Friday, August 3, 2007

Insult to Injury

Nothing new here, good for a laugh. And a tear or two.

"Here we have the haves and the have mores. Some call you the elite; I call
you my base." -George W. Bush, at a black tie 2000 campaign event.

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking of new ways to harm our country and our people.. and neither do we."
- George W. Bush

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." —to a group of Amish he met with privately, July 9, 2004

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000

"You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." --to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005

In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy shit we're all gonna die. Read more!

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Pharmaceutical Monopoly of YOUR Basic Needs

I followed a link to a Facebook group called "Abate the Codex Alimentarius". I think Giancarlo had mentioned something about this before but I never looked into it. I had no idea about the extent of such obscenity although, again, I'm not entirely surprised what with the way things are going globally. The description of the group is as follows:

"Anyone who has not heard of the Codex Alimentarius before, you're in for a bumpy ride. The Codex Alimentarius is a trade commission in place to control the international trade of food and backed by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Bottom line: everything edible, except pharmaceuticals (remember that), is controlled by the Codex. This is to go into full global effect in the year 2010, and here are a couple of disturbing highlights:

You may remember a few years ago there was a big to-do about a new product called Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH). This is a product that increases the milk production in cows. Since then, there have been numerous other products that do the same thing, as well as different hormones given to cows to increase the production of meat. Artificial hormones that increase production will become MANDATORY! And, any vegans out there who think nothing of this should know that all agricultural products would be required to be irradiated. Essentially, all organic food will be illegal. Welcome to the new world order.

Under the Codex, all nutrients (vitamins and minerals) are listed as toxic materials. Any substance deemed as toxic is required to be legally regulated to "protect the ignorant, the unthinking and the credulous" through the science of toxicology. The sciences of toxicology and 'risk management' have one ultimate goal: to limit the amount of the material in question to a point where it will have "no possible affect on humans". So, if the Codex is allowed in the United States, and you go to the store to pick up some glucosamine for your joints or some green tea for. . . well. . . everything, the nutritional content of those tea bags or those gelcaps will be limited to a point where they will have "no possible affect (benefit) on humans".

My greatest fear in all of this (in a world where we have at least one prescription drug commercial during every commercial break) is that in the very near future, any health conscious person who would prefer to watch what they eat and take care of themselves will be allowed only two solutions: pharmaceuticals or death."-Jon Pietz

Facebook Group found here



Summary of Codex in 7 Points


Dear Money Famished Corporations,
Stop ruining my life.
Love, Leslie
P.S. What's next, a tax on air? Let me know. Read more!

Bottled water suckers!

You've been paying a huge premium for the same stuff that comes out of your faucet.
August 2, 2007


Some years back, during a break in the criminal case against her, the Beverly Hills madam, Alex Adams -- the more circumspect predecessor to Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss -- went padding down the courthouse hallway. She carried her empty bottle of Evian water, and she refilled it at a public drinking fountain.

It struck me as funny when I watched her do it then -- Evian pretensions and tap-water realities.

It's still funny now, for different reasons. The H2O in at least one-quarter of the billions of bottles of water this country swigs down every year comes out of the same public reservoirs that send water to every tap from public drinking fountains to your bathroom sink.

Now Aquafina, the biggest-selling bottled water in the country, bottled by Pepsi, has been outed. The water in those pretty, swirly-topped bottles with the pure blue mountain logo comes from the same sources as the humble -- and cheap -- tap water in Fresno and Wichita and Detroit and other cities that are nowhere close to pure blue mountains.

Dasani water, bottled by Coca-Cola, has already been busted for its tap-water pedigree from pristine locales such as Queens, N.Y., but it's still this nation's second-best-selling water. (Britons laughed Dasani off the shelves; its marketing campaign couldn't stand up to mocking comparisons to a BBC sitcom character who scammed customers by repackaging tap water as a fancy brand.)

Crystal Geyser water comes out of the same Owens Valley well that the Department of Water and Power draws from. Yosemite Water doesn't come from Yosemite Valley -- it's from L.A.'s Highland Park, where there's a street named Yosemite. Some of the DWP's biggest water customers are. . . bottled water companies.

Of course, the bottlers purify already drinkable water, but slap a filter on your spigot and yours will be purified too.

Tap water often comes from the same source as the bottled stuff. It's cheaper than the bottled stuff. It may be safer than the bottled stuff -- big city tap water is tested for some bacteria at least 100 times a month; the FDA requires bottlers to test just once a week.

Which is why, in the words of the Economist, the success of bottled water is "one of capitalism's greatest mysteries." In the words of me, where's the mystery? We're suckers.

We drink more bottled water than we do coffee or milk. (Sodas are more popular, but for how long, after last week's news that even one soft drink a day can add 50% to the risk that you'll get a condition that's a precursor to heart disease and diabetes.)

About 30 years ago, we each drank about six quarts of bottled water a year in Southern California. Now it's nearly 29 gallons. If earthquake rubble buried us in an instant, so many of us would be death-gripping water bottles that future archaeologists would conclude they were religious talismans.

You can get at least 450 gallons of L.A. tap water for the $1.35 you'd pay for 20 ounces of Aquafina. Turn that around, and 20 ounces of L.A. tap water costs about one-twentieth of a cent.

Would you pay $5 for a gallon of gas in a pretty container if you could get a plain-wrap gallon for half a penny? When it comes to water, that's pretty much what we do.

And we do it in part because public water has a worse image than Michael Vick. Public water contamination in places like Milwaukee and Washington crowds out memories of the benzene that turned up in Perrier samples years ago. And oh, that "eeesh" factor from tap water and public drinking fountains.



If you're a Third World immigrant to the U.S. you may buy bottled water, a habit from homelands where local water was undrinkable. If you're scared of terrorism, bottled water just feels safer. If you're in a rush, unless you've got a faucet in your dashboard, it's convenient. And if you don't have a filter, it may taste a little better.

Still, I think people are getting thirsty -- for something different.

After The Times pointed out that L.A. was spending half a million bucks a year to get people to drink DWP water at the same time it was buying the bottled stuff for some city offices, the mayor put the kibosh on outside H2O. Ann Arbor and Salt Lake City are pushing the local drink. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is too. Chic restaurants are pouring eau de tap as the house brand. Enviros are crusading against mountains of un-recycled plastic water bottles.

And how healthy can that bottle of European spring water really be, if the best reason to drink it is to wash away the taste from the jet-fuel pollutants that were created to get it to your table? Read more!

Santa Ana's small-minded self-hatred

The heavily Latino city has all the problems of an urban metropolis, but its leaders act like they're governing Newport Beach.
By Gustavo Arellano
August 2, 2007


Teens killing teens. Corrupt school officials. Graffiti that blooms every night. Streets withering into dust. Not enough parks. Two libraries to serve a city of 400,000. A huge, unassimilated and poor immigrant population. Segregated neighborhoods. Overcrowding. Santa Ana, Calif., has all the problems of a metropolis but little of the compensating urban charm. (Although the overpriced downtown lofts amid the quinceaƱera shops and fruit ladies are trying to change that pronto.)

City officials are understandably concerned about their 'burb, especially because it's the government seat of Orange County, where image trumps all and "Santa Ana" is code for "Mexican." But instead of focusing on the city's underlying ills, Santa Ana's leaders are ignoring the burrito for the beans.

In the last few years, Santa Ana City Council members, their appointed allies on city commissions and various bureaucrats have declared war on the criminal equivalent of Bugsy Malone. They've limited garage sales to four set weekends a year, hassled street vendors, made owning a barking dog a jailable offense and even tried to declare taco trucks a public nuisance. Now Orange County's largest city has sicced its lawyers on what they classify as "human signs": those lovable losers who spend hours on street corners under the sun holding large advertising signs.

These breathing billboards are as much a part of Santa Ana as illegal immigrants and Latino trannie bars. I've enjoyed dozens of memorable characters over the years -- pink-tutu-wearing pancakes promoting IHOP, break-dancing teens shilling for housing developments, Latino men glumly lugging around sandwich boards, a lady dressed as a clown while handing out fliers for a furniture store blasting rock en espaƱol.

I figure that anyone brave enough to withstand ridicule and heat for $10 an hour and few bathroom breaks is a captain of industry, a hero worthy of his own Woody Guthrie ballad. But Santa Ana's rulers don't share my appreciation. In this long, dry summer, they've already charged at least five sign-wavers with misdemeanors and are promising to prosecute more. Court dates are set for later this month.

The busybodies argue that they're merely trying to improve Santa Ana's quality of life. Today's human pancakes might become tomorrow's broken windows, and irritate drivers to boot.

But the entrepreneurs who hire sign-wavers are suffering as a result of the crackdown, and I'd believe the driver-distraction excuse if Santa Ana didn't also allow big businesses to erect eyesores like the Santa Ana Auto Mall's thousand-suns-bright marquee near the 55 Freeway, or the Taco Bell Discovery Science Center's giant cube dangling ominously over cars as they speed past on Interstate 5.

The root of the problem is that Santa Ana is governed by people who don't want to accept the immigrant magnet where they live. They pretend they're in Newport Beach instead of the city that a 2004 study by the State University of New York's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government rated as having the most "urban hardship" in the United States. Their policies are designed to please those who live in the ritzy neighborhoods north of 17th Street, Santa Ana's Mason-Dixon line, instead of the teeming barrio below.

Instead of investing money in more police officers, Santa Ana spent a bit more than $1 million to refurbish and repaint a water tower so it could read "Downtown Orange County." Rather than improving infrastructure, it installed a downtown water fountain better suited for Tivoli. Instead of supporting local businesses, Santa Ana lures such out-of-town corporations as Starbucks and American Apparel with massive subsidies. And the city's primary project over the last decade has been an Artists Village that gets its largest crowds not during its "first Saturday" gallery open houses but during Dia de los Muertos.

Sure, catering to the poor doesn't elect politicians, and it incurs the wrath of longtime residents who seethe that immigrants have changed Santa Ana forever. But Orange County's largest city needs visionary politicians like Fiorello LaGuardia, Franklin D. Roosevelt or even the pre-philandering Antonio Villaraigosa: men who understood that communities don't truly prosper until the downtrodden do.

The irony of Santa Ana's pettiness is who leads the attack. Santa Ana is the largest U.S. city with an all-Latino City Council. Three of them are Mexican immigrants; one, Mayor Miguel Pulido, campaigned against city nitpickers (planners wanted to seize his family's muffler shop through eminent domain and turn it into a shopping center) when he first ran for City Council in 1986.

You'd expect, because of their background, that Pulido and his amigos would feel more sympathy for the city's teeming masses. Instead, they strum some mariachi chords while Santa Ana crumbles. Before, it was gabacho politicians who ignored Latino needs; now, it's Latino politicos forsaking their duty. That's progress, right?

Gustavo Arellano is a contributing editor to Opinion and a staff writer for the OC Weekly, where he writes the ¡Ask a Mexican! column. Read more!

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Pranic Healing

In Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Tantric Judaism, Islam, and Gnostic Christianity there are two types of energy: Prana (chi) and Shakti (universal God-energy, Buddha, Christ, Brahman). Prana is the word for chi in Hinduism, Ruach in Judaism, Barraka in Islam. People who practice Qi meditation or kundalini yoga are able to harness Prana and manipulate it. This type of energy is what everything physical is composed of... sort of like a life-force, or God manifest in the physical. It can be pooled in the Chakras and channeled from person to person, either through each person's own Prana or through that of the Earth, wind, water, or sun (Chi or Prana from the wind is the most common source, Prana from the sun is the most potent). Shakti on the other hand can't be manipulated, but merely channeled. Pranic Healing is based on the concept that physical and psychological ailments are caused by a disharmony or blockage of Prana in the Chakras. Someone practicing serious meditation or kundalini yoga (especially westerners) often experience "kundalini syndrome" which manifests itself as physical and psychological disturbances, depression, or near-death (this happened to me during my last trip). This is due to a physical manifestation of a person's karma when his or her mind is consciously and physically aware of Pranic energy. Cleansing the body through exposure to sunlight, sea-water, and positve karmic actions like abstaining from or participating in the killing of sentient living beings, surround oneself with large trees, and pranic healing like the video below allow Prana a cleaner and smoother enviornment in the body, thereby alleviating unwanted effects of novists being aware of Prana or Chi. Also, Sakya and Tibetan Buddhists are able to to channel both Prana and Shakti energies without the unwanted effects due to the process of using this energy in order to attain a state of vipassana wisdom after samatha meditation, the goal being liberation from the physical and union with God, and not the manipulation of Prana for physical purposes. Anyway, so far as I know.

Read more!

Monday, July 30, 2007

The President and the Press (Ringing True Today)

Please listen or read. It's beautiful.

Google Video description:
"John F. Kennedy Speech, April 27, 1961

American Newspaper Publishers Association. Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, NY.

In a speech that should shock Americans. He warns the press and America to be on the lookout for the exact circumstances that have manifest themselves under the Bush Administration and the false flag of state sponsored terrorism.

This speech should chill Americans to the bone. Kennedy died trying to warn us. He wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve and the C.I.A.

On November 22, 1963, hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by multiple assassin's bullets as his motorcade took and unscheduled turn in Dallas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; and youngest to die. The Secret Service was not by his side, they had been called off of his motorcade. Who would have the power to do this?

Graduating from Harvard in 1940, he entered the Navy. In 1943, when his PT boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer, Kennedy, despite grave injuries, led the survivors through perilous waters to safety. He is a war hero.

Don't let his death be in vain. This speech which has now transcended time could be the key to saving America from the fate which looms over it like a dark spectra.

Author: John F. Kennedy Date: 1961-04-27 Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Recorded by: White House"



Highlights:

"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know."


"It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions--by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations."

"Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match."

"It is the unprecedented nature of this challenge that also gives rise to your second obligation--an obligation which I share. And that is our obligation to inform and alert the American people--to make certain that they possess all the facts that they need, and understand them as well--the perils, the prospects, the purposes of our program and the choices that we face."

"No President should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding; and from that understanding comes support or opposition. And both are necessary. I am not asking your newspapers to support the Administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. For I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed."


"This means greater coverage and analysis of international news--for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security--and we intend to do it."


Source of Transcript Read more!

Blackwater




I am truly embarrassed to say that this man is our president. Read more!

Who Killed the Electric Car?

oil and corporate greed


Read more!

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Illuminazi



"New World Order", sound familiar? Read more!