediate release have merged with calls for the F1 cancellation. Protesters are described as holding al-Khawaja’s picture in one hand, and a “no to F1” sign in the other.

1996 F1 champion Damon Hill, who is now a commentator for Rupert Murodch’s Sky News also expressed his concern, saying, "It would be a bad state of affairs, and bad for Formula One, to be seen to be enforcing martial law in order to hold the race. That is not what this sport should be about. Looking at it today you'd have to say that [the race] could be creating more problems than it's solving."

One might think that all of this would pose a moral and ethical quandary for 81-year old Formula 1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone. One would be wrong. The multi-billionaire Ecclestone, the 4th richest man in England, has done little more than roll his eyes. In February, when hundreds were arrested and tortured for protesting on the anniversary of the 2011 uprising, he was asked if the F1 race would be pulled,  He said, “I expected there was going to be a big uprising today, with the anniversary. But I think what happened, apparently, was that here were a lot of kids having a go at the police. I don't think it's anything serious at all.”

In March, Ecclestone said of the plans for Bahrain,  "It's business as usual. I don't think the people who are trying to demonstrate a little bit are going to use anything to do with F1. If they did they would be a little bit silly…The good thing about Bahrain is it seems more democratic there than most places. People are allowed to speak when they want, they can protest if they want to." There is no word as to what color the sky is in Ecclestone’s world or if at the conclusion of this interview, he released the hounds.

Not to shock anyone, but this 81 year old British billionaire has in the past expressed sympathy for Adolf Hitler, and by “past” I mean 2009. During an interview in July of that year, Ecclestone said, "Apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people able to get things done…..If you have a look at a democracy it hasn’t done a lot of good for many countries — including this one.”

This is an ugly twisted old brute, but say this for him: at least he commented when asked about Bahrain. That’s far more that we can say for President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  As Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a consultant to Human Rights Watch, wrote, “President Obama... loses his voice when it comes to Bahrain.” This isn't just oversight or happenstance. Bahrain happily houses the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, and has pledged to do so for another 50 years. It appears that this favor has bought silence and that’s exactly why we need to be loud. The call has gone out form inside of Bahrain to call upon Formula 1 to cancel this race. We should do our part.

People can email business@formula1.com and tell them their feeling.  For more information on Bahrain, visit http://witnessbahrain.org.

Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

BabeWatch: Dania Suarez

The Colombian "escort" behind the Secret Service Hookergate

For more pics from NYDailyNews.com:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/secret-service-colombian-hooker-scandal-escort-explosive-scandal-article-1.1064287

Discover your deepest goals

Discover your deepest goals with our Free NLP Mini-Course
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As you make efforts to improve your life, gain new skills and grow as a person, consider the following: What if you were missing some key factors? What if some of your deepest needs were forgotten along the way?

It is entirely possible to set goals that “miss the point” from a deeper personal development perspective. Many of these goals can be perfectly worthwhile – not everything in life is meant to be “deep.” However, if you are not clear about your core goals, the results of your efforts will be mediocre at best. The deeper issues in your life will remain untouched.

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 your Deepest Self-Improvement Goals
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Addressing your core needs requires high self-awareness and this is what you will gain from our free course. Additionally, as a subscriber to the iNLP Center’s newsletter, you’ll receive regular personal development strategies and insights. Our newsletter is not a sales pitch, but a real personal growth tool.

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Yacht Island Design

Robalini: Here's a website for some pretty interesting designs for gigantic yachts that only the decadently rich can afford.  Which is a shame, because they sure look cool.  In any case, sit back and check it out, ideally with an iPod soundtrack filled with the songs of Hall & Oates, Steely Dan and Christopher Cross...

Yacht Island: Introducing the new concept in luxury yachting...
http://www.yachtislanddesign.com

At Yacht Island Design we like to do things differently

We like to base our designs upon innovative floating platforms. It frees us to explore bold and daring ideas which challenge the accepted norms within the yachting industry. No longer are we bound by the restrictions of a conventional hull shape. This unleashes creative flair and individualism for our clients as well as us!

Our approach is to consider the design in a holistic manner. We like to ensure that a common theme runs throughout the yacht, from the overall exterior shape down to the smallest interior detail. The most important thing for us is to ensure the original client-driven concept is achieved in a flowing and seamless manner.

Concepts

Streets of Monaco

'The Streets of Monaco' is our first design proposal. The theme is based around the Mediterranean principality with the primary focus being the famous grand prix circuit. The idea was to recreate the circuit as a fully functional kart track able to accommodate three karts side by side to allow for plenty of overtaking. By sizing the track in this way it has driven the overall dimensions of the yacht and the placement of the famous landmarks. The Monaco story extends beyond this exterior architecture and into the interior spaces giving a seamless transition as guests move between the various areas of the yacht. The following pages show some early concept sketches and a variety of artist's impressions of the final design.

Tropical Island Paradise

These are some of the initial ideas created during the conceptualisation stage showing a wide variety of designs. From these designs, elements and features are extracted and combined to produce the final concept.

The brief for this concept was to create an idyllic, floating island, with all the features of a tropical island getaway built into the design. As you can see, from the early stages, we wanted to include elements close to the water, deployable, as well as a mountain/waterfall feature.

Project Utopia

Visions of the future are often constrained by familiarity with the present or reflection on the past. Project Utopia, a collaboration between Yacht Island Design and BMT Nigel Gee, is an avant-garde vision of a future concept free from such restricted thought.

Before trying to understand the design one has to examine why the greater majority of yachts have evolved to the traditional form that has derived from millennia of engineering and naval architecture. Once the mind is free from these constraints the possible forms that a concept might take are wide ranging.

Email: enquiries@yachtislanddesign.com
Tel: +44 (0)1909 511224

HAPPY TRAILS TO HIGH WEIRDNESS

A CONSPIRACY THEORIST'S TOUR GUIDE
RELEASED IN PAPERBACK & ON AMAZON KINDLE

"No matter where you go, there THEY are."

Author Is Ultimate Tour Guide to the People, Places, & Parapolitics Throughout the Weirdscape of California and the Great Southwest

ATLANTA - Apr. 11, 2012 - FEEJEE PRESS (feejeepress.com) announced today the release of "Happy Trails to High Weirdness: A Conspiracy Theorist's Tour Guide," a precise roadmap to the People, Places, & Parapolitics that make up the scenery of bizarre destinations in & around California and the ever-odd Great Southwest weirdscape, by author and "crackpot historian" ADAM GORIGHTLY in traditional paperback and as an ebook for Amazon Kindle and Kindle app users.

Gorightly takes readers along for a wild and hilarious ride to out-and-out strange locations to meet up with some of the most interesting folks and figures involved in Conspiracy, UFOlogy, Occultism, Discordian Hijinks, Death Cults, and more. Gorightly's travels reveal a land of strange, beguiling and sometimes humorous wonders. From surfing with occult secret societies in Santa Cruz on through to the dry depths of the Manson Family and other cults of Death Valley to crashing with aliens and their fans in Roswell, NM, Gorightly has an uncanny knack for locating the weird, the wanton and the wacky.

"Happy Trails to High Weirdness: A Conspiracy Theorist's Tour Guide" is a must for readers who need to mix a little levity with their paranoia. Gorightly's infectious humor takes the edge off the more distressingly dark aspects of occult and conspiracy history and lore while affording readers a better understanding of the curious subject matters that makeup fringe and high weirdness culture. You can't go wrongly with Gorightly.

The book's introduction is by Andy Colvin, a West Coast writer, artist, "synchroconspiracy" researcher, who is best known for his "Mothman's Photographer" video/book series and also includes a bonus chapter from legendary Steamshovel Press publisher Kenn Thomas.

The Feejee Press paperback edition can be purchased online for US $19.95 at CreateSpace.com (https://www.createspace.com/3835210) or Amazon.com (http://amzn.to/IdbCos) where a preview of the book is also available. The Kindle edition can be purchased online for US $9.99 at Amazon's Kindle Store (http://amzn.to/An00xC).

Press Contacts:

Adam Gorightly - Contact for Interviews
adamgorightly.com
adamgorightly@yahoo.com

ABOUT ADAM GORIGHTLY

A certified "crackpot historian" and 23rd degree Discordian, Adam Gorightly has been chronicling fringe and conspiracy culture in an illuminating manner for over two decades. An active contributor to the 'zine revolution of the late '80s and early '90s, Gorightly's byline was a familiar sight in many cutting-edge magazines of the period where he sharpened his literary teeth. His articles have appeared in numerous publications such as "The Excluded Middle," "UFO Magazine," "Paranoia," "Steamshovel Press," and "FourTwoFour," the largest soccer magazine in Great Britain. Gorightly's explorations into these arcane waters eventually led to his first book, published in October 2001, "The Shadow Over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control and the Manson Family Mythos." Other books by Gorightly include "The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture," "James Shelby Downard's Mystical War," and "The Beast of Adam Gorightly: Collected Rantings 1992-2004." Previously, Feejee Press published his "A Who's Who of the Manson Family."

Editors - Feejee Press
feejeepress.com
editors@feejeepress.com

ABOUT FEEJEE PRESS

Feejee Press (feejeepress.com) is an upstart publishing company focused on "Forbidden, Forsaken, and Forgotten Knowledge" ranging from conspiracy theory to true crime to love poetry.

Orgies for Jesus

Daniele Bolelli
December 17, 2011
http://www.disinfo.com/2011/12/orgies-for-jesus

The following is an excerpt from the new Disinformation title 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion, authored by Daniele Bolelli.

What if Christian theology dismissed the virgin birth and other miracles as fairy tales? What if your pastor/priest told you to flush the Ten Commandments down the toilet and instead live life to the fullest? What if Sunday service at your local church consisted in a juicy orgy? All of this could have happened had Carpocrates had his way.

Carpo … who? The lead character in our story was the leader of a second century Christian community based in the Greek islands. Back in those days, early Christians couldn’t agree on just about anything. Official Christian doctrine hadn’t been fully established yet, so an extremely wide range of opinions and teachings fell under the label of “Christianity.” The only thing they had in common was that they all thought Jesus was a cool guy. Other than that, everything else was up for debate since they couldn’t even agree on which books should become official scriptures. Some Christians believed their religion was to remain exclusively for Jewish people. Others wanted to open it to all ethnicities. Some believed Jesus and God were one. Others were far from sold about this. Some were strict ascetics. Others enjoyed a very sensual life. Some promoted women as leaders within their groups. Others felt women were good to cook dinner and make babies, but religious leaders? Ha!

In the midst of this very chaotic beginning, Carpocrates emerged as a particularly charismatic preacher, who soon attracted enough of a following as to give birth to his own branch of Christianity. His ideas were just a tad on the wild side. Jesus—Carpocrates argued—was as human as anyone else. He was a visionary whose brilliance and wisdom put him in touch with God, but was not God himself. This didn’t diminish Jesus’s status in Carpocrates’s eyes, since it set him up as a model of behavior that regular human beings could hope to emulate. The whole story of the virgin birth made Carpocrates laugh. In his view, good old Jesus was conceived in the old fashioned way: through sweaty sex. The depth of Jesus’s wisdom was enough for Carpocrates to admire and love him, so he felt no need for any supernatural special effects.

Since this beginning was apparently not controversial enough, Carpocrates promptly taught his followers to reject Mosaic Law as well as the prevailing morality of his times as mere human opinions, not divine commandments. A goodie-goodie morality was according to Carpocrates nothing but a cage built by those who were too scared by life’s intensity. The soul could only achieve freedom and fulfillment by experiencing all of life, without discriminating too much. Only in this way, it would free itself from the cycle of reincarnation …

Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that? Carpocrates’s followers—like the members of many other early Christian sects—fully believed in reincarnation. And just like several tantric schools found in the history of both Hinduism and Buddhism, they also believed that human beings should explore every emotion without holding back. Sensual pleasure in their eyes was not any less sacred than the most spiritual practices, so good food, sex and every other earthly joy was embraced as a stepping stone toward liberation.

This determination to live life to the fullest went hand in hand with another radical notion. Carp considered differences in wealth and social class as unnatural perversions. Since everyone is born naked and equal in front of God, human attempts to gain status at the expense of others were misguided and ultimately against God’s plan. The cure for the very human tendency toward ego aggrandizing was to discourage the evil of private property. Instead, everything—from material possessions to sexual partners—was to be held in common. Coupled with Carp’s insistence on indulging in sensual pleasures, this idea led his followers to regularly stage sexual orgies as part of their spiritual practices … which makes you wonder: just how different would the world be had mainstream forms of Christianity decided to embrace Carpocrates rather than stern moralists like Saint Paul and Saint Augustine? I think it’s a safe bet that church attendance would be much higher.

The Godfather of Christianity

Daniele Bolelli
April 8, 2012
http://www.disinfo.com/2012/04/the-godfather-of-christianity

This is an excerpt from the recent Disinformation title 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion, authored by Daniele Bolelli.

The Roman emperor Constantine is one of the great heroes of Christian history. As legend would have it, he singlehandedly put an end to religious persecution and became the first Christian emperor. His impact was nothing short of miraculous, and this is why his name is often adorned with superlatives: he is Constantine “the Great,” or as some branches of Christianity regard him “Saint” Constantine. More than any other figure, he is the true Godfather of Christianity, who helped it turn from a small troubled sect into the dominant religion of the empire.

But the word godfather applies to Constantine in more ways than one. Think Don Vito Corleone kind of Godfather (actually, I like Don Vito Corleone, so more like Michael Corleone). The historical reality is that Constantine was a brutal dictator who used Christianity for his own self-aggrandizing means and probably never even converted (some say he converted on his death bed, while others say he never did).

At the beginning of the 300s, the Roman Empire was a mess: there were too many people following too many religions speaking too many languages. Culturally, politically, religiously and in every other way, hardly anything brought unity to the empire. The confusion was so intense that it was not unusual for multiple people to claim the title of emperor at the same time. Civil wars to settle the squabbles between these contenders were the norm.

Constantine had quickly understood that ruling over such a diverse population, with such divided loyalties, would always be an uphill battle unless he figured out a way to bring them together. Religion seemed to fit the bill: a shared religion would give his citizens a common sense of loyalty and identity.

The old Roman polytheism didn’t seem to serve his purposes since few people still believed in it. Christians instead were very enthusiastic about their faith. Perhaps even more attractive, monotheism preached the need for all to worship a single source of authority—a concept that was music to Constantine’s ears. By tying religion and imperial power together, Constantine would be able to claim that any rebellion against him was a rebellion against God’s right hand man. Saint Paul’s writings about political leaders receiving their authority from God gave Constantine plenty of ammunition for his totalitarian project.

Constantine probably didn’t give a rat’s ass about religion (or if he did, he had a curious way of showing it since—as we will see—his newly found interest for Christianity didn’t dampen his passion for murder). He professed devotion to the Church, but he also regularly offered sacrifices to Apollo, Diana and Hercules, and remained head of the official pagan priesthood throughout his life. What he was looking for was a tool that would allow him to tighten his grip on power.

Accordingly, Constantine tested the waters by putting an end to the persecutions against Christians in 313 CE. The infighting among different Christian sects, however, bothered him. Religious disagreements could lead to conflicts and rebellion, and this would mean more people to kill, more heads to be bashed, and nothing but work, work, work. If Christianity were to serve his purpose, only one official version should be allowed. So, in 325, Constantine invited bishops from all over the empire at the Council of Nicaea, where they could get their act straight and vote once and for all regarding which one would the true Christian doctrine, and which should be eliminated as heresies. Once the bishops were done bickering, Constantine immediately moved to repress any alternate versions of Christianity.

Shortly after thus becoming the champion of the new religion, Constantine demonstrated how much religious piety had touched his soul by having his son executed, and his own wife boiled alive, for he feared they may have been plotting against him. Jesus’s message to “love your enemies” must have not gotten to destination, since Constantine had some of his rivals beheaded, and others hanged after he had promised them clemency if they surrendered.

Constantine played an incredibly important role in legitimizing Christianity, but considering him a saint may be a tad overoptimistic. The man, in fact, was a gangster with a tiny heart and a Godzilla-sized ego.

Thank You God for Killing My Enemies’ Children

Daniele Bolelli
April 7, 2012
http://www.disinfo.com/2012/04/thank-you-god-for-killing-my-enemies-children

The following is an excerpt from the recent Disinformation title 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion, authored by Daniele Bolelli.

Often, the stories at the origin of many religious holidays sound like sweet fairy tales.

Think of Christmas, for example, with the shooting star, the three wise men bringing gifts, and baby Jesus being born in the midst of all the happy barn animals. It has a “God meets Old-MacDonald-Had-a-Farm” feel to it.

The story at the roots of the Jewish holiday of Passover, on the other hand, doesn’t sound quite like a fairy tale—unless perhaps one created by Stephen King. What exactly is celebrated during Passover? Our tale begins in Egypt over 3,000 years ago—or at least so we are told, since there is less historical evidence for the authenticity of this story than for the existence of the Yeti and the Loch Ness monster. No source for its truthfulness exists other than the Torah. For all we know, it could be all exactly true or it could just as well be entirely made up. But in any case, here’s what the Torah has to say about the origins of Passover. Over three millennia ago, times were not rosy for Jewish peoples (some things never change …). Being enslaved in ancient Egypt was not the epitome of fun, so Jews were desperately looking for a way out. The one and only God came to the rescue by empowering Moses to threaten the Pharaoh with a series of horrific plagues unless he freed his people. Nine consecutive plagues failed to sway the Pharaoh. So, for the tenth plague, God decided to pull out the big guns. He told good monotheistic Jews to mark their doorposts with the blood of sacrificial lambs. This was to make sure that the angel of death—who apparently could be a bit distracted sometimes—would not make mistakes. The blood on the door was the signal to the angel of death that he was not welcome to come in for a visit: the blood told him to “pass over” those homes and go carry out his murderous homework elsewhere. God’s orders, in fact, were pretty specific: all the firstborn children of the Egyptians were to be wiped out in a single night. And just in case that weren’t enough, all the firstborn calves were also to be killed (if you are wondering about that, sorry but the Torah doesn’t tell us exactly what evil sin Egyptian cows had committed to deserve such punishment).

Since this story was apparently not perverted enough, here’s the icing on the cake. It was God all along who had hardened the heart of the Pharaoh to make sure he wouldn’t release Jewish people before He had a chance to unleash all ten plagues. “Why?”—you may ask—“What kind of weird game was God playing?”

This whole drama was a publicity stunt set up by the one and only God, “… in order to show you My power and in order that My fame may resound throughout the world.” In other words, the killing of thousands of Egyptian kids was but a way for God to flex His muscles and gain some fame: bloodshed and terror tactics as a strategy to get attention.

Now, ancient Jews were clearly not overly fond of their enemies’ children. In Psalm 137, which begins as a moving lamentation over being exiled from their homelands, we are told with gleeful satisfaction about the joys of smashing the heads of the children of Babylon. During the march to the Promised Land, we are told in multiple occasions about Jewish armies hacking to death all enemy males, including those still suckling. But the lovely tale of the angel of death having a field day with Egyptian kids is the only massacre of babies to get its very celebratory holiday.

50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion

A Konformist Book Klub Special
Daniele Bolelli (Author)

Paperback List Price: $12.95
Price: $10.36 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
You Save: $2.59 (20%)
Kindle Edition: $9.39

Publication Date: December 20, 2011
Series: Things You're Not Supposed to Know

If you're waiting for the world's "Holy Men" to tell you the truth about their religions, do you suppose they'll mention that:

The Tao Te Ching was only created because Lao Tzu was thrown in jail by a disciple who didn't want to let him leave town without writing down his teachings? "Passover" celebrates God killing all firstborn Egyptian kids while Jewish homes were "passed over" by the angel of death? Shinto, a nature-loving, mellow religion, was transformed by the Japanese government into a nationalistic ideology promoting "holy" war?

Adding to its popular 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know series, Disinformation has teamed with Daniele Bolelli — writer, professor of comparative religion, and renowned martial arts practitioner and philosopher — to tackle an ever more serious and important topic: popular misconceptions about religion. Among other revelations:

Carpocrates, an early Christian, argued that sex orgies were a key to heaven. Prostitution was a religious duty in Mesopotamian temples.The two major Chinese religions (Taoism and Confucianism) are completely at odds with each other and yet are often practiced together. Despite having persecuted Jews for 2,000 years, Christian fundamentalists are Israel's biggest supporters.

Capturing just the right balance of in-depth knowledge, respect, humor and irreverence, Bolelli takes an ecumenical approach to the task, revealing surprising, shocking, and little-known facts about the "big three" religions but also many more, including Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and, of course, the increasingly popular non-religion: atheism.

About the Author

Daniele Bolelli is a writer, college professor and martial artist. Born in Milan, Italy, he is part of a family of writers. His father, Franco Bolelli, is one of the most influential modern Italian philosophers, while his mother, Gloria, is the author of four books and a freelance journalist.

His first book published in the United States was On the Warrior’s Path: Philosophy, Fighting, and Martial Arts Mythology. It is one of the top modern bestsellers on the philosophy of martial arts and has been used as a textbook in several universities in the United States, Canada and Italy. A fourth-degree black belt, Bolelli has taught seminars about martial arts in schools around the world and has coached and fought professionally in mixed martial arts (MMA).

Bolelli is a lecturer at several major universities in Southern California. He is a professor in the History Department at Santa Monica College, teaching courses on the history of religions. He also teaches in the Asian American Studies and World Arts Cultures Departments at UCLA and the American Indian Studies Department at CSULB.

Bolelli is a regular contributor for several magazines both in Italy and in the United States. A graduate of UCLA with Bachelors and Masters degrees, he lives in Los Angeles.

Product Details
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: The Disinformation Company (December 20, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1934708690
ISBN-13: 978-1934708699

JFK's mistress was assassinated by the CIA?

Book claims JFK's mistress was assassinated by the CIA 'because she knew too much about his assassination'
19 April 2012
Full Article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2132334/JFKs-mistress-Mary-Pinchot-assassinated-CIA-knew-much.html

The suspicious death of one of President John F. Kennedy's mistresses just months after his death has sparked numerous conspiracy theories.

The latest version posits that socialite Mary Pinchot Meyer, a beautiful divorcee who was close friends with the Kennedys and is widely known for having a lengthy affair with the playboy President, was shot in a cover-up operation by the CIA.

A new book alleges that, in her preoccupation with her lover's assassination and ensuing personal investigation, she may have gotten so close to the 'truth' that the CIA found her to be a threat.

As a result, agency operatives staged a shooting to make it look like she died due to a sexual assault that turned violent.

Whether or not the theory is true, there are a number of questionable components to the story of the months leading up to her death on October 12, 1964.

Her ex-husband, Cord Meyer, was a CIA agent himself and the couple were card-carrying members of Georgetown's starry social set, which included then-Senator John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline.

The couples became close friends, along with Mary's sister Antoinette (who went by Tony) and her husband Ben Bradlee, who was a bureau chief for Newsweek but later went on to be the managing editor of The Washington Post.

Another couple that they spent time with was Mary's Vassar classmate Cicely d'Autremont and her husband James Angleton, who was the chief of the counter surveillance for the CIA.

A book by Peter Janney, called Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision of World Peace, the author claims that the the socialite would often bring marijuana and LSD to her trysts with the President.

During their conversations while on these hallucinogens, Ms Pinchot Meyer reportedly tried to appeal to Mr Kennedy's pacifist nature and urged him to seek peaceful solutions to such worldwide crises like the Cold War and the Cuban missile crisis.

At the time, LSD was not illegal, and many, including Harvard professor Timothy Leary, advocated its use because they believed it helped people expand their knowledge base.

Mr Janney's book is not the first to draw conclusions between Ms Pinchot Meyer's friendship with Mr Leary and her intentions with her relationship with Mr Kennedy.

He goes on to say that she was later murdered by the CIA, who he believes organized the assassination of the President in an effort to stop him from preventing violent escalation that they wanted in the Cold War...

Only 85 Million Americans Pay Federal Tax? No.

Is It True That Only 85 Million Americans Pay Federal Tax? No.
Josh Barro
4/17/2012
Full Article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbarro/2012/04/17/everything-about-this-drudge-headline-is-wrong
 
Splashed across the Drudge front page right now is the headline: “DATA: ONLY 85 MILLION PAY FED TAXES.” This is the old trope about most Americans “not paying taxes.” And as usual, it’s a lie.

The truth is that most American adults pay federal taxes. The data point that Drudge has mangled here is that only about 122 million Americans pay federal personal income tax—and most who don’t pay other federal taxes.

The underlying data here are the IRS’s preliminary figures on 2010 individual income taxes, which indeed show that only 85 million federal individual income tax returns included a tax liability. But income tax is not the same thing as federal tax. Payroll tax raises nearly as much money as personal income tax, and is much less progressive—essentially everyone who works pays it, at a flat rate, and the tax is actually capped so that high earners pay a smaller percentage of their income than moderate and low earners. And people who don’t pay income tax pay other federal taxes, such as excise taxes on gasoline and tobacco. They also bear some of the burden of the corporate income tax..

Overall, the federal tax code is progressive, but not nearly as progressive as the federal income tax alone, and a large majority of households have a positive federal tax liability.

So the “fed taxes” part of Drudge’s headline is wrong. What about “85 million”? There are 85 million tax units that paid federal income tax in 2010, but some of those tax units are married couples. The IRS hasn’t yet announced how many in 2010, but in 2009, 44 percent of filers with a federal income tax liability were married couples. If that figure held for 2010, then about 122 million Americans paid federal income tax.

Fix income inequality with $10 million loans!

Fix income inequality with $10 million loans for everyone!
Sheila Bair
April 13, 2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fix-income-inequality-with-10-million-loans-for-everyone/2012/04/13/gIQATUQAFT_story.html

Are you concerned about growing income inequality in America? Are you resentful of all that wealth concentrated in the 1 percent? I’ve got the perfect solution, a modest proposal that involves just a small adjustment in the Federal Reserve’s easy monetary policy. Best of all, it will mean that none of us have to work for a living anymore.

For several years now, the Fed has been making money available to the financial sector at near-zero interest rates. Big banks and hedge funds, among others, have taken this cheap money and invested it in securities with high yields. This type of profit-making, called the “carry trade,” has been enormously profitable for them.

So why not let everyone participate?

Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest. The more conservative among us can take that money and buy 10-year Treasury bonds. At the current 2 percent annual interest rate, we can pocket a nice $200,000 a year to live on. The more adventuresome can buy 10-year Greek debt at 21 percent, for an annual income of $2.1 million. Or if Greece is a little too risky for you, go with Portugal, at about 12 percent, or $1.2 million dollars a year. (No sense in getting greedy.)

Think of what we can do with all that money. We can pay off our underwater mortgages and replenish our retirement accounts without spending one day schlepping into the office. With a few quick keystrokes, we’ll be golden for the next 10 years.

Of course, we will have to persuade Congress to pass a law authorizing all this Fed lending, but that shouldn’t be hard. Congress is really good at spending money, so long as lawmakers don’t have to come up with a way to pay for it. Just look at the way the Democrats agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts if the Republicans agreed to cut Social Security taxes and extend unemployment benefits. Who says bipartisanship is dead?

And while that deal blew bigger holes in the deficit, my proposal won’t cost taxpayers anything because the Fed is just going to print the money. All we need is about $1,200 trillion, or $10 million for 120 million households. We will all cross our hearts and promise to pay the money back in full after 10 years so the Fed won’t lose any dough. It can hold our Portuguese debt as collateral just to make sure.

Because we will be making money in basically the same way as hedge fund managers, we should have to pay only 15 percent in taxes, just like they do. And since we will be earning money through investments, not work, we won’t have to pay Social Security taxes or Medicare premiums. That means no more money will go into these programs, but so what? No one will need them anymore, with all the cash we’ll be raking in thanks to our cheap loans from the Fed.

Come to think of it, by getting rid of work, we can eliminate a lot of government programs. For instance, who needs unemployment benefits and job retraining when everyone has joined the investor class? And forget the trade deficit. Heck, we want those foreign workers to keep providing us with goods and services.

We can stop worrying about education, too. Who needs to understand the value of pi or the history of civilization when all you have to do to make a living is order up a few trades? Let the kids stay home with us. They can play video games while we pop bonbons and watch the soaps and talk shows. The liberals will love this plan because it reduces income inequality; the conservatives will love it because it promotes family time.

I’m really excited! This is the best American financial innovation since liar loans and pick-a-payment mortgages. I can’t wait to get my super PAC started to help candidates who support this important cause. I think I will call my proposal the “Get Rid of Employment and Education Directive.”

Some may worry about inflation and long-term stability under my proposal. I say they lack faith in our country. So what if it cost 50 billion marks to mail a letter when the German central bank tried printing money to pay idle workers in 1923?

That couldn’t happen here. This is America. Why should hedge funds and big financial institutions get all the goodies?

Look out 1 percent, here we come.

outlook@washpost.com

Sheila Bair is a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a regular contributor to Fortune Magazine.

ACLU Rates Obama Below Paul, Johnson

ACLU Rates Obama Below Ron Paul and Libertarian Gary Johnson
ACLU report card finds fault with Obama, rivals
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, January 2, 2012
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/01/MNND1MJ7UO.DTL

The American Civil Liberties Union has issued "Liberty Watch 2012," its report card for presidential candidates on issues like surveillance, torture, gay rights and immigration. No one gets an A, including President Obama.

Obama, the only Democrat among the 10 candidates rated, got a perfect score - four "torches" - on only one issue, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, for his backing of the December 2010 law that repealed "don't ask, don't tell."

But he received lower marks on immigration, abortion rights and "closing Guantanamo Bay and indefinite detention," where his one-torch rating was attributed to backtracking on a promise to shut the prison for suspected terrorists and his support for holding their trials in military commissions.

'Surveillance state'

The ACLU gave Obama a zero rating in the category of "ending a surveillance state," citing his support for renewing the search and surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act.

The ACLU has praised Obama for banning torture and closing secret CIA prisons, but says he has refused to hold government wrongdoers accountable. The organization has gone to court on behalf of alleged victims of illegal wiretapping and CIA abductions during the Bush administration, lawsuits that Obama's Justice Department says threaten state secrets.

The nonprofit civil liberties group is officially nonpartisan and does not endorse political candidates. Its report focuses on issues of government power and minority rights that attract little attention in most presidential elections.

GOP candidates

The survey gave low ratings to most of the Republican hopefuls, marks they might want to trumpet in Tuesday's Iowa caucuses to appeal to conservatives who consider the ACLU a fighting word. Three candidates - Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann - received zero torches in all seven categories.

Romney, the ACLU noted, has endorsed Arizona's "show us your papers" immigration law, called for doubling the size of Guantanamo, backed waterboarding of terrorism suspects and supported a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Santorum wants criminal prosecution of doctors who perform abortions, the survey said, and Bachmann has proposed amending the Constitution to eliminate citizenship rights for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

Fellow Republicans Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry were given zeros on all issues but immigration, where both men's statements opposing wholesale deportations have angered hard-liners and have been seen as liabilities in the primary campaign.

Gingrich, the ACLU said, supports allowing youngsters brought to the United States by their parents to earn the right to citizenship by serving in the armed forces. The ACLU noted that Perry opposed a U.S.-Mexico border fence, said Arizona's immigration law "would not be the right direction for Texas," and signed a bill as governor in 2001 granting in-state tuition to illegal immigrants attending college.

Both candidates were given two torches on the issue, same as Obama. The president supports a path to citizenship for undocumented youths who enter the military or college, and he has challenged the Arizona law in court. But his administration increased deportations to record levels and expanded Secure Communities, which requires local authorities to forward arrestees' fingerprints to the federal government for immigration checks.

Highest ranking

The highest overall rating went to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, who opposes the Patriot Act and - unlike Obama - supports the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Among the leading Republican candidates, libertarian-leaning Rep. Ron Paul also got a higher score than Obama despite low ratings in several categories.

The ACLU gave the Texas congressman high marks for opposing the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists, condemning waterboarding and voting to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." But it criticized Paul's call for an end to "birthright citizenship" for children of illegal immigrants, his support of the law that denies federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples and his opposition to abortion.

Obama, endorsed by abortion-rights groups in 2008, was given three torches on "reproductive choice" by the ACLU, which cited his support for federal funding of Planned Parenthood and family-planning programs but also his bowing to Republican demands to ban funding for poor women's abortions in Washington, D.C., as part of legislation to prevent a government shutdown.

Obama also accepted restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion in the national health care law that passed in 2010.

Report card link

The survey can be viewed at www.aclulibertywatch.org/ALWCandidateReportCard.pdf.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

The Fall of Bo Xilai

Full Article:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-10/bo-xilais-fall-complicates-chinas-leadership-transition

Former high-flying conservative Bo Xilai has been suspended from China’s Central Committee, a 200-plus-member top leadership body, as well as the more powerful Politburo, now with two dozen members. The charge: “suspected of being involved in serious discipline violations,” said Xinhua news agency on April 10. And in a stunning development, the state news agency also announced that Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, and an orderly from the Bo household are “highly suspected” in the homicide of a British businessman who died in Chongqing last November.

It is the biggest political scandal to hit China in years. It destroys any possibility of a smooth transition to the next generation of top leaders slated to take control at the National Party Congress, which will happen this fall. That had been the intention of China’s party brass, eager to present a unified face to the world. And it ends the career of the 62-year-old former party secretary and princeling—son of a Communist Party revolutionary—whose once-likely ascension to China’s Standing Committee would have made him one of the nine most powerful men in the country.

For Bo, it is an ignominious end to a career that earned him occasional kudos and plenty of enemies. He was praised for creating one of China’s most livable cities when he ran coastal Dalian in the 1990s. As minister of commerce from 2004 to 2007, he earned few friends among the foreign business community while gaining a reputation as a nationalist who favored Chinese state enterprises.

Bo’s prospects of reaching top office faded when his former chief of police, Wang Lijun, fled to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, Sichuan, in an apparent failed bid for political asylum. Now it appears Wang carried with him explosive allegations about Bo’s wife’s involvement in the Chongqing murder, effectively ending any possibility of Bo ever being promoted again. The unfolding scandal saw him replaced as Chongqing’s party secretary earlier, on March 15...

The Obama DOJ and strip searches

Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday, Apr 3, 2012
Full Article:
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/03/the_obama_doj_and_strip_searches

Numerous progressive commentators are lambasting the Supreme Court for its 5-4 ruling yesterday in Florence v. Bd. of Chosen Freeholders, and rightfully so. The 5-judge conservative faction held that prison officials may strip-search anyone arrested even for the most minor offenses before admitting them to the general population of a jail or prison, even in the absence of a shred of suspicion that they are carrying weapons or contraband. The plaintiff in this case had been erroneously arrested for outstanding bench warrants for an unpaid fine that he had actually paid, and was twice subjected to forced strip searches; he sued, claiming a violation of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. In essence, the Florence ruling grants prison officials license to subject every single arrested individual entering the general prison population to humiliating and highly invasive strip searches (that’s 13 million people every year, with hugely disproportionately minority representation), based on the definitive police state mentality — one that has been applied over and over — that isolated risks justify the most sweeping security measures. This policy has been applied to those arrested for offenses such as dog leash laws, peaceful protests, and driving with an expired license.

What virtually none of this anti-Florence commentary mentioned, though, was that the Obama DOJ formally urged the Court to reach the conclusion it reached. While the Obama administration and court conservatives have been at odds in a handful of high-profile cases (most notably Citizens United and the health care law), this is yet another case, in a long line, where the Obama administration was able to have its preferred policies judicially endorsed by getting right-wing judges to embrace them:

In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled that in the interest of security, prisons could conduct visual body cavity searches of all detainees after they had contact with outsiders. For years after that ruling, lower courts ruled that the prison had to have a reasonable suspicion that the arrestee was concealing contraband before subjecting him to a strip search upon entering the facility.

But in recent years, some courts have begun to allow a blanket policy to strip search all arrestees.

The Obama administration is siding with the prisons in the case and urging the court to allow a blanket policy for all inmates set to enter the general prison population.

“When you have a rule that treats everyone the same,” Justice Department lawyer Nicole A. Saharsky argued, “you don’t have folks that are singled out. You don’t have any security gaps.”


As The Guardian said yesterday: “The decision was a victory for the jails and for the Obama administration, which argued for an across-the-board rule allowing strip-searches of all those entering the general jail population, even those arrested on minor offenses.” Civil rights lawyer Stephen Bergstein added:

This evidence suggesting that minor offenders are not smuggling contraband into jails was not good enough for the Obama administration, which is asking the Supreme Court to endorse the restrictive strip search policy in Florence. At oral argument, a lawyer for the Obama Justice Department told the Supreme Court that “[p]rotesters…who decide deliberately to get arrested… might be stopped by the police, they see the squad car behind them. They might have a gun or contraband in their car and think hey, I’m going to put that on my person, I just need to get it somewhere that is not going to be found during a patdown search, and then potentially they have the contraband with them.” This position would probably be identical to that advanced by a Republican presidential administration.


What makes the Obama DOJ’s position in favor of this broad strip-search authority particularly remarkable is that federal prisons do not even have this policy. As The New York Times‘ Adam Liptak explained, “the procedures endorsed by the majority are forbidden by statute in at least 10 states and are at odds with the policies of federal authorities. According to a supporting brief filed by the American Bar Association, international human rights treaties also ban the procedures.”

It’s rather strange to so vehemently condemn the ruling in this case as a warped, sadistic police state excess, and not even mention that the Obama DOJ vigorously advocated for this very result...

In a speech to the Associated Press today, President Obama boasted that his signature domestic policies were basically conservative (he labeled them “centrist”): his individual mandate, he said, was pioneered by conservatives and the Heritage Foundation; his cap-and-trade policy was first proposed by Bush 41; federal spending is lower now than it was during any year of the Reagan administration, etc. Even the successes most touted by his supporters — the Detroit bailout, TARP, the withdrawal from Iraq — were started by Bush 43. Obama’s foreign policy and civil liberties assaults also, of course, were largely shared by his predecessor and are frequently praised by the Right.

What is needed most — a strong countervailing force to these policies coming from a place other than the neoconservative Right and corporatist oligarchs — is exactly what is missing...

Greek Town Implements Barter System

Greek Town Implements Revolutionary Barter System Without Euro
 Sunday, April 22, 2012
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/04/greek-town-develops-bartering-system.html

Greece continues along a path toward self-sufficiency that could very well see them break free from their debt servitude.

In the wake of their pillaging by international financiers, Greeks who have realized that protesting is likely to bring little relief have begun to implement barter systems to meet their local community needs.  Through a combination of decentralization from the Euro, free markets, local cooperation, and the creation of a new currency based on productivity, markets like the one below in Volos are leading the charge to a restoration of the principles that build truly sustainable economies.

This is an encouraging sign, and one that is replicating throughout austerity-ridden economies the world over.  International currencies are increasingly being rejected in the face of reduced living standards through inflation and outright theft by global banksters.

Americans would do well to learn from the truly revolutionary actions taken by individuals in deliberately collapsed countries, because if global (mis)managers have their way, a similar scenario is guaranteed to unfold in the United States.

You can support this information by voting on Reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/smnam/greek_town_implements_revolutionary_barter_system/

Is This Dude Hitler's Grandson?

He claims he is, and you have to admit, they do look alike.  However, he claims his birth isn't the result of some Nazi cloning project hidden in the jungles of Brazil, but rather from his father, Hitler's French lovechild from WWI.  It's a very plausible tale and a great read...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2126591/Philippe-Loret-believes-Adolf-Hitlers-grandson-French-plumber-tells-family-story.html