Friday 29 February 2008

The Origin Of Life Made Easy

This video explains the prevailing scientific theory as to how life came into being on earth. It details how organic matter, over a period of around a billion years, emerged from inorganic sludge. Crucially, at no point in this process is a deity required. It's a fair question for the theists: what role does your God play in this process?

Monday 25 February 2008

INTERVIEW: Aaron Russo

Aside from detailing the pure and unconstitutional tyranny of the Federal Reserve system in the US - a tyranny which put a group of unelected private bankers at the helm of the biggest corporation in the biggest economy on earth, enslaving the American people to a century's worth of unnecessary debt - America: Freedom to Fascism, by the late Aaron Russo, also warns of the impending threat of a comprehensive social dystopia from which no-one can realistically hope to escape. By all accounts, the wheels of this threat have been turning faster and faster since the events of 11th Sepember 2001. Listen to Russo talk about this and his film below.

Wednesday 20 February 2008

CHOMSKY: On Corporations and Government

People are encouraged to take their anger and frustrations out on the government. But the real propogators of tyranny - who have 'demolished civil society', who have purposely marginalised people, creating the fabricated 'wants' that people spend most of their lives pursuing - are the powerful private coporations which back government. Whilst our media is filled with stories and scandals about government, these powerful, privately owned coporations remain hidden, out of sight, unnamed, untouchable. This is a genuine achievement of corporate propoganda. An achievement made possible because the people who own the media (and thereby control the flow of information and ideas, deciding what constitutes 'news') are those very same powerful, privately owned corporations. They tell you what they want you to know. What they don't want you to know remains hidden.

FILM: America: Freedom to Fascism, Links

For more information about the film visit the official site: America: Freedom to Fascism.
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View the trailer below.

Watch the full film here for free on google video.

Tuesday 19 February 2008

FILM: America: Freedom To Fascism

The question Russo started out asking when he began his film was whether or not there was an actual law requiring US citizens to file a 1040 tax return. That is, to pay tax on their labour - an income tax. He'd heard stories that the income tax was unconstitutional and unlawful. Whilst making the film, he found out that - it was. Below is a brief summary of some of the issues discussed in the film.

What is the Federal Reserve?

The Federal Reserve (often refered to as the Fed) issues money to the US government. In spite of its name, the Federal Reserve isn't federal. It's owned by a group of private bankers, not all of which are known. There's a false perception - which has been consciously fabricated - that the Federal Reserve is part of or run by the government. It isn't. It's a private company that operates in collusion with government, not under it. Someone in the film says that the government and the Federal Reserve are like a mafia cartel, one forcing people to pay up through the threat of violence and imprisonment, while the other collects the money. This is more true than you probably realise.

[I've also just read that the Federal Reserve bankers are behind the Bank of England (I've heard this said a few times), along with many other institutions such as the Bank of France, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland, the United Nations, 'the ultimate front for international banking interests.']

Money

In the past, you could take paper receipts (what we call money) into a bank and exchange it for gold. The receipt itself had no value beyond the gold (or whatever else) it represented. In effect, the gold was the money, not the recipt. However the Federal Reserve isn't backed by gold. It literally prints money out of thin air. This invariably produces inflation (someties called the 'hidden tax') because everytime more money is printed the value of the money already in circulation simultaneously diminishes. Since the value of the currency is diminished the cost of things increases.
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"Paper is poverty...it is only the ghost of money, not money itself." Thomas Jefferson

Interest

The money loaned to the government by the Federal Reserve is loaned at interest. This means that for every dollar in public use interest must be paid to the Federal Reserve. In order to pay the interest more money must be printed, by the Federal Reserve, at interest. Thus creating an endless supply of revenue for the private bankers who own the Federal Reserve.

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

This is the federal goverment agency that collects taxes, including the unlawful, unconstitutional income tax. Now, if you're like me, you'd probably assume that money collected through a manditory income tax would go towards things such as running government and paying for public services. This isn't so. The Grace Commission (a top to bottom investigation of government set up by Reagan when he entered office) reported of the income tax that "100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the federal debt."

Not one cent of this tax benefits a single US citizen. It all falls into the pockets of the private bankers who own the Federal Reserve. As ludicrous as it sounds, in effect, people work a significant portion of each year to pay the Federal Reserve for the privelidge of having a currency.

Income Tax

There is a lawful income tax. But it doesn't apply to money earned personally though one's labour. It's a tax on corporate gains. This is the meaning of income tax. In spite of this, in 2005, $278.5 billion was collected in legal corporate tax, whereas $927.2 billion was collected via the unconstitutional, unlawful labour tax.

1913

JP Morgan. Paul Warburg. John D Rockerfeller. According to Russo it was these bankers in 1913 who convinced Philander Knox, then secretary of state, to lie to the American people and declare that the 16th Ammendment had been ratified when it hadn't (read more about this here or here). The 16th Ammendment gave congress the power "to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived". The bankers knew that money gained through tax via the 16th Ammendment would belong to them.

The bankers then bribed senators to pass the Federal Reserve Act. They did this when many senators were at home during Christmas vacation. The act was passed and signed into law by president Woodrow Wilson. This is how a group of private bankers took complete control of the production of money in the US.

"Give me control of a nations money supply, and I care not who makes its laws." Mayer Rothschild

After thought: As Chomsky says, the two party political system is an illusion. Democrat and Republican are two sides of the same business faction (Chomsky also says that the same analysis applies to Britain, albeit to a lesser extent). The name of this business faction is the Federal Reserve - or New World Order, or Global Elite, or whatever you want to call these people.

Friday 8 February 2008

NOTES: From An Interview With Acharya S

What follows are notes I took from an interview with Acharya S (the pen name of D M Murdoch) conducted on the Conscious Media Network by Regina Meredith in Novermber 2005. Find out more about Acharya S here, or visit her website, here.

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Modern icons, such as Christ, are as mythical as Isis, Hercules, Dyonisis.

Most religious ideologies originate from the same source.

The symbol of the cross - which is an instance of a cruciform - is sacred in many ancient religions.

There was a Mexican sun god who was crucified between two thieves.

Sun worship dates back to the beginning of agriculture, tens of thousands of years ago.

Astrological knowledge was crucial agriculturally. It was used to foretell such things as when to plant and harvest crops. It's value was such that astrological information was personified and turned into stories that could be more readily passed from generation to generation. This was in times before there were written texts.

Historically the most powerful have always imposed their religion upon others. Ancient religions were sometimes amalgamated into single, new religions in order for those in power to gain unified control of different cultures or peoples.

It's easier to control and manipulate people through religious ideas more than political ones.

In order to make religion more influential - especially to women - gods were 'brought down to earth' in the form of godmen (Jesus, for instance), into figures that were easier for people to relate to.

Christ/Christos: used many times in the Old Testament to refer to a number of people, including Sirus, the Babylonian king.

Jesus: used over 300 times in the Old Testament, relating to anyone named Joshua. In pre-Christian times there were Joshua worshippers. At the time there was no reason for people to think of Joshua as a real person. Joshua was also a sun god.

Three Positions

1) Jesus Christ existed and was the son of God.

2) Jesus Christ was a man who had the myths subsequently bestowed upon him.

3) Jesus Christ has always been a myth.

Acharya S's basic contention is this: The creators of the Christian gospel tale chose themes and motifs from pre-Christian religions and myths - most notably Egyptian ones - and pieced them together in accordance with Jewish scriptures to produce a unique version of the 'mythos' and 'ritual'. These themes and motifs - such as the sacredness of the cross; the virgin mother giving birth to a divine son or Godman, who taught on earth, was murdered, buried and after three days resurected; the ten commandments, and so on - were all pre-existant in ancient Egypt and were known by millions in the same Mediteranean regions that Christianity first appeared. There is nothing unique about them specifically relative to Christianity.

"The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun."

[Thomas Paine from An Essay on the Origin of Free-Masonry (c.1803-1805), discovered after Paine's death.]

Wednesday 6 February 2008

Come, Lets All Be Hypocritical Bastards

Dominic Lawson, writing in the Independent: 'At times Members of Parliament talk and behave as if they are living in a parallel universe, which co-exists with the one in which the rest of us live – and yet which is not subject to the laws which govern our own lives.'
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Lawson is writing about a commons statement given by Justice Secretary Jack Straw, and the subsequent parlimentary discussion, in response to the bugging of conversations between alleged terrorist fundraiser, Babar Ahmed, and his MP, childhood friend and ex-lawyer, Sadiq Khan. According to Lawson, MP's aren't concerned about the fact that bugging the conversation may have prejudiced Ahmed's extradition to the US, however they're livid with the fact that one of their own has been bugged.
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Lawson details how in 1966, following a series of stories in the press about MP's being bugged by security and intelligence agencies, prime minister Harold Wilson introduced what became known as the 'Wilson Doctrine'. The 'Wilson Doctrine' meant that under no circumstances should a member of parliment have their telephone tapped. MP's cited this doctrine in their protests about Khan's bugging. However Lawson says:
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"The doctrine means that MPs and peers can engage in serious crime or terrorism without running the risk of being investigated in the same way as any other member of the public. It is fundamental to the constitution of this country that no one is above the law or seen to be above the law."
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Lawson is right. They do live in a parallel universe. Or at least they think they do. They're in parliment, outraged that they could be subject to such intrusive treatment as having their private conversations spied on. But where was that outrage in July 2007, when Jacqui 'Gestapo' Smith passed a law giving 795 public companies free access to not just some but all of our phone calls and text messages? There was none, because the only civil liberties our MP's care about is their own. They're content to inflict all manner of surveillance measures on us, but only so long as they remain exempt. And if their exemption is threatened - as it was recently with the Khan case - they're outraged. Well I'm outraged. We all should be. The duty of government should be to protect the privacy and liberty of its citizens, not the privacy and liberty of itself.

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Remember: For all you know there could be a file at this very moment with your name on it. It could detail the names of the people you call, how often you call them, what you say, how often you send text messages and their content. And, thanks to the governments secret Celldar project, this file could detail where you were when you made the calls and sent the text messages. Indeed, in so far as you have a mobile phone and have it switched on, it could detail where you are at this very moment. And you will never know.

And just imagine how useful, or rather, profitable such information would be to large corporations - not to mention the government. Imagine the psychological insight that could be garnered from it. Corporations with the technology to profile and marginalise everyone. A government with the lawful ability to spy on anyone that poses a threat to it.

It is not us that should be subject to this kind of treatment. It is the government. It was they, not us, who invaded two countries. It was they, not us, who endorsed the use of hundreds of tons of depleted uranium in Iraq, a viscious toxic substance whose radioactivity will persist for 4,500,000,000 years and will kill and cause suffering to millions all over the world. And they didn't do this, contrary to their lies, in some fight aginst terrorism or because Iraq posed a threat to us. They attacked Afghanistan and Iraq because of profit and power. Which is exactly the same reason why they're imposing all these barbaric surveillance measures on us.

Sunday 3 February 2008

Pentagon: To Treat The Internet Like An Enemy "Weapons System" [Ref.]

[From 'Pentagon: The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system"', an article by Brent Jessop, Global Research.]
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Quotes below from Rebuilding America's Defences, a document produced by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 2000.
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"It is now commonly understood that information and other new technologies...are creating a dynamic that may threaten America's ability to exercise its dominant military power."
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"Control of space and cyberspace. Much as control of the high seas - and the protection of international commerce - defined global powers in the past, so will control of the new "international commons" be a key to world power in the future. An America incapable of protecting its interests or that of its allies in space or the "infosphere" will find it difficult to exert global political leadership."
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"Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and "combat" likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, "cyber-space," and perhaps the world of microbes."

Saturday 2 February 2008

The Snow Leopard

I recently saw a BBC documentary about the Snow Leopards of Chitral Gol National Park on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Quite what is so remarkable about these creatures I find hard to say. I'm going to bypass this problem by simply showing some photographs I found on the internet.

[Information below from BBC. Find out more from the Snow Leopard Trust.]

Snow leopards inhabit Central Asia from Afghanistan to Lake Baikal and eastern Tibet.

Snow leopards can live for up to 21 years.
Snow leopards mate between December and March and after 98-104 days of gestation, females give birth to one to five cubs (usually two or three). The cubs stay with their mothers for at least a year.

Snow leopards cannot roar which helps to separate them from the big cats.

Prey is either stalked or ambushed.

They have been recorded living in mountain steppes and coniferous forest scrub at altitudes from 2000-6000m.

Snow leopards are crepuscular (active at dawn and dusk) and are solitary, although males and females have been known to hunt together during the breeding season.

Chomsky: The Nazification of Policitcal Speech and Government Action in the US [Ref.]

[From The Daily Free Press, Boston Student Newspaper.]

Pulitzer-Prize winning author Noam Chomsky denounced the Iraq War and "imperialistic" American foreign policy of the Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations at Roxbury Community College last night.

Chomsky, a renowned linguist often noted as one of the nation's leading leftist intellectuals, condemned Gens. David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker's abusive actions against the Iraqi state to the crowd of more than 500.

"Lord Petraeus has initiated tyrannically destructive policies, including, but not limited to, the surge proposed on Sept. 11, 2007 in a despicably theatrical manner before Congress," Chomsky said. "Great sectarian violence, particularly in the Anbar Province, has all but consumed a once prosperous nation."


[Read more here.]