The New Agora June 2011

Page 1

FREE

THE

JUNE | July 2011

AGORA TRUST IN THE READER

.ca

WHO OWNS YOUR DATA? The Case for Decentralized Social Media

Did Jesus Heal With Hemp Oil?

Call to Action: Operation Empire state Rebellion

FDA ADMITS Arsenic in Chicken


There’s no need to turn to medication to achieve a healthy pH level. You can effortlessly defend your body against imbalance by consuming healthy, mild tasting water that is friendly to Mother Nature. Alkaline Ionized Enagic® Water Systems produce clean water that is never stripped of the important minerals your body needs to stay well. Your Enagic® Water machine will conveniently connect to your kitchen faucet, so you can naturally give your immune system a boost without stepping outside your home!

For more information email KangenJamesM2@gmail.com

Turn back the clock, with

NEW! from

LIFE CHOICE

Homeopathic HGH+... a true anti-aging breakthrough in natural medicine. Long-known for its ability to rejuvenate the body, injections of Human Growth Hormone have proven to yield phenomenal results in reversing the symptoms of aging: • Improves muscular strength, endurance and energy • Restores hair color and growth • Reduces body fat • Rejuvenates skin tone and reverses wrinkling

LIFE CHOICE Homeopathic GH+ offers a safe, economical alternative to costly injections! Plus additional homeopathic support for the Adrenals, Thyroid, Pituitary and Pancreas, to ensure proper absorption and maximum beneet.

LIFE CHOICE™ Homeopathic HGH+ Learn more! Visit

www.life-choice.net 1-866-226-1722

Ask for it at your local health store!

Published by Paradoxical Publishing Subscriptions (one year) Canada $36 North America $67 World $90 Bulk Subscriptions available upon request. Article Submissions submissions@theagoranantional.ca Letters to the Editor letters@theagoranational.ca General Information www.TheAgoraNational.ca - 1-778-422-1902 Editorial Dan Merchant Ryan Foster Rob Bunney Fredalupe Kugelmann Walker Morrow Advertising Vancouver - Rob Bunney 604-600-7492 Victoria - Lorenzo Malowane 250-885-6249 Designer Dan Merchant DISCLAIMER

The Agora is a periodical that represents opinions and articles on a wide variety of issues and disciplines to its readers. The Agora is edited for appropriate content, and the authors swear that all articles are original and appropriately sourced. Neither The Agora nor its editors are liable for any damage incurred by the material printed herein. To the best of our knowledge all images and content are not copyrighted material. The opinions expressed are those of the contributors and may not reflect those of The Agora or the businesses that advertise with us.


In This Issue Cover Feature - The New Age of the Internet Private Yet Connected: The Case for Decentralized Social Media Chinese Prisoners Forced to Mine Digital Gold Government Orders Youtube to Censor Protest Videos Platform Politics - The Death of the Web? Facebook’s Facial Recognition: An Invasion of Privacy Too Far?

8-9 10 10 11 11

Local Call to Arms - Operation State Rebellion The Need for Civil Disobediance in B.C. Today B.C. Warparties Line up at Militart Industrial Trough

19 6 6

National Income Tax, Compulsory or Mandatory? You Decide

7

World Top Government Insider: Bin Laden Dead Since 2001 The Chaimbermaid’s Revenge: I.M.F Hacked

12 7

Health Did Jesus Cure Using Hemp Oil? 4-5 The Dr. Is In 13 FDA Admits Arsenic in Chicken 18 Mushroom Compound Heals Cancer and Prevents Tumors 18

Culture Events 14 Taikotroniks Review 14 Canadian Culture Days 15 Elect to Govern Yourself 16 The 25 Rules of Disinformation 17

t

jo

.ne s e ey k h s


J

Did Jesus Cure

esus was almost certainly a cannabis user and an early proponent of the medicinal properties of the drug, according to a study of scriptural texts published in 2003. The study suggests that Jesus and his disciples used the drug to carry out miraculous healings. The anointing oil used by Jesus and his disciples contained an ingredient called kanehbosem which has since been identified as cannabis extract, according to an article by Chris Bennett The incense used by Jesus in ceremonies also contained a cannabis extract, suggests Mr Bennett, who quotes scholars to back his claims. “There can be little doubt about a role for cannabis in Judaic religion,” Carl Ruck, professor of classical mythology at Boston University said. Referring to the existence of cannabis in anointing oils used in ceremonies, he added: “Obviously the easy availability and long-established tradition of cannabis in early Judaism would inevitably have included it in the [Christian] mixtures.”

Mr Bennett suggests those anointed with the oils used by Jesus were “literally drenched in this potent mixture …. Although most modern people choose to smoke or eat pot, when its active ingredients are transferred into an oilbased carrier, it can also be absorbed through the skin”. Quoting the New Testament, Mr Bennett argues that Jesus anointed his disciples with the oil and encouraged them to do the same with other followers. This could have been responsible for healing eye and skin diseases referred to in the Gospels. “If cannabis was one of the main ingredients of the ancient anointing oil and receiving this oil is what made Jesus the Christ and his followers Christians, then persecuting those who use cannabis could be considered anti-Christ,” Mr Bennett concludes. (Source: Gaurdian.co.uk) Bennet isn’t alone in his assertions “According to some scholars, cannabis was

an ingredient of holy anointing oil mentioned in various sacred Hebrew texts. The herb of interest is most commonly known as kaneh-bosm (the singular form of which would be kanehbos) which is mentioned several times in the Old Testament as a bartering material, incense, and an ingredient in holy anointing oil used by the high priest of the temple. The Septuagint translates kaneh-bosm as calamus, and this translation has been propagated unchanged to most later translations of the old testament. However, Polish anthropologist Sula Benet published etymological arguments that the Aramaic word for hemp can be read as kannabos and appears to be a cognate to the modern word ‘cannabis’, with the root kan meaning “reed” or hemp and bosm meaning “fragrant”. Both cannabis and calamus are fragrant, reedlike plants containing psychotropic compounds. Rabbinical scholars appear to be divided on the subject; some reject the cannabis hypothesis and others affirm it.”

Making Biblical Anointing Oil Exodus 30, verses 22 – 30

22 Then the LORD said to Moses, 23 “Take the following fine spices:

500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of fragrant cane, 24 500 shekels of cassia – all according to the sanctuary shekel – and a hin of olive oil.

25 Make these into a sacred anoint-

ing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anointing oil.”

Page 4

Converted into today’s measurements: • Liquid myrrh - 500 shekels 5.75 kg (12.68 lbs) • Cassia - 500 shekels 5.75 kg (12.68 lbs) • Cinnamon Leaf - 250 shekels 2.875 kg (6.34 lbs) • Cannabis Flowers - 250 shekels 2.875 kg (6.34 lbs) • Olive Oil - 1 hin 6.5 liters (1.72 gallons)

In the traditional method, all of these ingredients would have been mixed with water and then boiled until all the water evaporated. The oil was then strained and ready for use.


using Hemp Oil? Cannabis vs. Calamus: Debate over the translation of kaneh-bosem

In 1936, Sara Benetowa, later Known as Sula Benet, an etymologist from the Institute of Anthropological Sciences, in Warsaw wrote a treatise, “Tracing One Word Through Different Languages”. This was a study on the word Cannabis, based on a study of the oldest Hebrew texts. Although the word cannabis was thought to be of Scythian origin, Benet’s research showed it had an earlier root in the Semitic Languages such as Hebrew. Benet demonstrated that the ancient Hebrew word for Cannabis is Kaneh -Bosem. She also did another study called Early Diffusion and Folk Uses of Hemp. On page 44, she states, “The sacred character of hemp in biblical times is evident from Exodus 30:23, where Moses was instructed by God to anoint the meeting tent and all of its furnishings with specially prepared oil, containing hemp.” On page 41 Sula Benet writes, “In the course

of time, the two words kaneh and bosem were fused into one , kanabos or kannabus know to us from the Mishna”. According to the Webster’s New World Hebrew Dictionary, page 607 the Hebrew for hemp is kanabos. In 1980, a wave of interest in Benet’s work prompted numerous etymologists to agree with Benet’s reinterpretation of the word qaneh-bosm in Exodus. That year, scholars at Jerusalem Hebrew University confirmed her work, noting that the qaneh-bosm was mistranslated in the King James version of Exodus 30:23 as calamus (Latimer, 1988). That same year, Weston La Barre also confirmed Benet’s work, noting further that “the term kaneh-bosm occurs as early as both the Aramaic and the Hebrew versions of the Old Testament, hemp being used for rope in Solomon’s temple and in priestly robes, as well as carried in Biblical caravans”. More archaeological evidence

A recent archeological expedition to Israel uncovered scrolls that appear to depict the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. On one of the scrolls is a sketch that shows a man, thought to be Jesus, smoking from a pipe. Below the drawing is the Hebrew word “kineboisin”, which translates to cannabis. Dr. Isaac Cohen, president of the South Israel Archaeological Society, believes that this is an extremely significant discovery for the theological community. He described the discovery as “a finding that could change the way many perceive the world.” Cannabis is known to have been smoked thousands of years before Jesus’ time, but this is the first evidence to show that Jesus himself may have used the plant. Not only could this mean that Christian fundamentalist may ease up on their firm stance against the use of marijuana, but they may actually begin to promote its use for an enhanced religious experience. It is the Christian belief that Christ’s followers should emulate him. If Jesus smoked weed, then why shouldn’t everyone else?

Making Modern Anointing Oil by Reverend Tom Brown

T

his is the recipe I have used. It is not exactly the same recipe that is listed in Exodus, it has only one ounce of marijuana instead of fifteen ounces. However, this recipe has been used on human beings and used with prayer, worked to relieve pain. I have used this on a man suffering from Aids, another man with severe upper back pain from a pinched nerve, on a woman with severe lower back pain associated with her monthlys, on a man suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and on myself for various pains and abrasions. You need a cooking pot and a Pyrex 4 cup measuring cup. Use a cooking pot with a liner/separator so that the container you cook the oil in is lifted off the bottom of the cooking pot. You need a candy thermometer that will clip onto the side of the pot. You need enough Canola oil to use as the heat transfer medium in the cooking pot. • Organic Sesame Seed Oil - 1 pint •

Organic Olive Oil - 1 pint

Cinnamon bark Oil (Cassia) - .06 oz (1 eighth of a .5 oz bottle)

Cinnamon Leaf Oil - .06 oz (1 eighth of a .5 oz bottle)

Myrrh Gum - 1 oz

Marijuana - 1 oz

You need a cooking pot and a Pyrex 4 cup measuring cup. Use a cooking pot with a liner/separator so that the container you cook the oil in is lifted off the bottom of the cooking pot. You need a candy thermometer that will clip onto the side of the pot. You need enough Canola oil to use as the heat transfer medium in the cooking pot. Place the pint of Sesame Seed oil in the container with the shredded Marijuana and the Myrrh Gum. Place the jar into the cooking pot, on top of the liner/separator. Place the Canola oil into the cooking pot up to within 3 inches of the top of the pot – or to the same level of the Sesame Seed oil in the jar – whichever is less. Wrap Aluminum foil around the cooking pot lip

and crumple it so that the space between the cooking pot and the jar is covered with the foil. This helps cut down on oil fumes and reduces fire hazard from the hot oil. Use an electric stove or hotplate – never use any kind of open flame for this cooking. Place the candy thermometer thru the foil and clip it onto the side of the cooking pot so that the sensing tip is immersed in the Canola oil. The Canola oil transfers heat from the stove to the jar at higher temperatures then boiling water at 212 degrees. You want to cook the oil for one hour at 300 degrees. This extracts the active ingredients from the Marijuana and dissolves the Myrrh gum into the oil. Remove from the heat and allow it to cool. The glass container is very fragile; do not mess with it until it cools to skin temperature or it will break and you will lose that lot of oil. Strain the oil / herb mixture thru a cloth and discard the solids. Add the Olive oil, Cinnamon Bark (Cassia) oil and the Cinnamon leaf oil to the cooked Anointing Oil and bottle. Store the Anointing Oil in the refrigerator in a dark colored bottle. Decant into smaller jars for use.

Page 5


BC Warparties Line up at Military Industrial Complex Trough

The Need for Civil Disobedience Throughout History...and in BC Today by Rafe Mair | TheCanadian.org IPPs are destroying – not just impacting – our rivers. What chance to protest has been given the citizen? When did the citizen have the opportunity to affect IPPs politically? Their MLAs and MPs are not bound to the public’s interests but the party line from which they dare not deviate.

Gregory Hartnell gregoryhartnell.wordpress.com

T

he Military Industrial Complex is alive and well in Beautiful British Columbia. Both parties of the false left-right paradigm are anxious to get credit for supporting a multinational corporation’s two bids on the obscene contracts, worth an estimated $35,000,000,000. An estimated $20,000,000,000 of the $35,000,000,000 total will be spent on so-called ‘combat-ready’ naval ships, and the other $15,000,000,000 on ‘non-combatready’ coast guard vessels. The Official Opposition party, the New Democractic Party of British Columbia, representing Big American Labor unions in this westernmost Canadian province, supports both of the bids of Seaspan, part of the Washington Marine Group of companies. So does the present government of the Pacifican Canadian province, the Liberal Party of British Columbia (‘BC Liberals’), under Premier Christy Clark, also support Washington’s two bids for both of the big federal Canadian Government Department of Defence procurement contracts.

BC Liberals, BC NDP both support $35 billion Seaspan combat and guard shipbuilding bids.

The unusual unanimity of the parties on the issue is telling, and proves quite conclusively that neither party is working in the public interest of all of the people, but rather, the NDP works for the unions, and the Libs work for the corporations. Both parties are integral to the success of the War Party economy here, and that is why the local War Party newspaper endorses this ridiculous expenditure, touting it as a way to ‘stimulate’ the local economy, and to supposedly enhance ‘Canadian security’ (whatever that is). Socialist ‘stimulus’ spending, whether it is disguised as a nationally-significant federal make-work programme (as in this case, under the ‘defence’ moniker) or overt, as with the heritage Johnson Street Bridge demolition scandal in Victoria, is always wrongheaded and economically questionable. Ethically, such profligate socialist ‘stimulus spending’ on Globalist ‘Conservative’ Dictator Harper’s vanity projects actually endangers the liberties of the dreaming Pacifican citizenry in Esquimalt, Victoria and North Vancouver who unwittingly support it with their silence. It must be emphasized that the final decision on the awarding of the highly lucrative federal ‘procurements’ for new military and coast guard ships is apparently (and shamefully) in the hands of faceless federal bureaucrats in Ottawa. The decision on whether to waste such an obscene amount of Canadian taxpayers’ dollars on militarism should rightly be made by the elected Parliamentarians in the House of Commons.

Page 6

C

ivil disobedience was practiced by Jesus; more recently Henry David Thoreau, the 19th Century American philosopher, is seen as father of the modern art of flouting authority. Thoreau had a strong impact on Mohandas Gandhi, who led protests first against South Africa’s laws against Indians (Gandhi lived there between 1893 and 1914) and later effectively against colonial powers in India. Gandhi and Martin Luther King are seen as 20th Century leaders in this field but one must include the entire civil rights movement and especially that in the Southern US in the 50s and 60s. One must also remember the many acts of civil disobedience in BC in recent decades, especially those against killing old growth forests and the good that’s come of them. Precise principles are hard to make but here are a couple from my own research and thoughts. The cause must be “just” - not an easy word to define at the best of times - and has these elements: •

It is clearly a debatable issue in our society.

There is a clear philosophical underpinning such as civil rights, immorality, an intrinsically evil law or policy.

The public has been deprived of a fair hearing.

There is no reasonable alternative.

It is non-violent, which is a better word than peaceful.

The other side of the coin is the need of members of society to obey laws and only change them through the Legislature or Parliament. This “law and order” theme is the song of the “establishment” through whom unjust policy and law is manna from heaven and works substantially in their favour. Until this day, slavery in economic chains of those who were freed from formal slavery is justified as “the law” but contains within itself my basis truth – this issue alone tells us how long it takes to get equality before the law and the impotence of decent people who simply want that for everyone. Unions and civil rights leaders have fought for basic justice for many years with every step painful and blocked by those who complain that they are outlaws - overlooking, conveniently, whose interests those laws support and how they came to be passed. An interesting example is that of Lionel Nathan de Rothschild, a British banker and politician who was, in 1857, refused his seat in Parliament because, as a Jew, he could not (so the established MPs decided) take the Christian oath. Catholics were similarly rejected. Disraeli’s father had him baptized in the Church of England to avoid this problem. Would anyone see these laws as supportable just because a parliament passed them? Another famous case was Gandhi’s protest in 1930 in order to help free India from British control. He proposed and led a non-violent march in clear defiance of a Salt Tax which essentially made it illegal to sell or produce salt, allowing a complete British monopoly. Since salt is necessary in everyone’s daily diet, everyone in India was affected. The Salt Tax made it illegal for workers to freely collect their own salt from the coasts of India, making them buy salt they couldn’t really afford. This protest set Gandhi and the Congress Party on the path-

way to Indian independence. Could anyone seriously claim that this law, being passed by a colonial power, must be obeyed? British Columbians today face huge assaults on their environment from those who control our legislatures. Let me deal with just two – pipelines and tankers, and private power producers (IPPS). In each case the environmental damage is monumental. With pipelines and tankers, huge irremediable environmental catastrophes are not just a risk but a mathematical certainty with immense and lasting consequences. IPPs are destroying – not just impacting – our rivers. What chance to protest has been given the citizen? When did the citizen have the opportunity to affect IPPs politically? Their MLAs and MPs are not bound to the public’s interests but the party line from which they dare not deviate. These same questions pertain to pipelines and huge oil tankers. The answer is that worse than having no hearings at all are the phony hearings which permit no discussions of the merits (if any) of these proposals. The argument is made that our legislators speak for us – the very argument used by the establishment to sustain slavery, keep black children out of “white schools”, outlaw labour unions because they were a conspiracy to interfere with employers’ right to set wages and working conditions, keep Jews from Parliament, to deny women the right to vote, to allow restaurants to keep Blacks out, and on it goes... It’s interesting how the law deals with these matters today: •

First, legislators on the government side pass laws dramatically helpful to those whose money gets them elected.

Second, they give away that which they hold in trust for us, to these corporations to desecrate for their own very profitable use.

Third, people protest by getting in the way of the contractors’ relentless, uncaring and lawful abuse of our environment.

Fourth, the corporation goes to Court and gets an injunction against the protesters. (These hearings give no opportunity for the public to deal with the “merits” of the project.)

Fifth, the protests continue.

Sixth, turning a civil act into a crime, the corporation seeks and gets an order to imprison these “criminals” not for breaking any law, but for “contempt of court”.

Before this year is out I think we’ll have protests where decent, contributing citizens, wanting no more than to pass the province they love to future generations without the scars of private power development or spilled oil. They will go to jail for as long as it takes them to admit their “error”, as in other times, with similar legal machinery (Galileo confessed his “error” when he said that earth went around the sun instead of the other way around). That’s right, these “criminals”, our friends and neighbours are sent to jail forever unless they recant and apologize. It is thus democracy is practiced in our fair land.


Income Tax, Compulsory or Mandatory? You Decide by Grant Baudais

What is ‘Income”? Is it the popular meaning of the word, or could the word “income” actually have some specific meaning for the purpose of the Income Tax Act? Supreme Court of Canada: Stewart v. Canada [2002] 2 S.C.R. 645 2002 SC 46 (See Para. 5 and 54) Apparently, the Supreme Court considers “income” to be: an amount received from a “source of income”, and a “source of income” is an activity carried on with an intent to profit.

S

o, is it really your intent to profit when receiving amounts for your time and labour (i.e. your property)? Or, are you simply being compensated for the loss of one form of property (i.e. your time and labour) with another of equal value (i.e. money)? If the latter is true, and you have no intent to profit from your time and labour, then do the amounts you receive represent “income” from a “source of income”? Apparently not! No intent to profit = No “source of income” = No “income”…And if there is no “income”, then you might want to ask yourself… “Why am I paying an “income” tax on the amounts I receive from providing my time and labour when I have no intent to profit?” After all…”It is ignorance of the law when you do not know your rights!”

Do You Have A “Business” or Personal Endeavour ? Interestingly, the expression, “income”, is not defined in the Income Tax Act. However, it is clear that in order for there to be “income”, whatever that means, there must be a “source of income”. The Supreme Court (in Stewart v. Canada [2002] 2 S.C.R. 645 2002 SC 46) has stated that “in order to determine whether a particular activity constitutes a source of income, the taxpayer must show that he or she intends to carry on that activity in pursuit of profit and support that intention with evidence.” (The Supreme Court makes no reference to any requirement for an individual to provide evidence in support of an intention not to profit!) The Supreme Court went on to say that “Equating ‘source of income’ with an activity undertaken ‘in pursuit of profit’ accords with the traditional common law definition of ‘business’; i.e. “anything which occupies the time and attention and labour of a man for the purpose of profit” So, what is profit? Black’s Law 4th Edition defines profit as; “The advance in the price of goods sold beyond the cost of purchase...” In this formula, one would logically include the value of one’s own time and labour. So, what is your time and labour worth? Is it worth such an amount that there is no profit? Alternatively, what if you have no intent to profit from your businesslike activity, but simply want to be compensated for the time and labour in order to make a living? Are you really in the pursuit of profit? Perhaps not… perhaps you simply have a personal endeavour and not a “business” activity! And what is “intention”? In simple terms, an intention is an amplified thought, a thought that goes from the head to the heart. So what comes first, profit or intent? It

seems obvious that one needs to establish their intent before all else, and it all starts with our basic right of freedom of thought. This basic principle is recognized within our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms, section 2, wherein it states; Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: b) freedom of thought. So what if one were to carry on an activity with no intent to profit? Is this a “business” or, in other words, a “source of income” for the purposes of the Income Tax Act? Apparently not, considering the Supreme Court has stated that there first needs to be an intent to profit in order for there to be a “source of income” (i.e. a “business”). Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that if you have no intent to profit from your activity, it is not a “source of income”, and if it is not a “source of income”, there is no “income”, and if there is no “income”, there is no “taxable income”, and consequentially no “income tax” to pay. And it seems logical that if you own a “business”(an activity in the pursuit of profit), you still have the right to be compensated for the time and labour you provide with no intent to profit to that “business” , or to any other “business” for that matter, right? Should you feel the need to clarify this information, please contact the Canada Revenue Agency, General Enquiries, at 1.800.959.8281 (for individuals) or 1.800.959.5525 (for business enquiries). To assist the CRA, please remember to be very clear and specific with the words you use for the purpose of your enquiry. I leave you with a thought, Albert Einstein once said; “Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth”. So, don’t you think it’s time you acquaint yourself with the truth and your rights?

The Chambermaid’s Revenge: IMF Hacked emptywheel.firedoglake.com

U

sually, the apparent purpose of hacks is fairly banal. To steal defense secrets. To profit organized crime. To embarrass a political opponent. But a reported sophisticated hack on the IMF is far more intriguing. Because the fund has been at the center of economic bailout programs for Portugal, Greece and Ireland — and possesses sensitive data on other countries that may be on the brink of crisis — its database contains potentially market-moving information. It also includes communications with national leaders as they negotiate, often behind the scenes, on the terms of international bailouts. Those agreements are, in the words of one fund official, “political dynamite in many countries.” It was unclear what information the attackers were able to access. The concern about the attack was so significant that the World Bank, an international agency focused on economic development, whose headquarters is across the street from the I.M.F. in downtown Washington, cut

the computer link that allows the two institutions to share information. The story mentions market-moving information, so I assume it could just be someone trying to play the bond markets. But what is the scenario under which hackers compromise IMF’s top secret files to get information on the deals signed between the banksters and debtor nations? While I’d like to see that information–and I’m sure the Greeks rioting in the streets and the Irish stoically bearing down accepting their fate would like to see that information–I don’t understand what entity would sponsor the hackers? Organized crime? China? Hacktivists? If it were the latter–which seems most plausible to me–wouldn’t we already be looking at the demands German banksters made of Greek leaders? I’m sure we’ll learn more about this in the future. But for now, I’m really curious about who had the means and motive to hack the IMF. Aside from a bunch of chambermaids, of course.

Page 7


Private Yet Connected? Yes We Can: by Francesca Musiani From ParisTechReview.com

I

n the age when the massive success of social network sites relies on users’ willingness to freely disclose their personal data for profiling purposes, the project of developing a “privacy-aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network” may come as a surprise. Widespread public interest in such a project may seem even more surprising. Yet, this is how the story of Diaspora started. In April 2010, four undergraduates from New York University (NYU) set out to create a decentralized social network. They gave themselves 39 days to raise $10,000, and within 12, they met their target. Dan Grippi, one of the four developers, said in astonishment: “For some strange reason, everyone just agreed with this whole privacy thing”. This strange reason might very well be that, despite all odds, users—at least some of them—do care. While they obviously enjoy, and wish to continue enjoying, the potential of social networking sites for aggregation, communication, exchange, and interaction, users do not see privacy as a right they have to relinquish in exchange for the opportunity to connect. Thus, they might very willingly migrate towards the technology that would allow them to refuse, or at least partially counter, the trade-off between privacy and connectivity. For a start, they are donating their money to individuals who promise to dedicate their time, skills, and resources to develop such technology. These people— like the four young developers of Diaspora, currently the most media-savvy but by no means the only ones—claim that the privacy-connectivity trade-off can indeed be overcome. The solution is called decentralized social networking. In this article, we address current developments in the field of decentralized social networking. We argue that open-source tools may constitute the first attempt to fully leverage the social opportunity of virtual networking, at a time when issues of user privacy and personal data protection are under the spotlight.

Decentralization, Social Networking, and Privacy of Personal Data Since the inception of the Internet, the principle of decentralization has governed the circulation of information on the network of networks. However, the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1990 has progressively and widely led to the diffusion of client-server architecture models. The most widespread and diffused Internet-based services (e.g., social networks, instant messaging tools, digital content storage services) are based upon technical and economic models in which end users ask for information, data, Web server farms, information storage, and/ or network “traffic” management. Thus, even if traffic on the Internet functions on the generalized distribution principle, it has now taken the form of concentration around servers delivering access to content. It is believed that this trend may expand even further due to the diffusion in the software- and platform-as-a-service (SaaS/PaaS) markets of the so-called “cloud computing” model. In this model, the vendor/service provider supplies the hardware infrastructure and the software product, thus hosting both the application and the data in a physical location unknown to the user (the “cloud”); the provider interacts with the user by means of a front-end portal. While cloud computing is the most frequently used network-based approach to organizing structures and services today, it is not the only one and it may not be the most effective. Scholars such

Page 8

as Barbara van Schewick, Eben Moglen, and Niva Elkin Koren have noted that one of the possible, and perhaps most promising, alternatives is decentralization: designing the network in such a way that communication and/ or exchanges take place between nodes having the same responsibility within the system. Decentralization thus erases the dichotomy between server (provider of the service) and client(s) (requesters of the service), typical of the client-server model, and replaces it with a situation where every client becomes a server. The most famous (or infamous, some may say) decentralized computer network models are doubtlessly those that have been used in the last 15 years in peer-topeer (P2P) file sharing systems. Very frequently framed as a threat to the digital content industry—its most diffused use by the general public being the unauthorized sharing of copyright-protected materials—P2P technology is certainly well-suited to give free, and immediate, access to perfect copies. However, the decentralized, distributed architecture of P2P systems is, at a broader level, suited to promote increased effectiveness, freedom, and stability in online content distribution, enhanced by the direct connections between nodes-users of the system. Following the widespread adoption of Facebook, and to a lesser extent Twitter, additional social networks have seen massive success in recent years. These networks are Web-based services that allow individuals to build a public or semi-public profile within a system, define a list of other users with whom to interact and establish relationships, and view the list of connections they and their friends make within the system. Among the most controversial aspects of social networks are the uses that managers and administrators make of private information. They often disclose data to third parties and sometimes use them for their own commercial purposes. Relatively few users are actually aware of the possibility of data collection by outside sources with access to company servers—something both legal and technical experts have now qualified as a significant privacy issue.

Towards Decentralized Social Networks Recently, several research projects and commercial applications have attempted to propose solutions to counter at least some of the limitations of current social networks. Niva Elkin-Koren, dean of the University of Haifa Faculty of Law, has described these initiatives as favoring the “removal of intermediaries” in sharing and networking activities online. They mostly consist of decentralized alternatives to services and instruments that—under the names and centralized architectures of Google, Facebook, and Picasa—constitute today an important part of our everyday lives. Several questions arise: What if decentralized networking was applied to the social network of the future? Are the “first steps” of decentralized social networks the beginning of new implications and possibilities for the safeguard of the right to privacy, while maintaining, and perhaps improving, full connectivity? How are the developers of such tools reshaping the two networking models, so as to mutually

reinforce them? We will use a few examples to illustrate what is currently happening in the field, in addition to the highly newsworthy Diaspora case. The Social Virtual Private Network (VPN) Project, in development at the University of Florida, aims to connect users in a virtual network in which P2P links are automatically created at the application layer (the layer of the network that ensures effective communication between applications) based on links made at the layer of the social networking infrastructure. In short, social links determine network links. In this system, users act as the certification authority for their personal layer; they are given a certificate or key, which they distribute to their friends. NoseRub, a protocol for decentralized social networking, allows applications to store information about profile data for each contact. This means that users are able to keep their profile information on their own server and servers interact and synchronize automatically. The Appleseed Project aims to create an open source, fully distributed, and decentralized social networking software. According to the founders, it is based upon the will to consider the user as “a citizen of the Net, rather than a consumer to target.” “[S]pecial attention [is] paid to privacy and security,” seen as constantly trampled on by publicity, product placement, and data management, widely present in “classic” social networks. After a period of financial trouble, the project is back in development. When it’s done, users will be able to create a profile on an Appleseed compatible website and connect with users on another Appleseed website. Most recently, as mentioned above, there’s been the distributed social networking project Diaspora. After its initial fundraising success, it once again surpassed expectations in the summer of 2010 by raising $100,000. The way in which Diaspora aims at securing the privacy of its users is by making them the hosts of the node that contains their personal information. As Eben Moglen, the project’s mentor (and more recently informal advisor) has pointed out, this constitutes “the second-generation social network architecture that offers sharing to everyone, without putting anybody in the middle, holding all the data for everybody else”. Its underlying principle, like that of its “older” counterparts, is that the company partially or totally relinquishes its access to users’ personal data as a privacy safeguard. This not only increases users’ control, but also their responsibility, in terms of personal information. Separate computers, which Diaspora’s developers call “seeds,” are meant to connect to each other directly. An online technology blogger has described the seed as “an aggregator that will gather your content from around the Internet into a central location, your server. Link your seed to my seed and we can share and converse … In short, you host your own profile that is a[n] amalgamation of your life online, and share with a select group of people”.


The Challenge of Decentralized Social Networks

The main challenge for these decentralized social networking projects is persuading users to switch to another service, especially one that may be less easy to use and technically developed in the short term. Given that the added value of these initiatives is the possibility for users to set up their own small servers to host their profiles, it’s believed that decentralized products will ultimately fail to gain a wide enough following among users accustomed to a less complicated, more easily accessible interface. At the same time, recent public support for open source solutions tells another story. An online commentator says: “Perhaps the most damning critique of Facebook’s recent controversial moves has been that a group of programmers have been raising money to create an alternative—and people are donating”. If what it takes is awareness and support, this might just be the moment to dare and speed things up.

A Social Opportunity

In the age when the massive success of social network sites relies on users’ willingness to freely disclose their personal data for profiling purposes, issues of user privacy and personal data protection are under the spotlight. This article addresses current developments in the field of decentralized social networking as a way of countering the trade-off between privacy and connectivity in social network services. We argue that such tools may constitute the first attempt to fully leverage the social opportunity of virtual networking tools.

The different projects and applications that are working towards possible hybrids between decentralization and social networks are perhaps the first attempt to fully leverage the social opportunity of networking tools. As University of Florida researchers Renato J. Figueiredo, P. Oscar Boykin, Pierre St. Juste, and David Wolinskypoint out, an important number of Internet users worldwide interact systematically with social networking websites. Yet, social networking infrastructures, skewed towards finding and establishing social links, are scarcely adapted to allowing connections between a user and his or her peers by means of network links. Thus, the challenge, and the key to more robust and safe social networks, is envisaging innovative architecture capable of integrating networking at both the interface and application levels, thus improving both connectivity and privacy. The protection of private data on social networks appears to be bound to improve in two directions. On the one hand, the use of a decentralized, distributed or P2P architecture calls for a reconfiguration of data management practices with respect to the most widely used social networks today. This reconfiguration implies potentially farreaching changes in the service provider’s status, in what

information it has access to, and in the material locations in which user-created content is stored and shared. On the other hand, these applications are also moving towards possible solutions to address some of the disadvantages of classic P2P networks. They are doing so by strengthening the personal character of requests and authorizations linked to the creation of network friendships, such as the “Add Friends” feature and the attribution of different degrees of trust according to different contacts within the network. In his 2010 talk at NYU, indicated by the Diaspora team as their main source of inspiration, law professor Eben Moglen argued that what is currently labeled as the “cloud computing” shift only means, in a landscape of Internet-based services where the client-server paradigm is dominant, that “servers have gained [more] freedom. Freedom to move. Freedom to dance; to combine and to separate, re-aggregate, and do all sorts of tricks. Servers have gained freedom. Clients have gained nothing”. However, a gain for clients should not necessarily mean the death of the cloud, or vice-versa. In a distributed network, where the boundaries between the client and the server get blurred or erased altogether, the freedom would be distributed as well, and so would the

cloud. Indeed, the decentralized cloud may be just around the corner, and some companies have already taken on the challenge. One example is the French-based PaaS TioLive and its hosting and content management service TioLive Grid, which can be used to share the cloud’s computing power and resources among the terminals of every contributing user. The idea behind TioLive Grid, says Jacques Honoré, community manager of TioLive, is “total freedom of users on the cloud and the possibility for them to control entirely, and by themselves, their personal data’’. Once again, we see that total user freedom and privacy are not incompatible goals. User-hosted personal profiles, less intermediaries, clouds made of users, and so on. A lot can be done to balance the equation, and an increasing awareness of this— not only by a few developers, but by large groups of users as well—is most likely the “strange” reason why, as the astonished Dan Grippi remarked a few months ago, “everyone just agreed with this whole privacy thing.” It is now up to researchers, companies, and communities of users worldwide, to leverage the social opportunities of decentralization for an increasingly connected world, where—albeit transformed and constantly recomposed— the private sphere may exist and be respected.

Page 9


Chinese prisoners forced to mine fake gold in online video games as part of elaborate money-making scheme Ethan A. Huff NaturalNews.com

T

he fake currencies used in online role-playing games like World of Warcraft (WoW) have become a hot new commodity that is now worth a significant amount oaf real currency. According to a recent report in the UK’s Guardian, some Chinese labor camps actually force their prisoners to spend countless hours on computers every day engaged in “gold farming” -- and this fake gold is then sold to other players in exchange for actual money. “Prison bosses made [sic] more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labor,” said Liu Dali, a former prisoner at the Chinese Jixi labor camp, concerning his tasks there. “There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000 - 6,000 rmb ($770 - $924) a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.” Dali explained that during the day, prisoners performed actual physical labor like digging trenches and moving heavy boulders. But at night, everything turned

virtual as select gaming prisoners performed repetitive labor tasks in the online world in order to earn fake currency, which in turn was later sold for real cash. Punishments administered to prisoners who do not perform well enough in the virtual world are very real, however, According to Dali, low-performing gamers are routinely subjected to physical punishments, many of which would qualify to the average person as torture. “If I couldn’t complete my work quota, they would punish me physically,” Dali is quoted as saying in the Guardian. “They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things.” In other words, prisoners who fail to achieve enough fake earnings in the fake world are subject to very real consequences in the real world. And so it goes in this increasingly sick and twisted modern world where, ironically, many other common things like processed food, birth certificates, and even currencies are also fake, and yet accepted as if they are actually real

Government Orders YouTube To Censor Protest Videos Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com

I

n a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate. The latest example is You Tube’s compliance with a request from the British government to censor footage of the British Constitution Group’s Lawful Rebellion protest, during which they attempted to civilly arrest Judge Michael Peake at Birkenhead county court. Peake was ruling on a case involving Roger Hayes, former member of UKIP, who has refused to pay council tax, both as a protest against the government’s treasonous activities in sacrificing Britain to globalist interests and as a result of Hayes clearly proving that council tax is illegal. Hayes has embarked on an effort to legally prove that the enforced collection of council tax by government is unlawful because no contract has been agreed between the individual and the state. His argument is based on the sound legal principle that just like the council, Hayes can represent himself as a third party in court and that “Roger Hayes” is a corporation and must be treated as one in the eyes of the law. The British government doesn’t want this kind of information going viral in the public domain because it is scared stiff of a repeat of the infamous poll tax riots of 1990, a massive tax revolt in the UK that forced the Thatcher government to scrap the poll tax altogether because of mass civil disobedience and refusal to pay. When viewers in the UK attempt to watch videos of the protest, they are met with the message, “This content is not available in your country due to a government removal request.” We then click through to learn that, “YouTube occasionally receives requests from governments around the world to remove content from our site, and as a result, YouTube may block specific content in order to comply with local laws in certain countries.” You can also search by country to discover that Google, the owner of You Tube, has complied with the majority

Page 10

of requests from governments, particularly in the United States and the UK, not only to remove You Tube videos, but also specific web search terms and thousands of “data requests,” meaning demands for information that would reveal the true identity of a You Tube user. Google claims that the information sent to governments is “needed for legitimate criminal investigations,” but whether these “data requests” have been backed up by warrants is not divulged by the company. “Between July 1 and Dec. 31 (2009), Google received 3,580 requests for user data from U.S. government agencies, slightly less than the 3,663 originating from Brazil,” reports PC World. “The United Kingdom and India sent more than 1,000 requests each, and smaller numbers originated from various other countries.” With regard to search terms, one struggles to understand how a specific combination of words in a Google search can be considered a violation of any law. This is about government and Google working hand in hand to manipulate search results in order to censor inconvenient information, something which Google now freely admits to doing. You Tube’s behavior is more despicable than the Communist Chinese, who are at least open about their censorship policies, whereas You Tube hides behind a blanket excuse and doesn’t even say what law has been broken. Anyone who swallows the explanation that the videos were censored in this case because the government was justifiably enforcing a law that says scenes from inside a court room cannot be filmed is beyond naive. Court was not even in session in the protest footage that was removed, and the judge had already left the courtroom. The real reason for the removal is the fact that the British government is obviously petrified of seeing a group of focused and educated citizens, black, white, old and young, male and female, go head to head with the

corrupt system on its own stomping ground. In their efforts to keep a lid on the growing populist fury that has arrived in response to rampant and growing financial and political tyranny in every sector of society, governments in the west are now mimicking Communist Chinese-style Internet censorship policies in a bid to neutralize protest movements, while hypocritically lecturing the rest of the world on maintaining web freedom. Via a combination of cybersecurity legislation and policy that is hastily introduced with no real oversight, governments and large Internet corporations are crafting an environment where the state can simply demand information be removed on a whim with total disregard for freedom of speech protections. This was underscored last year at the height of the Wikileaks issue, when Amazon axed Wikileaks from its servers following a phone call made by Senator Joe Lieberman’s Senate Homeland Security Committee demanding the website be deleted. Lieberman has been at the forefront of a push to purge the Internet of all dissent by empowering Obama with a figurative Internet kill switch that he would use to shut down parts of the Internet or terminate websites under the guise of national security. Lieberman spilled the beans on the true reason for the move during a CNN interview when he stated “Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.” Except that China doesn’t disconnect the Internet “in case of war,” it only ever does so to censor and intimidate people who express dissent against government atrocities or corruption, as we have documented. This is precisely the kind of online environment the British and American governments are trying to replicate as they attempt to put a stranglehold on the last bastion of true free speech – the world wide web.


Platform Politics: The Death of the web? Networkpolitics.org

W

ired recently announced the ‘death’ of the Web, based on the premise that platforms are becoming the primary mode of access to the Internet. Platforms are portals or applications that offer specific Internet services, frameworks for social interaction, or interfaces to access other networked communications and information distribution systems. Additionally the prevalence of mobile computing and its operating systems, that prioritize Internet ac-

cess via ‘apps’ not web browsers, is intensifying this transformation, and this model is now being applied to tablet computing - and may well soon spread into general computing and computer mediated communication. These platforms are able to take advantage of the scale-free architecture of the Internet to built very large user bases and communities of interest. However, unlike the world-wide-web, these platforms are often proprietorial, have closed protocols and operate as a kind of privatized public space. As such platforms themselves are becoming the object and enabler of politics, but also new arenas of control. Therefore network politics can be seen as pertaining not only to the question of content (what questions, agendas and activities are taken up and promoted as political?) but also to the role of platforms and apps as political ‘objects’ that shape the form and the structure of political mediation. Such proprietorial platforms as Facebook and Twitter have been used in the various modes of organization of political events, both on and offline, and have been discussed with enthusiasm as new tools for stimulating the democratic process, with electoral

campaigns, and as organizing tools to influence public opinion and create pressure groups. At the same time the proprietorial nature of these platforms and their role as an integral part of a ‘communicative capitalism’ works to create a situation of great ambiguity and has not gone unnoticed in either network theory or software development. There is, however, an emerging movement of software development for activism, and non-proprietorial social networking, that places at its core the values of openness, decentralization and notfor-profit projects - such as Diaspora and Thimbl - that are emblematic of the alternative political economies of network politics. So the question of how politics is increasingly processed through the form of software and hardware design, as well as the hacking of closed platforms and creation of peer-to-peer networks, is a pressing one. This conference thus wishes to engage with the full range of these concerns and to map out the place of software, hardware and online platforms, as a realm of both control, but also as opportunity for radical political practices, in the ‘democratizing’ of democracy, and in the challenge to the ‘interpassive’ political economy of communicative capitalism.

Facebook’s Facial Recognition: an Invasion of Privacy Too Far? Stephen Logan | koozai.com

I

f you type the words ‘Facebook’ and ‘Privacy’ into Google, you will get around 4.1 billion results (even in quotations it is still 1.8 million). This probably tells you all you need to know about how often the social networking giant runs into issues over user data.

The latest hoo-ha surrounds a brand new piece of technology, integrated within the picture upload section, which automatically tags people based on facial recognition. Great if you can’t be bothered to sift through all your contacts to tag them individually; not so useful if you’re worried about Facebook becoming a little too friendly with you and your data. The issue Facebook has is that they have previous when it comes to privacy lapses. Stories about data being stolen are in the news on a near weekly basis. However, this is just one of the inevitable drawbacks of managing the very public profiles of over 600 million users throughout the world. To an extent, data has to be mined. It helps their advertising and helps to expand its user numbers and services. This level of reporting invariably leads to a higher level of scrutiny. Therefore when Facebook decides to roll out a new system which, at least on the face of it (excusing the pun), looks to save users time and link more profiles, a backlash is inevitable. In fact Sophos has gone as far as to say that it is ‘eroding the online privacy of its users by stealth’, pretty damning stuff. This is by no means the only

comment questioning the ethics of such a system, in fact it has sparked widespread condemnation from many sources. What perhaps makes this surprising is the fact that it is something of a delayed reaction, especially as this feature was rolled out last year in the US. Privacy on Facebook tends to have a polarising effect. There will always be a large group that claim our information is susceptible to exploitation and attack due to the flimsy defences offered by the social network. Others though will always suggest that if you choose to add personal information, pictures and otherwise private data to a public domain, you have to accept the risks that come with it. Is facial recognition just an easier way to spy on the world, or is it just about making a mundane task a little quicker? I don’t think that it’s Skynet quite yet, but it’s certainly interesting to see how something that can be viewed as entirely inconsequential by some can also be given the greatest significance by others. If you are worried about being tagged, Search Engine Watch has rolled out a pretty decent guide to disabling Facebook recognition (Follow QR code for link)

Page 11


Top Government Insider: Bin Laden Died In 2001, 9/11 A False Flag Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars.com

T

op US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job. Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT. Recruited by Lawrence Eagleburger as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Pieczenik went on to develop, “the basic tenets for psychological warfare, counter terrorism, strategy and tactics for transcultural negotiations for the US State Department, military and intelligence communities and other agencies of the US Government,” while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world. Pieczenik also served as a senior policy planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker and worked on George W. Bush’s election campaign against Al Gore. His record underscores the fact that he is one of the most deeply connected men in intelligence circles over the past three decades plus. The character of Jack Ryan, who appears in many Tom Clancy novels and was also played by Harrison Ford in the popular 1992 movie Patriot Games, is also based on Steve Pieczenik. Back in April 2002, over nine years ago, Pieczenik told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months,” and that the government was waiting for the most politically expedient time to roll out his corpse. Pieczenik would be in a position to know, having personally met Bin Laden and worked with him during the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan back in the early 80’s. Pieczenik said that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, “Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome,” adding that the US government knew Bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan. Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer. “He died of marfan syndrome, Bush junior knew about it, the intelligence community knew about it,” said Pieczenik, noting how CIA physicians had visited Bin Laden in July 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai. “He was already very sick from marfan syndrome and he was already dying, so nobody had to kill him,” added Pieczenik, stating that Bin Laden died shortly after 9/11 in his Tora Bora cave complex.

Page 12

“Did the intelligence community or the CIA doctor up this situation, the answer is yes, categorically yes,” said Pieczenik, referring to Sunday’s claim that Bin Laden was killed at his compound in Pakistan, adding, “This whole scenario where you see a bunch of people sitting there looking at a screen and they look as if they’re intense, that’s nonsense,” referring to the images released by the White House which claim to show Biden, Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the operation to kill Bin Laden live on a television screen. “It’s a total make-up, make believe, we’re in an American theater of the absurd….why are we doing this again….nine years ago this man was already dead….why does the government repeatedly have to lie to the Ameri-

can people,” asked Pieczenik. “Osama Bin Laden was totally dead, so there’s no way they could have attacked or confronted or killed Osama Bin laden,” said Pieczenik, joking that the only way it could have happened was if special forces had attacked a mortuary. Pieczenik said that the decision to launch the hoax now was made because Obama had reached a low with plummeting approval ratings and the fact that the birther issue was blowing up in his face. “He had to prove that he was more than American…. he had to be aggressive,” said Pieczenik, adding that the farce was also a way of isolating Pakistan as a retaliation for intense opposition to the Predator drone program, which has killed hundreds of Pakistanis. “This is orchestrated, I mean when you have people

sitting around and watching a sitcom, basically the operations center of the White House, and you have a president coming out almost zombie-like telling you they just killed Osama Bin Laden who was already dead nine years ago,” said Pieczenik, calling the episode, “the greatest falsehood I’ve ever heard, I mean it was absurd.” Dismissing the government’s account of the assassination of Bin Laden as a “sick joke” on the American people, Pieczenik said, “They are so desperate to make Obama viable, to negate the fact that he may not have been born here, any questions about his background, any irregularities about his background, to make him look assertive….to re-elect this president so the American public can be duped once again.” Pieczenik’s assertion that Bin Laden died almost ten years ago is echoed by numerous intelligence professionals as well as heads of state across the world. Bin Laden, “Was used in the same way that 9/11 was used to mobilize the emotions and feelings of the American people in order to go to a war that had to be justified through a narrative that Bush junior created and Cheney created about the world of terrorism,” stated Pieczenik. During his interview with the Alex Jones Show yesterday, Pieczenik also asserted he was directly told by a prominent general that 9/11 was a stand down and a false flag operation, and that he is prepared to go to a grand jury to reveal the general’s name. “They ran the attacks,” said Pieczenik, naming Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams, and Condoleezza Rice amongst others as having been directly involved. “It was called a stand down, a false flag operation in order to mobilize the American public under false pretenses….it was told to me even by the general on the staff of Wolfowitz – I will go in front of a federal committee and swear on perjury who the name was of the individual so that we can break it open,” said Pieczenik, adding that he was “furious” and “knew it had happened”. “I taught stand down and false flag operations at the national war college, I’ve taught it with all my operatives so I knew exactly what was done to the American public,” he added. Pieczenik re-iterated that he was perfectly willing to reveal the name of the general who told him 9/11 was an inside job in a federal court, “so that we can unravel this thing legally, not with the stupid 9/11 Commission that was absurd.” Pieczenik explained that he was not a liberal, a conservative or a tea party member, merely an American who is deeply concerned about the direction in which his country is heading.

Scan the QR code to watch the full interview with Dr. Pieczenik


Éiriú Eolas “GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE” A Stress-Control, Healing, Detoxing and Rejuvenation Program

Dear Dr. Dahl, I have a question regarding the welfare of a dear friend of mine who, due to the deteriorating state of his health, had to be admitted into palliative care in the hospital until space is available at a long term care nursing home. I thought he would be fine but in a short period of time, his condition has worsened ten- fold from when admitted. I am afraid that I may have made the wrong decision, but I can’t take care of him on my own. Can you recommend any treatment that could help to restore his health? It is frightening how quickly he went down-hill. MMN - Fretting in Toronto Dear MMN,

T

hank you for your question. This is a desperate situation that many families are now facing; Canada’s rapidly- increasing senior population is expected to double in the next 25 years. I don’t think we have adequate funding or planning for this form of health care, although these needs should have been anticipated. Because of this, those who helped build our country are often being shuffled out of sight and neglected in the process. We need to follow the example of other nations and establish a system of care for our elderly allowing them to remain at home, with care provided by one or more dedicated family members, paid by the government for their work. In this mode, the burden of care can be fit into the family structure, while costs of unnecessary hospitalization and nursing home care are avoided. Of course the greatest benefit to such patients is their ability to live in familiar surroundings, with the comforts of home. Since your friend’s health condition was not disclosed, I will answer your question based on what you have supplied. Even if clarity of mind is not an issue for him, being isolated and alone in a strange environment can easily contribute to the deterioration of his health. The sudden feeling of helplessness and uselessness is more than most can take after a life of productivity, and when combined with hospital food, airborne bacteria, limited care and loneliness, can be devastating beyond whatever damage he has already suffered. Therefore, I would recommend that the primary focus of attention be aimed at assisting his mental condition. My recommendation would be to give the amino acid L-Tyrosine and/or Neurological Support to addressing mood swings, and to maintain mental clarity. Though you did not elaborate on his condition, I would assume pain is a concern, as it is with most seniors, especially when bedridden. Liquid SAMe is great for pain, depression, arthritis and a host of other conditions. I recommend the liquid version, since it can easily be added to water or juice if the patient has difficulty swallowing pills. If sleep is an issue, I would recommend liquid melatonin, again for ease of delivery. Unfortunately, in both hospitals and care homes, the patient’s immune system is under attack, given the stressors of helplessness, loneliness, and fear. Pyroxidal-5-Phosphate (P5P) Complex and HGH+ are known to do wonders. The Life Choice brand includes these easy-to-administer supplements, which are only available in health food stores. Also of concern are the proper food nutrients, which need to be maintained under less-than-ideal circumstances. Proper protein intake often suffers most, and I find one of the best sources of protein is found in hemp heart seeds, and in hemp and almond milk. Obviously, fresh fruit and vegetable smoothies offer a healthful choice as well. But there is one stunning new study showing that including beet juice, rich in nitrates, in those smoothies is an excellent idea: the study, published in the journal Nitric Oxide, showed that there are major benefits from dietary nitrates, including increased blood flow to key areas of the brain in older adults, possibly improving mental function. It is well-known that drinking beet juice can lower blood pressure, another complication of stress. Now the problem becomes, how do you get these into your loved one when you are not always there to do it? I would suggest that you find a naturopathic doctor to lay out these requests in prescription format -- something that the hospital or care-home staff can easily identify with. Having an open-minded medical doctor included in the treatment process is helpful. Ideally, the patient should be kept from being inundated with drugs that sedate, rather than treat, and draw the life from one who is already fragile, and his care providers should be empowered with the best tools for his recovery. I wish you the best of success, Dr. Eldon Dahl

For The First Time in VANCOUVER! Take this opportunity to learn the simple techniques that will help you reduce your stress instantly, and gently detox your body, mind and heart.

When? Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 at 6 pm Where? St James' Community Square 3214 West 10th Avenue (Kitsilano Area) Bring Your Yoga Mat and/or Blanket

For More Information Contact: irini @ eiriu-eolas.org

EEbreathe.com Page 13


JUNE EVENTS

Vancouver Naked Bike Ride worldnakedbikeride.org

Experience the exposed joy of Vancouver’s largest naked protest against oil dependency and car culture. It’s time to stop indecent exposure to automobile emissions! Hundreds of cyclists will ride in various stages of undress, reclaiming the streets as sexy, self-propelled citizens. Raw Naked Bicycle People Power! Date: Saturday, June 18, 2011 Time: 1pm body painting, 2pm ride starts, picnic by NIFTY following the ride Location: Sunset Beach (corner of Beach Ave and Bute St) We recommend bringing something that communicates the messages of the ride (opposition to oil dependency and celebration of our bodies). Don’t feel limited by the main WNBR messages (“protest oil dependency”, “curb car culture”, “real rights for bikes”, “celebrate body freedom”). Use your imagination.

Vancouver New Music Taikotroniks Review by Rob Bunney

V

ancouver New Music consistently produce some of the most original, sa-

tiating music events in Lotusland. Taikotroniks at the Vancouver Playhouse on May 3rd was no exception, although the production itself was indeed exceptional! Taikotroniks brought together for the first time, seven Vancouver-based taiko groups, with the newly formed Vancouver Electronics Ensemble, in what could be termed, quintessential Japanese- a perfect blend of the traditional and the cutting edge. All this orchestrated by Italian Artistic Director, Giorgio Magnanensi of Vancouver New Music. Taiko, literally means “fat drum” although they come in all shapes and sizes. The origins of Taiko date back over 1400 years in Japan, but the style of taiko best known today began in the 1950’s.Over the last 50 years the growth rate of taiko has been phenomenal, with estimates of at least 8000 taiko groups in Japan. Taiko promises to be the biggest musical gift Japan will offer to the world. The Vancouver Electronic Ensemble is comprised of electronic musicians from Vancouver’s ever increasing community of electronic music alchemists. The main aspiration of the VEE is performance and research within the electronic music field, both historic and original. VEE look to engage performers and audiences in “aesthestic criticisim through a wide variety of activities” The evening featured special performances by each of the 7 groups, and a phenomenal breakaway taiko and electronic improvisation piece for the finale(light cues via the Mad Scientist Machine by Stefan Smulovitz, articulated the spatialized performance of the piece). During set breaks, the 14 electronic musicians placed around the perimeter of the theatre fused the gaps in between performances with electronic improvisation, via laptop and other gadgets. Otherworldly sounds would begin to fill the room as each taiko performance ended, gravity seemed to disappear, and the listener was lifted up, into the ether. As each new taiko performance was about to begin, gravity returned, gently placing audience members back in their seats, as the sounds of the VEE faded into the next performance. Appropriately the performances began with the first taiko drum group formed in Canada in 1979, Katari Taiko. They incorporate vocals, martial arts, and poetry, playing their drums on angled stands, ultimately creating a very joyful, visceral experience. Next up was Sansho Daiko’s Borrowed Time 2.0. which integrated a dream poem, the fading of the world,. written by Tod Greenway. Saxophone melodies, brittle percussion + postmodern taiko rhythms conjured a half-walking dream-world, as if one had been dropped into a Haruki Murakami novel. Uzume Taiko, and Yuaikai Ryukyu Taiko also performed in the first half. Sawagi Taiko, formed in 1990 kicked off the second half, incorporating martial art techniques into their drumming.The all women taiko group set out to “ smash their sterotypical image as quiet, demure, and passive” Mission accomplished! Following them were Chibi Taiko, the first childrens taiko group ensemble in Canada. They performed a piece called Donburi, which used hip hop rhythms and others not normally associated with taiko. This heartwarming group showcased talent from 6-24 years of age, singing and drumming their hearts out, to the utter delight of the crowd. The final taiko ensemble of LOUD was a real treat for this guitar fan, comprised of Eileen Kage(taiko and percussion) and Elaine Stef(electric guitar) .Loud, as their name suggests, were all that and a whole lot more. The duo have performed together since 2001 and released an album called Taikoelectric, which has been described as ” the soundtrack to the world breathing and the soul stirring”. Elaine Stef grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let go, primitive, spiritual, utterly fascinating. All the elements one would hope to see, feel, and hear were present in this historically significant fusing of musical worlds. VNM on this night wed the traditional with the avant garde, may they live happily ever after.

High speed look at rehearsal - Live audio recordings - Photo’s http://giorgiomagnanensi.com/component/k2/item/509-taikotroniks http://giorgiomagnanensi.com/component/k2/item/530-taikotroniks-live http://newmusic.org/media/other-media/

Page 14


Canadian Culture Days “Culture Days embraces a core vision that every individual, regardless of age, background or experience, has the right to access and participate actively in the arts and cultural life of their community”

by Rob Bunney

C

ulture Days Canada- “the largest-ever collective public participation camapign undertaken by the arts and cultural community of Canada- had their lauch party here in Vancouver on May 9th 2011.The Agora was invited to shake it on down to the Roundhouse Community Centre for a sampling of the arts and culture community here in Lotusland - a designated cultural capital for this years event. We were greeted with an impromtu drum jam to kick things off, courtesy of of Paul Bray and Friends. Other artists on hand included, Kaija Rautiainen(tapestry weaver), Borealis String Quartet, Shawn Edenshaw( Haida carver), Jeanne Krabbendam(live painting), and Arts Umbrella Dance Company, performing amongst attendees as they enjoyed the wonderful food and wine provided, just to name a few. Party invitees were clearly enjoying themselves at this very well orchestrated event. The food and artist selections were appropriately diverse, and delicious, with a lovely BC wine helping it all go down, nice and easy. The first annual Culture Days Canada event was held in Sept. 2010 spread across 700 Canadian cities and towns. Culture Days Canada events feature free, hands on-interactive activities that invite the public to participate in the process, get behind the scenes, and discover the workings of their local arts community. Taking place over 3 days, the inaugural event last year showcased 4500 unique events in cities and towns across the country. This years Culture Days are September 30, October 1 and 2. 2011 is expected to see at least as many events tak-

ing place, more than 300 activity organizers in 122 cities and towns already pre-registered across the country as of April 22nd 2011. A few early BC activity organizers are, Arts Umbrella of Vancouver, Theatre Terrific, Vancouver, Arts Club Theatre Company, Vancouver, Barbara Heller, Vancouver, Vancouver Co- Op Radio, Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company, G-Luve, Artistrun.org, Vancouver, Julie Pongrac, Vancouver, Michelle SiroisSilver,Vancouver, Raha Kharrazi- Azar,Vancouver, Kay Meek Center, West Vancouver, Artists Studio, Richmond, Richmond Art Gallery/UBC Community Historical Recognition Program, Richmond Singers,Textile Arts Guild of Richmond, Camyar Chai, Richmond, Jeanette Jarville, Richmond, Cinevolution Media Arts Society, Richmond, The Community Arts Council of Richmond, Okanagan Regional Library, Kelowna,City of Kelowna Cultural Services, Kelowna Museums Society, Kelowna Art Gallery, Centre culturel francophone de l’Okanagan, Kelowna, Stephanie Moore, Kelowna. As one can see from the list, BC has three cities competing for the title of biggest supporter of Culture Days Canada. Many other BC cities were amongst early registrants, the above is a sampling of the most active communities at the time of evaluation. Please see culturedays.ca for complete listings of events, and be sure to check out some of the folks and organizations mentioned above, you can be sure they will have well laid plans. One success story from last year was Richmond, according to Liesl Jauk, Manager of Cultural Development for the City of Richmond. “We leveraged the Culture Days brand for our own purposes, raising awareness

among local citizens and raising Richmond’s profile beyond city limits and even nationally. Coincidentally, we are noticing increased coverage and mention of cultural events in both Richmond newspapers”. Nearly 90% of organizers in 2010 believed their activity was a success, with many motives mentioned for getting involved, such as, supporting the vision of promoting access to arts and culture, the chance to reach new audiences, and to be part of something Canada wide. “As a citizen-focused project, Culture Days is a timely Canadian initiative in the global context as it responds directly to issues addressed by the Coalition for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, of which Canada is a founding member. The Coalition points clearly to the importance of engaging citizens of the signatory countries of the associated UNESCO convention.” The arts and cultural sector make vital contribution’s to the economic and social development of every community in Canada,stimulating and strengthening a sense of ownership of arts and culture by citizens in local communities, thus contributing to the overall health of our country. Get out there on Sept 30, Oct, 1 and 2, bring a few friends, help foster an appreciation and willingness to support the artistic and cultural life, created and expressed by your community, in your community, for your community. “Affirm that every citizen is the guardian of the cultural life of his or her community”

Up Close - Artist Spotlight member of Tambor Iroko, led by Jack Duncan, Candela, and a regular club percussionist, collaborating with local DJ’s in Vancouver. Based in Vancouver, Canada, Sambata is a percussion school and musical ensemble that plays a powerful and unique blend of music drawing on the rich traditions of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian popular and folkloric music. Led by Paul Bray, Sambata delivers high energy, inspiring performances in parades, clubs and corporate events throughout the Greater Vancouver area. Since its inception in 2000, Sambata has touched thousands of lives with their brand of innovative arrangements, crosscultural instrumentation and exuberant spirit. Sambata.org

Paul Bray is a dynamic and charismatic multitalented percussionist working as a musical educator and performer in Vancouver. Drawing on a strong classical background, Paul has devoted his attention to the study of African influenced music, specializing in Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian folkloric musical styles. He has studied extensively in Cuba, and has developed a strong command of Brazilian percussion. In Vancouver, he has collaborated with Afro-Bahia Dance Productions and Yasse Afro-Arts in addition to working as a studio musician and directing Sambata, Vancouver’s 20 piece Escola de Samba. In addition, Paul has performed as a guest artist with both Jesse Cook and Tibetan multi-instrumentalist Nawang Kechog. Currently, Paul is the percussion instructor at the Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach – an Arts Umbrella youth program, and is guest instructor with the Britannia World Rhythms Ensemble. In the performing arena Paul is a

Mother Bear, 2008 - Kaija Rautiainen

Kaija Rautiainen uses the very ancient medium of weaving combined with cutting edge technology in her images of west coast nature. She went from using a traditional tapestry technique to computer-aided weaving to realize her interest in creating works that marry image and structure. She has exhibited her work internationally including the American Tapestry Alliance biennales and the Cheongju International Crafts Biennale 2009. She is a recipient of the City of Seattle Arts Award and her work can be found in corporate and private collections. She studied fibre arts in her native Finland and holds a BA in Textile Arts Education. She currently lives and works in Vancouver,BC, Canada. Nature has been a life force and a source of ideas for Kaija. Sailing on the west coast and skiing in the mountains keeps her in touch with the natural elements. Nature has been dear to her since childhood and is a well of inspiration and creativity for her work. In recent years she has taken her traditional tapestry weaving to the next level using the computer facilitated jacquard hand weaving technique. The marriage of the image and the structure challenges her creativity. With a long-standing background in tapestry, she continues making works with a strong feel of the hand. Kaija begins with an idea, a drawing or a photograph of an image. If it is a drawing or photo, it is scanned onto the computer so she can manipulate it. When the image is ready she allocates weave structures to it and transform this information to the computer assisted loom. The computer chooses the sequence of warp (vertical) threads, but the actual weaving is done by hand. Image and structure are, thus, locked together and the relationship of the two affects the overall content of the finished piece. One cannot simply scan a picture and weave it. In between is the translation, where an understanding of structure, materials and scale is crucial before a visual idea can become art in fibre. Kaijart.com

Page 15


Elect to Govern Yourself Fredalupe Kugelmann | Mirificent.com

H

ere I give a simple summation of my views whereas the entirety of personal and interpersonal human (behaviour) is concerned. Notice I didn’t use the word political. From my perspective, if you don’t want to stink don’t go swimming in a cesspool. As I see it there is nothing worth saving about the political systems in place, nothing worth repeating, and certainly nothing worth fighting about. A quick look at the meaning of a few words will easily make my point. (def.’s from the simple dictionary on my computer, nothing fancy) Politics: here meaning “of, for, or relating to citizens”. Citizen: “a legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalized.” Subject: “a citizen or member of a state other than its supreme ruler, a person who is the focus of scientific or medical attention or experiment.”... you get the drift. It’s a healthy necessity to do a little research into one’s own language. After all, language provides the building blocks that take part in making up one’s thoughts. And I do mean making up, as in inventing, as in make-believe. Isn’t it the work and duty of every free being to figure it out for and by themselves? Isn’t that the point of a personal evolution: personally parting the veils of one’s own ignorance; leading oneself away or towards...whatever one might choose? All a person has to do is look up the definitions of a few words to see the truth behind

their meaning. If someone really wants to be governed by someone or something else rather than accepting the personal responsibility of doing it themselves, for themselves, by themselves, isn’t that their right? And isn’t the only way to win at this game not to play it? And by games I mean the “political” one we are being offered as a distraction from possibly claiming our own sovereign authority. The truth is politics is all shite. Shite that can’t even be used as fertilizer because of it’s toxic nature. One based on false paradigms that are ultimately destructive, ugly, tacky, and rather embarrassing. Don’t take my word for it either. Just look around. None of these systems work in the people’s favour. Sure they feed the parasites at the top of these pyramids schemes, but remember these parasites are bottom feeders so where exactly does that put the rest of us? Most of us really do seem to inhabit a bizzaro topsy-turvy world in which paradise has been so hellishly distorted as to become a state at war with Life itself. Hierarchies are ponderous self serving monstrosities that are without question the enemies of freedom. Never met one I liked. The electoral process is by any other name perhaps best titled, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. Immortalized by Hans Christian Andersen’s tale ‘about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that are invisible to those unfit for their positions, stu-

pid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!”’ (Summary lifted directly from wikipedia) Everyone else, including the emperor, up until then have all played along with the paradigm of the day regardless of the obviousness of the lie, one so proudly and ridiculously worn, all remaining subject to the programming of self importance, which in essence is born of fear. Electing to govern oneself pretty much says it all for me on the subject, so to speak. It’s a good place to make a stand by accepting responsibility for one’s own state of being. Anything else is a lie, possibly cobbled up by some mad political tailors intent on keeping us from our personal power by dressing us all in their lies, regal or otherwise. Being naked, truthful and honest, transparent if you will, all words for the same thing really, are all about having nothing to hide, nothing to fear. This is where and how I ‘cast my vote’. The Nation of Imagination in the Country called Life. I leave you to your own choices for they are no one else’s to make. After all, what if anything do we have but the power of our decisions? This is also up to us to decide. For my part, I am no one’s subject. I steer my own ship. I rule myself and no other. I guide myself by not doing harm. In other words, I elect to govern myself.

In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end. -Alexis de Tocqueville

NEWMUSIC.ORG Page 16


The 25 Rules of Disinformation 1. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Regardless of what you know, don’t discuss it — especially if you are a public figure, news anchor, etc. If it’s not reported, it didn’t happen, and you never have to deal with the issues. 2. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the “How dare you!” gambit. 3. Create rumor mongers. Avoid discussing issues by describing all charges, regardless of venue or evidence, as mere rumors and wild accusations. Other derogatory terms mutually exclusive of truth may work as well. This method works especially well with a silent press, because the only way the public can learn of the facts are through such “arguable rumors”. If you can associate the material with the Internet, use this fact to certify it a “wild rumor” which can have no basis in fact. 4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent’s argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/ opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.

10. Associate opponent charges with old news. A derivative of the straw man usually, in any large-scale matter of high visibility, someone will make charges early on which can be or were already easily dealt with. Where it can be foreseen, have your own side raise a straw man issue and have it dealt with early on as part of the initial contingency plans. Subsequent charges, regardless of validity or new ground uncovered, can usually them be associated with the original charge and dismissed as simply being a rehash without need to address current issues — so much the better where the opponent is or was involved with the original source. 11. Establish and rely upon fall-back positions. Using a minor matter or element of the facts, take the “high road” and “confess” with candor that some innocent mistake, in hindsight, was made — but that opponents have seized on the opportunity to blow it all out of proportion and imply greater criminalities which, “just isn’t so.” Others can reinforce this on your behalf, later. Done properly, this can garner sympathy and respect for “coming clean” and “owning up” to your mistakes without addressing more serious issues.

issues. 18. Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents. If you can’t do anything else, chide and taunt your opponents and draw them into emotional responses which will tend to make them look foolish and overly motivated, and generally render their material somewhat less coherent. Not only will you avoid discussing the issues in the first instance, but even if their emotional response addresses the issue, you can further avoid the issues by then focusing on how “sensitive they are to criticism”. 19. Ignore proof presented, demand impossible proofs. This is perhaps a variant of the “play dumb” rule. Regardless of what material may be presented by an opponent in public forums, claim the material irrelevant and demand proof that is impossible for the opponent to come by (it may exist, but not be at his disposal, or it may be something which is known to be safely destroyed or withheld, such as a murder weapon). In order to completely avoid discussing issues may require you to categorically deny and be critical of media or books as valid sources, deny that witnesses are acceptable, or even deny that statements made by government or other authorities have any meaning or relevance.

From Twenty-Five Ways To Suppress Truth: The Rules of Disinformation (Includes The 8 Traits of A Disinformationalist) by H. Michael Sweeney.

5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary attack the messenger ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as “kooks”, “right-wing”, “liberal”, “left-wing”, “terrorists”, “conspiracy buffs”, “radicals”, “militia”, “racists”, “religious fanatics”, “sexual deviates”, and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.

20. False evidence. Whenever possible, introduce new facts or clues designed and manufactured to conflict with opponent presentations as useful tools to neutralize sensitive issues or impede resolution. This works best when the crime was designed with contingencies for the purpose, and the facts cannot be easily separated from the fabrications.

21. Call a Grand Jury, Special Prosecutor, or other empowered investigative body. Subvert the (process) to your benefit and effectively neutralize all sensitive issues without open discussion. Once convened, the evidence and testimony are required to be secret when properly handled. For instance, if you own the prosecuting attorney, it can insure a Grand Jury hears no useful evidence and that the evidence is sealed an unavailable to subsequent investigators. Once a favorable verdict (usually, this technique is applied to find the guilty innocent, but it can also be used to obtain charges when seeking to frame a victim) is achieved, the matter can be considered officially closed.

These 25 rules are everywhere in media, from political debates, to television shows, to comments on a blog.

6. Hit and Run. In any public forum, make a brief attack of your opponent or the opponent position and then scamper off before an answer can be fielded, or simply ignore any answer. This works extremely well in Internet and letters-to-the-editor environments where a steady stream of new identities can be called upon without having to explain criticism reasoning — simply make an accusation or other attack, never discussing issues, and never answering any subsequent response, for that would dignify the opponent’s viewpoint. 7. Question motives. Twist or amplify any fact which could so taken to imply that the opponent operates out of a hidden personal agenda or other bias. This avoids discussing issues and forces the accuser on the defensive. 8. Invoke authority. Claim for yourself or associate yourself with authority and present your argument with enough “jargon” and “minutiae” to illustrate you are “one who knows”, and simply say it isn’t so without discussing issues or demonstrating concretely why or citing sources. 9. Play Dumb. No matter what evidence or logical argument is offered, avoid discussing issues with denial they have any credibility, make any sense, provide any proof, contain or make a point, have logic, or support a conclusion. Mix well for maximum effect.

12. Enigmas have no solution. Drawing upon the overall umbrella of events surrounding the crime and the multitude of players and events, paint the entire affair as too complex to solve. This causes those otherwise following the matter to begin to loose interest more quickly without having to address the actual issues. 13. Alice in Wonderland Logic. Avoid discussion of the issues by reasoning backwards with an apparent deductive logic in a way that forbears any actual material fact. 14. Demand complete solutions. Avoid the issues by requiring opponents to solve the crime at hand completely, a ploy which works best for items qualifying for rule 10. 15. Fit the facts to alternate conclusions. This requires creative thinking unless the crime was planned with contingency conclusions in place. 16. Vanishing evidence and witnesses. If it does not exist, it is not fact, and you won’t have to address the issue. 17. Change the subject. Usually in connection with one of the other ploys listed here, find a way to side-track the discussion with abrasive or controversial comments in hopes of turning attention to a new, more manageable topic. This works especially well with companions who can “argue” with you over the new topic and polarize the discussion arena in order to avoid discussing more key

22. Manufacture a new truth. Create your own expert(s), group(s), author(s), leader(s) or influence existing ones willing to forge new ground via scientific, investigative, or social research or testimony which concludes favorably. In this way, if you must actually address issues, you can do so authoritatively. 23. Create bigger distractions. If the above does not seem to be working to distract from sensitive issues, or to prevent unwanted media coverage of unstoppable events such as trials, create bigger news stories (or treat them as such) to distract the multitudes. 24. Silence critics. If the above methods do not prevail, consider removing opponents from circulation by some definitive solution so that the need to address issues is removed entirely. This can be by their death, arrest and detention, blackmail or destruction of their character by release of blackmail information, or merely by proper intimidation with blackmail or other threats. 25. Vanish. If you are a key holder of secrets or otherwise overly illuminated and you think the heat is getting too hot, to avoid the issues, vacate the kitchen.

Page 17


FDA finally admits chicken meat contains cancer-causing arsenic

A

fter years of sweeping the issue under the rug and hoping no one would notice, the FDA has now finally admitted that chicken meat sold in the USA contains arsenic, a cancer-causing toxic chemical that’s fatal in high doses. But the real story is where this arsenic comes from: It’s added to the chicken feed on purpose! Even worse, the FDA says its own research shows that the arsenic added to the chicken feed ends up in the chicken meat where it is consumed by humans. So for the last sixty years, American consumers who eat conventional chicken have been swallowing arsenic, a known cancer-causing chemical. Until this new study, both the poultry industry and the FDA denied that arsenic fed to chickens ended up in their meat. The fairytale excuse story we’ve all been fed for sixty years is that “the arsenic is excreted in the chicken feces.” There’s no scientific basis for making such a claim... it’s just what the poultry industry wanted everybody to believe. But now the evidence is so undeniable that the manufacturer of the chicken feed product known as Roxarsone has decided to pull the product off the shelves. And what’s the name of this manufacturer that has been putting arsenic in the chicken feed for all these years? Pfizer, of course -- the very same company that makes vaccines containing chemical adjuvants that are injected into children.

Technically, the company making the Roxarsone chicken feed is a subsidiary of Pfizer, called Alpharma LLC. Even though Alpharma now has agreed to pull this toxic feed chemical off the shelves in the United States, it says it won’t necessarily remove it from feed products in other countries unless it is forced by regulators to do so. As reported by AP: “Scott Brown of Pfizer Animal Health’s Veterinary Medicine Research and Development division said the company also sells the ingredient in about a dozen other countries. He said Pfizer is reaching out to regulatory authorities in those countries and will decide whether to sell it on an individual basis.”

Arsenic? Eat more!

But even as its arsenic-containing product is pulled off the shelves, the FDA continues its campaign of denial, claiming arsenic in chickens is at such a low level that it’s still safe to eat. This is even as the FDA says arsenic is a carcinogen, meaning it increases the risk of cancer. The National Chicken Council agrees with the FDA. In a statement issued in response to the news that Roxarsone would be pulled from feed store shelves, it stated, “Chicken is safe to eat” even while admitting arsenic was used in many flocks grown and sold as chicken meat in the United States. What’s astonishing about all this is that the FDA tells consumers it’s safe to eat cancer-caus-

ing arsenic but it’s dangerous to drink elderberry juice! The FDA recently conducted an armed raid in an elderberry juice manufacturer, accusing it of the “crime” of selling “unapproved drugs.” Which drugs would those be? The elderberry juice, explains the FDA. You see, the elderberry juice magically becomes a “drug” if you tell people how it can help support good health. The FDA has also gone after dozens of other companies for selling natural herbal products or nutritional products that enhance and support health. Plus, it’s waging a war on raw milk which it says is dangerous. So now in America, we have a food and drug regulatory agency that says it’s okay to eat arsenic, but dangerous to drink elderberry juice or raw milk. Eat more poison, in other words, but don’t consume any healing foods. That’s the FDA, killing off Americans one meal at a time while protecting the profits of the very companies that are poisoning us with their deadly ingredients. Oh, by the way, here’s another sweet little disturbing fact you probably didn’t know about hamburgers and conventional beef: Chicken litter containing arsenic is fed to cows in factory beef operations. So the arsenic that’s pooped out by the chickens gets consumed and concentrated in the tissues of cows, which is then ground into hamburger to be consumed by the clueless masses who don’t even know they’re eating second-hand chicken sh*t.

Mushroom compound heals cancer stem cells and prevents tumors

I

ncredible new research out of Australia has shown that a compound called polysaccharopeptide (PSP), which comes from a type of mushroom called “Turkey Tail,” is 100 percent effective at targeting prostate cancer stem cells and suppressing tumor formation. The research, which has been published in the online journal PLoS ONE, represents the first to show that a natural substance is totally and completely effective in every single trial.

Page 18

For the study, Dr. Patrick Ling, senior researcher from the Australian Prostate Cancer Research Centre in Queensland and the Institute for Biomedical Health & Innovation (IHBI) at QUT, and his colleagues fed PSP for 20 weeks to mice with prostate cancer. Compared to another group of prostate cancer mice not given PSP, which subsequently developed prostate tumors, the PSP group remained completely free of tumors. “The findings are quite significant,” said Dr. Ling. “What we wanted to demonstrate was whether [PSP] could stop the development of prostate tumors in the first place. In the past, other inhibitors tested in research trials have been shown to be up to 70 percent effective, but we’re seeing 100 percent of this tumor prevented from developing with PSP.”

Turkey Tail mushrooms are native to many northern forests around the world, and they have been highly studied for their medicinal benefits. Particularly in China and Japan, Turkey Tail mushrooms are already used as anti-cancer medicine, as well as an antimicrobial, anti-malarial, and immunomodulating natural treatment. And besides PSP, Turkey Tail mushrooms contain many other anti-cancer compounds like beta-glucan-proteins, polysaccharide K (PSK), and ergosterol derivatives, all of which provide substantial health benefits. “Our findings support that PSP may be a potent preventative agent against prostate cancer, possibly through targeting of the prostate cancer stem cell population,” added Dr. Ling. Turkey Tail mushroom extracts with high levels of PSP and many other anti-cancer compounds can be found at most natural grocers, health food shops, and online vitamin and supplement venders.


CALL TO ACTION Operation Empire State Rebellion (OpESR) On March 12 2011, the hacktivist group Anonymous declared they would catalyze a decentralized, non-violent resistance movement, dubbed A99. It would seek to restore the rule of law and fight back against the organized criminal class. It has been 3 months to the day since A99 was announced, and now Anonymous has engaged operation Empire State Rebellion (OpESR). They are calling for protests against the Central Banks of the World, and in America’s case the resignation of Ben Bernanke.

The world wide protests are to commence on June 14th. Canada’s equivalent to the Federal Reserve is the Bank of Canada, which has offices across Canada. The Governor of the BOC is Mark Carney, a Bilderberg 2011 attendee. This is a call for all concerned parties and individuals across the nation to join the worldwide protests against the banking system which is destroying lives and forcing the world into depression. We call for the resignation of Mark Carney and the BOC Board of Directors for supporting a corrupt system deigned to control and financially enslave Canadians.

We are planning to protest at the Vancouver BOC office in mid July, visit theagoranational.ca for updates

www.sovsquamishgov.org

Please forward this call to action widely. Visit theagoranational.ca for more information Contact: DanMerchant@theagoranational.ca The Most Interesting Goalie in The World

I don’t always fail

But when I do, I prefer it to be in the Stanley Cup Final

Page 19


HeddWyn

Essentials

“Let food be thy medicine� Hippocrates Problem skin? Nature Provides! www.wildoiloforegano.com Available at Fine Health Food Stores www.wildtamanuoil.com


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.