IOWA: Video cameras now lethal weapons; Republicans launch another attack on your rights

Marti Oakley, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Iowa is following in Florida’s footsteps and working on passing a bill making it a criminal offense to film or photograph the abuse of animals on farms or in commercial CAFO operations. Apparently it is ok to abuse your animals, to leave them in fetid conditions, or to treat them inhumanely . . . Iowa just doesn’t want you documenting that abuse.

Nine House Democrats joined all of the Republicans present to pass the bill in a 66 to 27 vote on Iowa bill H.R. 589.

Turns out your video camera or camera are now considered lethal weapons…the stuff of terrorism!
In an effort to protect industrialized CAFO operations, and unscrupulous corporate growers, Iowa is standing up to those activist citizens who document the abhorrent conditions on industrialized farms and ranches and also in some privately owned operations, claiming this somehow interferes with, or tampers with the property of another. 

11A. “Record” means any printed, inscribed, visual, or audio information that is placed or stored on a tangible medium, and that may be accessed in a perceivable form, including but not limited to any paper or electronic format.

This means anything recorded on your film or camera that would adversely affect the profits of the person committing the abuse. This includes, video’s, stills, pictures captured on your cell phone or any other documentation.

d. Disrupt operations conducted at the animal facility, if the operations directly relate to agricultural production, animal maintenance, educational or scientific purposes, or veterinary care.

 

IF your pictures highlight the abuse, unsanitary conditions or what is referred to as educational or veterinary…..meaning drug testing, experiments, vivisection research, dissemination of disease for “research” or other inhumane activities under the guise of Education or scientific,……you too could be a unique terrorist with a camera. Animal maintenance is the catch-all phrase that covers abusive treatment, mistreatment, unsanitary conditions and lack of care.

And here is the coup de grace:




Sec. 9. NEW SECTION. 717A.2A Animal facility interference.

1. A person is guilty of animal facility interference, if the person acts without the consent of the owner of an animal facility to willfully do any of the following:

(1) Produce a record which reproduces an image or sound occurring at the animal facility as follows:

(a) The record must be created by the person while at the animal facility.
(b) The record must be a reproduction of a visual or audio experience occurring at the animal facility, including but not limited to a photographic or audio medium.

(2) Possess or distribute a record which produces an image or sound occurring at the animal facility which was produced as provided in subparagraph (1)

(3) Subparagraphs (1) and (2) do not apply to an animal shelter, a boarding kennel, a commercial kennel, a pet shop, or a pound, all as defined in section 162.2.

Wouldn’t the more prudent thing to do here have been to enforce animal cruelty laws? How about all those fake food safety regulations? Would it be too much to ask that a higher, safer standard of animal care be enforced? Rather than criminalizing those who expose the corruption and abuse  that occurs routinely in these facilities.

This bill, like so many others we are seeing from the Republicans is a direct assault on your first amendment rights; your right to free speech. They’ve already attacked workers rights, your right to alternative healthcare and now they want to stop you from documenting the corruption and abuse in corporate farming and livestock operations.

This works out really well . . . this way, you are prevented from gathering the evidence, producing the evidence and forcing them to acknowledge the evidence. Perfect scenario: Plausible deniability.

YES! Corporate protectionism is alive and well in Iowa! And why wouldn’t it be? This is Tom Vilsack’s home turf; a man, who if he was any closer to Monsanto and other bio-pirates would most likely have to give them their own key to his place. Apparently they already have the keys to Iowa.


Bill HR 589

http://www.trendtrack.com/texis/walks/ia/billtext.html?bill=HF589

Roll Call on bill vote

http://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/pubs/hjweb/pdf/March%2017,%202011.pdf#page=5

Bill history

http://coolice.legis.state.ia.us/Cool-ICE/default.asp?Category=BillInfo&Service=DspHistory&key=0642C

 

Bill HR 589

http://www.trendtrack.com/texis/walks/ia/billtext.html?bill=HF589

Roll Call on bill vote

http://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/pubs/hjweb/pdf/March%2017,%202011.pdf#page=5

Bill history

http://coolice.legis.state.ia.us/Cool-ICE/default.asp?Category=BillInfo&Service=DspHistory&key=0642C

Marti Oakley is a political activist and former op-ed columnist for the St Cloud Times in Minnesota. She was a member of the Times Writer’s Group until she resigned in September of 07. She is neither Democrat nor Republican, since neither party is representative of the American people. She says what she thinks, means what she says, and is known for being outspoken. She is hopeful that the American public will wake up to what is happening to our beloved country . . . little of it is left.  Her website is The PPJ Gazette        

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COMMENT: The truth is like air to the Good; without the truth, the Good dies.


The lie is like air to the Evil; without the lie, the Evil dies.


ALL of the people who voted for this bill made themselves EVIL by that action.
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Texas rape bill opens door to prior conduct

Judge would decide if jury could hear previous uncharged allegations

By PATRICIA KILDAY HART and BRIAN ROGERS AUSTIN BUREAU

April 18, 2011, 8:45PM

AUSTIN — In what critics say could be a "seismic change" in state criminal law, the Texas Senate tentatively approved a bill that would allow jurors in sexual assault cases to hear testimony about similar allegations against a defendant — even if the previous incident did not result in a conviction or even criminal charges.

The bill by Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, would allow the introduction of testimony about allegations of other sexual assaults to be admitted during the guilt or innocence phase of a trial if a judge — outside the presence of the jury — hears the evidence and deems it relevant.

The bill gives "greater resources to prosecutors and victims of sexual assault," Huffman said Monday. Allowing testimony of similar sex offenses "brings Texas closer in line with federal rules of evidence," she added.

Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, opposed the bill, arguing the measure would bring about "more wrongful convictions" because jurors will be afraid to acquit a defendant against whom they have heard multiple allegations. Jurors who are skeptical of the evidence of the case before them could feel compelled to convict "because he (the defendant) must have done something wrong," West said.

"All of us want to be law and order and the whole nine yards," West said. "But this is carving new ground in criminal jurisprudence. You ought to think long and hard, 'is that fair?' "

Although the Senate gave initial approval to the bill on a 23-8 vote Monday, Huffman retreated on her first attempt to pass the bill last week when it was met with hostile questions.

"This is a hard bill for many to vote against," said Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock. While current rules of procedure "are designed to protect liberty," he said Huffman's measure would allow jurors to hear "allegations that have not even been vetted by a grand jury."

Constitutional issues

In an emotional response, Huffman described watching a 6-year-old girl clutching a teddy bear testify about a sexual assault.

"It would have been very helpful" to hear evidence about similar conduct by the defendant, she said. "Under current law, you can't do that."

Criminal law experts are split over the idea, said University of Houston law professor Adam Gershowitz.

"Defense attorneys believe it makes the trial more about the character of the defendant than whether they committed the act for which he is on trial," he said. "The evidence of prior behavior convinces the jury that he's a bad guy."

On the other hand, he continued, prosecutors find sexual assault cases difficult to prosecute because defendants charged with rape often claim the sex was consensual. Allowing testimony about similar acts would give jurors "evidence that this is not the first time it happened, that the defendant has a pattern of violent behavior."

"That's why it's a very hard issue," Gershowitz said. "I don't know which side is right."

Houston defense lawyer Pat McCann called it a terrible idea.

"With all due respect to Senator Huffman's sincere commitment to protecting victims of violent crime, this is probably one of the worst ideas that any senator has ever come up with," McCann said.

He said the rules of evidence are specifically designed to prevent juries from considering anything other than the facts of the case in front of them. Bringing in allegations that are too weak to garner an indictment or a criminal charge changes, fundamentally, the criminal justice system, he said.

"When you have an uncharged extraneous offense that somehow comes in at that phase, you have just guaranteed a guilty verdict and thrown out the U.S. Constitution," McCann said.

Similar bill in House

He noted that accused sex offenders are convicted every day without that provision.

A past president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, McCann said he was reminded of the Salem Witch trials.

"It's a dangerous, dangerous thing to convict people on past allegations, not convictions, not even charges," he said. "This is an unnecessary solution to a non-existent problem."

The Senate is expected to vote on final passage of the bill today . Rep. Beverly Woolley, R-Houston, has sponsored a companion bill which is pending in a House committee.

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COMMENT:  Pure evil. REAL rape is terrible and should be prosecuted, of course. But a women getting drunk, having sex, then - after the alcohol wears off and her inhibitions return - she regrets it, is NOT rape.

And what is to stop a group of Feminists from targeting a man for a series of ALLEGATIONS?

"In an emotional response, Huffman described watching a 6-year-old girl clutching a teddy bear testify about a sexual assault."
MANIPULATIVE BITCH.

And notice that both introducers of these bills are Republican women.
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Serotonin: A critical chemical for human intimacy and romance

Contact: Chris J. Pfister
C.Pfister@elsevier.com
215-239-3266
Elsevier

Philadelphia, PA, 14 April 2011 - The judgments we make about the intimacy of other couples' relationships appear to be influenced by the brain chemical serotonin, reports a new study published in Biological Psychiatry.
Healthy adult volunteers, whose levels of serotonin activity had been lowered, rated couples in photos as being less intimate and less romantic than volunteers with normal serotonin activity.
The approach involved giving amino acid drinks to two groups of volunteers in order to manipulate blood concentrations of the amino acid tryptophan, which is a vital ingredient in the synthesis of serotonin. One group received drinks that contained tryptophan. The other group received drinks that did not contain tryptophan. They were then asked to make judgments about sets of photographs of couples. Differences in the judgments made by the two groups reflected changes in their serotonin activity.
"Serotonin is important in social behavior, and also plays a significant role in psychological disorders such as depression," explained Professor Robert Rogers of Oxford University, who led the research. "We wanted to see whether serotonin activity influences the judgments we make about peoples' close personal relationships."
The volunteers who received the drink without tryptophan consistently rated the couples in the photos as being less 'intimate' and 'romantic' than the participants who received the control drink.
This finding is an important reminder that our relationships with other people are influenced by processes beyond our awareness and control. But we should not be surprised by this revelation. Serotonin function drops in association with episodes of depression, where the capacity for intimacy also is often compromised.
Understanding the powerful influence of these chemicals is important as supportive close relationships are known to protect against the development of mental illnesses and to promote recovery in those affected by psychiatric conditions. The opposite is also true: dysfunctional relationships can be triggers for those at risk of these conditions.
The results raise the possibility that lower serotonin activity in people with depression and other psychiatric conditions could contribute to changes in the way they perceive personal relationships, or even in their ability to maintain positive personal relationships.
"Although this is only a small study, the same patterns may well extend to the way we perceive our own relationships," said Professor Rogers.
"The ability to chemically influence the capacity for intimacy could be very important. Reduced capacity for intimacy can be a vexing symptom of many psychiatric disorders and an important target for treatment," noted Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "Drugs that ameliorate the impact of serotonin deficits might play a role in the treatment of this symptom."
Although much more research is necessary before a drug might come to market that can help promote intimacy, it is clear for now that our chemistry has an impact on nearly aspect of our lives, from our most public actions to our most private, as we see here with human intimacy and romantic feelings.

###

Notes to Editors: The article is "Serotonergic Activity Influences the Cognitive Appraisal of Close Intimate Relationships in Healthy Adults" by Amy C. Bilderbeck, Ciara McCabe, Judi Wakeley, Francis McGlone, Tirril Harris, Phillip J. Cowen, and Robert D. Rogers. Bilderbeck, McCabe, Wakeley, Cowen, and Rogers are affiliated with Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom. McGlone is affiliated with University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom. Harris and Cowen are from King's College, London, United Kingdom. The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 69, Number 8 (April 15, 2011), published by Elsevier.

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THE EPIDEMIC OF STUPID PEOPLE PRETENDING TO BE SMRT: Serotonin is a self-calming brain chemical; i.e., the brain releases it to calm itself in times of stress, to prevent the over-stimulation of neurons. So, chronically high serotonin means you are chronically stressed out. Therefore, to FORCE the brain to have high serotonin all the time would be incredibly STUPID.


See Ray Peat's article on serotonin, tryptophan, stress, body temp, and learned helplessness for more info.


ALSO, "supportive close relationships are known to protect against the development of mental illnesses and to promote recovery in those affected by psychiatric conditions." "Using the truth to lie" is one of the hallmarks of the pyschopathic personality.


ALSO, the Medical BUSINESS Model is the treatment of the symptoms of disease conditions with drugs and surgery. That is NOT health; they do NOT have good intentions.
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Pentagon warns on big defense cuts

By Missy Ryan and Jim Wolf | Reuters – Wed, 13 Apr, 2011 9:05 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States may have to scrap some military missions and trim troop levels if President Barack Obama sticks with his goal of saving $400 billion on security spending over a 10-year period, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
Arms makers' shares sold off after Obama made a speech on the budget deficit in which he called, in effect, for holding growth in the Pentagon's core budget, excluding war costs, below inflation through 2023, starting in fiscal 2013.
The squeeze on the Pentagon's budget, which has roughly doubled since 2001, is part of a larger drive to cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion over the 10-year period.
Standard & Poor's aerospace and defense index declined 0.9 percent on Wednesday, underperforming the S & P 500 index, which closed up .02 percent. Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier by sales, dropped 2.6 percent to close at $80.37 on the New York Stock Exchange.
"It's not just a math exercise which is 'cut $400 billion'," said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. "It's 'let's review our roles and our missions and see what we can forgo, or pare down, in this age of fiscal constraint, where we are all collectively trying to work with the deficit problem.'"
Analysts said a selloff of arms makers' shares was an overreaction.
"We think that a flat defense budget" (excluding overseas contingency operations such as Iraq and Afghanistan) "is what investors and the defense industry already expect," said Rob Stallard of RBC Capital Markets.
"We think the knee-jerk selling in response to today's headlines has created an opportune entry point for our preferred defense names, notably Raytheon Co and General Dynamics Corp," he added in a note to clients.
The Pentagon has been tightening its belt in the hope of warding off deep cuts amid the concern over budget deficits.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates already had eliminated or scaled back more than 20 troubled or "excess" weapons programs since April 2009. Last June he ordered the military to come up with more than $100 billion in overhead savings over five years, which could be reinvested in higher priority programs.
The chairmen of Obama's deficit commission as well as a Bipartisan Policy Center Debt Reduction Task Force each had called for cuts in projected military spending of up to $1 trillion over 10 years, far more than Obama proposed.

OBAMA'S GOAL

The core Pentagon budget is now about $530 billion, roughly $10 billion less than Gates said was critical when the Obama administration sent Congress its spending plan for 2012.
The Defense Department could easily meet Obama's goal -- which amounts to saving an average of about $40 billion a year -- without jeopardizing the U.S. military's global dominance, said Gordon Adams, a senior White House official for national security budgets from 1993 to 1997.
"It's fundamentally trivial," he said. "This is stuff a comptroller can do while playing with his prayer beads." He suggested it would mean shrinking the force "a bit," trimming and deferring some hardware purchases and finding more efficient ways to handle operations and maintenance spending.
But Mackenzie Eaglen, a national security analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the world was not getting any safer and the U.S. bill would come due.
"The need to modernize the inventory of all the services is not going away and that bill will simply grow larger the longer policymakers defer modernization," she said.
The Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Howard McKeon, said he had "grave concerns" about spending reductions while the U.S. military was involved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
The Defense Department accounts for roughly 20 percent of federal spending and roughly half of discretionary, non-mandated spending.
Gates said in January the United States planned to cut $78 billion in defense spending over five years, including a reduction of up to 47,000 troops. That came on top of the $100 billion cost-savings drive that Gates kicked off last year.
"My greatest fear is that in economic tough times that people will see the defense budget as the place to solve the nation's deficit problems," Gates said last August.

(Reporting by Missy Ryan, Phil Stewart and Jim Wolf; editing by Christopher Wilson)

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COMMENT: The U.S.A. is a MILITARY EMPIRE: over 1000 military bases on planet Earth, and troops PERMANENTLY stationed in over 100 countries. That is EVIL.


And that is in addition to the THREE wars we are currently fighting. 


DISMANTLE THE MILITARY EMPIRE. Complete withdrawal from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. BAN all arms sales to other countries (and no "gifts" either.)
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Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System

Posted on Apr 10, 2011

 By Chris Hedges 

www.truthdig.com

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.
Passing bubble tests celebrates and rewards a peculiar form of analytical intelligence. This kind of intelligence is prized by money managers and corporations. They don’t want employees to ask uncomfortable questions or examine existing structures and assumptions. They want them to serve the system. These tests produce men and women who are just literate and numerate enough to perform basic functions and service jobs. The tests elevate those with the financial means to prepare for them. They reward those who obey the rules, memorize the formulas and pay deference to authority. Rebels, artists, independent thinkers, eccentrics and iconoclasts—those who march to the beat of their own drum—are weeded out.

“Imagine,” said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don’t continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job. Up until very recently, the principal of a school was something like the conductor of an orchestra: a person who had deep experience and knowledge of the part and place of every member and every instrument. In the past 10 years we’ve had the emergence of both [Mayor] Mike Bloomberg’s Leadership Academy and Eli Broad’s Superintendents Academy, both created exclusively to produce instant principals and superintendents who model themselves after CEOs. How is this kind of thing even legal? How are such ‘academies’ accredited? What quality of leader needs a ‘leadership academy’? What kind of society would allow such people to run their children’s schools? The high-stakes tests may be worthless as pedagogy but they are a brilliant mechanism for undermining the school systems, instilling fear and creating a rationale for corporate takeover. There is something grotesque about the fact the education reform is being led not by educators but by financers and speculators and billionaires.”

Teachers, under assault from every direction, are fleeing the profession. Even before the “reform” blitzkrieg we were losing half of all teachers within five years after they started work—and these were people who spent years in school and many thousands of dollars to become teachers. How does the country expect to retain dignified, trained professionals under the hostility of current conditions? I suspect that the hedge fund managers behind our charter schools system—whose primary concern is certainly not with education—are delighted to replace real teachers with nonunionized, poorly trained instructors. To truly teach is to instill the values and knowledge which promote the common good and protect a society from the folly of historical amnesia. The utilitarian, corporate ideology embraced by the system of standardized tests and leadership academies has no time for the nuances and moral ambiguities inherent in a liberal arts education. Corporatism is about the cult of the self. It is about personal enrichment and profit as the sole aim of human existence. And those who do not conform are pushed aside. 
“It is extremely dispiriting to realize that you are in effect lying to these kids by insinuating that this diet of corporate reading programs and standardized tests are preparing them for anything,” said this teacher, who feared he would suffer reprisals from school administrators if they knew he was speaking out. “It is even more dispiriting to know that your livelihood depends increasingly on maintaining this lie. You have to ask yourself why are hedge fund managers suddenly so interested in the education of the urban poor? The main purpose of the testing craze is not to grade the students but to grade the teacher.”

“I cannot say for certain—not with the certainty of a Bill Gates or a Mike Bloomberg who pontificate with utter certainty over a field in which they know absolutely nothing—but more and more I suspect that a major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of self-respect,” he added. “In less than a decade we been stripped of autonomy and are increasingly micromanaged. Students have been given the power to fire us by failing their tests. Teachers have been likened to pigs at a trough and blamed for the economic collapse of the United States. In New York, principals have been given every incentive, both financial and in terms of control, to replace experienced teachers with 22-year-old untenured rookies. They cost less. They know nothing. They are malleable and they are vulnerable to termination.”

The demonizing of teachers is another public relations feint, a way for corporations to deflect attention from the theft of some $17 billion in wages, savings and earnings among American workers and a landscape where one in six workers is without employment. The speculators on Wall Street looted the U.S. Treasury. They stymied any kind of regulation. They have avoided criminal charges. They are stripping basic social services. And now they are demanding to run our schools and universities.

“Not only have the reformers removed poverty as a factor, they’ve removed students’ aptitude and motivation as factors,” said this teacher, who is in a teachers union. “They seem to believe that students are something like plants where you just add water and place them in the sun of your teaching and everything blooms. This is a fantasy that insults both student and teacher. The reformers have come up with a variety of insidious schemes pushed as steps to professionalize the profession of teaching. As they are all businessmen who know nothing of the field, it goes without saying that you do not do this by giving teachers autonomy and respect. They use merit pay in which teachers whose students do well on bubble tests will receive more money and teachers whose students do not do so well on bubble tests will receive less money. Of course, the only way this could conceivably be fair is to have an identical group of students in each class—an impossibility. The real purposes of merit pay are to divide teachers against themselves as they scramble for the brighter and more motivated students and to further institutionalize the idiot notion of standardized tests. There is a certain diabolical intelligence at work in both of these.”

“If the Bloomberg administration can be said to have succeeded in anything,” he said, “they have succeeded in turning schools into stress factories where teachers are running around wondering if it’s possible to please their principals and if their school will be open a year from now, if their union will still be there to offer some kind of protection, if they will still have jobs next year. This is not how you run a school system. It’s how you destroy one. The reformers and their friends in the media have created a Manichean world of bad teachers and effective teachers. In this alternative universe there are no other factors. Or, all other factors—poverty, depraved parents, mental illness and malnutrition—are all excuses of the Bad Teacher that can be overcome by hard work and the Effective Teacher.”

The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves. They do not pretend that fraud is moral or that corporate greed is good. They do not claim that the demands of the marketplace can morally justify the hunger of children or denial of medical care to the sick. They do not throw 6 million families from their homes as the cost of doing business. Thought is a dialogue with one’s inner self. Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness. The capacity to think is the only bulwark against any centralized authority that seeks to impose mindless obedience. There is a huge difference, as Socrates understood, between teaching people what to think and teaching them how to think. Those who are endowed with a moral conscience refuse to commit crimes, even those sanctioned by the corporate state, because they do not in the end want to live with criminals—themselves.

“It is better to be at odds with the whole world than, being one, to be at odds with myself,” Socrates said.

Those who can ask the right questions are armed with the capacity to make a moral choice, to defend the good in the face of outside pressure. And this is why the philosopher Immanuel Kant puts the duties we have to ourselves before the duties we have to others. The standard for Kant is not the biblical idea of self-love—love thy neighbor as thyself, do unto others as you would have them do unto you—but self-respect. What brings us meaning and worth as human beings is our ability to stand up and pit ourselves against injustice and the vast, moral indifference of the universe. Once justice perishes, as Kant knew, life loses all meaning. Those who meekly obey laws and rules imposed from the outside—including religious laws—are not moral human beings. The fulfillment of an imposed law is morally neutral. The truly educated make their own wills serve the higher call of justice, empathy and reason. Socrates made the same argument when he said it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.
“The greatest evil perpetrated,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.”

As Arendt pointed out, we must trust only those who have this self-awareness. This self-awareness comes only through consciousness. It comes with the ability to look at a crime being committed and say “I can’t.” We must fear, Arendt warned, those whose moral system is built around the flimsy structure of blind obedience. We must fear those who cannot think. Unconscious civilizations become totalitarian wastelands.

“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,” Arendt writes. “For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing themselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur—the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world.” 

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COMMENT: I am a truth-loving visionary genius - exactly what is not wanted in this evil goddamned country, my home. Thinking is not wanted. The truth is not wanted. ESPECIALLY not the truth.


Thinking, challenging, asking questions, trying to create greatness efficiently would only disrupt the FRAUD that the APPARENT business activity is only a cover for. 


What job can I get that will pay me enough to be middle-class, will not be serving Evil, and is not de-humanizing? The vast majority of rich and middle-class in this country today are rewarded for their OBEDIENCE. I am a white, heterosexual male of very high ability, and I have worked hard at various jobs. I have always been poor, as punishment for my failure to obey.


What are you risking to resist the evil in real life, my fellow humans? If the answer is "nothing", then you are a worthless piece of shit who should be killed.


MY NAME IS JOHN GALT, AND I DECLARE A STRIKE.
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For life, liberty and the burqa: Muslim women defy France's ban on full-face veils 

By Dheepthi Namasivayam 
April 11, 2011 1:05PM

• French ban on full-face veils starts today
• Risk of fine if women refuse to show faces
• Muslims women say they are not oppressed
• Libs back minister who called burqa alien

THEY are the women prepared to defy France for the burqa.

From today French police have the power to stop Muslim women wearing full-face veils and to threaten them with fines or prison if they refuse to expose their faces.
All over France posters have been put up reminding veil-clad women that “the Republic lives with its face uncovered”.
Last year, President Nicolas Sarkozy pushed through a controversial law banning Muslim women from wearing burqas or niqabs in public. He said the law was to increase security but claimed it would liberate Muslim women from the oppression of their veil.
Any woman who refuse to lift her veil can be taken to a police station, fined 150 euros ($205) and ordered to attend re-education classes.
Anyone found guilty of forcing a woman to wear face veils in public or in private faces a fine of 30,000 euros and a year in jail.
However, some women have vowed to defy the law.
“I will not obey it,” said Wahiba Mebrek, 25, from the suburb of Villepinte, north of Paris. “I will only respect laws of the French Republic which are not in contradiction with me, my religion and my faith,” she added.
She is angry the Government and media peddled this image of them as being oppressed. For her, it was a conscious decision, made by her and husband when they became devout Muslims eight years ago.

Violent reaction
Hind*, a 31-year-old single mother from the suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois outside Paris, switched from the “miniskirt to the veil” after converting to Islam six years ago.
She said that her wearing of the veil had provoked hostile, even violent reactions in the street. She was recently attacked in front of her daughter by a couple.
“People’s reactions weren’t as violent until this issue was mediatised. Now that the law has passed, they feel that their violent behaviour towards us is justified,” she said.
“People have the impression that we are totally cut off from the world, but we have normal relationships like everyone else, we are accessible."
Hind will not take off her niqab, if asked by police. “Never ever will I apply this law,” she said. “It is not up to the government to meddle in my private life and my beliefs.”
French officials estimate that about 2000 women, from a total Muslim population estimated at between four and six million, wear the full-face veil.
Many Muslims and human rights groups accuse Mr Sarkozy of targeting one of France's most vulnerable and isolated groups to signal to anti-immigration voters that he shares their fear that Islam is a threat to French culture.

Years of abuse
Other critics worry the law may be hard to enforce, since it had to be drawn up without reference to religion to ban any kind of face covering in public and since police officers will not be allowed to remove women's head coverings.
But for other women, wearing the veil was not a choice.
Zeina*, 31, was forced to wear the niqab by her abusive ex-husband. She lived with his abuse until one day, a neighbour saw her bruises and took her to a women’s refuge. She details the ordeal in her autobiography, Sous Mon Niqab (Under my Veil).
“When I wore the niqab, I felt excluded from the world, from society,” she said. “Taking it off was a sort of freedom, a liberty for me.”
But she opposes the law, saying it will further oppress women. Unable to wear their veil in public, Zeina fears their abuse may go unnoticed as they will be confined to their homes.
As for those women who wear their niqab in the street for Friday afternoon prayers at their local mosque, they too risk being fined.
This is what worries Mrs Mebrek.
“The veil is an exterior manifestation of my religion but in a secular country, I am free to do so,” she said. “All this will stop from April 11.”

*Names were suppressed or changed as requested

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COMMENT: No, you are NOT free to do whatever you want.


The PSYCHOPATHS promote "freedom" as the highest value, because THEY want to be free... to continue all their ridiculous and evil bullshit.

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Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study

(AFP) – 1 day ago

WASHINGTON — Everyone knows that liberals and conservatives butt heads when it comes to world views, but scientists have now shown that their brains are actually built differently.
Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study on Thursday in Current Biology.
"We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala," the study said.
Other research has shown greater brain activity in those areas, according to which political views a person holds, but this is the first study to show a physical difference in size in the same regions.
"Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual's political orientation," said Ryota Kanai of the University College London, where the research took place.
"Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure."
The study was based on 90 "healthy young adults" who reported their political views on a scale of one to five from very liberal to very conservative, then agreed to have their brains scanned.
People with a large amygdala are "more sensitive to disgust" and tend to "respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions," the study said.
Liberals are linked to larger anterior cingulate cortexes, a region that "monitor(s) uncertainty and conflicts," it said.
"Thus, it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views."
It remains unclear whether the structural differences cause the divergence in political views, or are the effect of them.
But the central issue in determining political views appears to revolve around fear and how it affects a person.
"Our findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty," the study said.

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.

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COMMENT: It is inherited.

Conservatives - SJ - can feel shame, but cannot feel compassion; that is their defining characteristic. We can never allow them to be in charge of anything ever again.


Liberals - SP - can feel compassion, but cannot feel shame; that is their defining characteristic.


We iNtuitive types - NT and NF (inherited a preference for the behaviors that make a person acquire depth) - can feel both shame and compassion. We deserve to rule over the Sensation Types.


[Note: For those who CAN feel compassion, learning to NOT give love to those who do NOT deserve it is a major life lesson.]


Psychopaths cannot feel either shame or compassion.
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Child-porn discovery not a 'licence to kill': Crown

By QMI Agency

Last Updated: March 29, 2011 11:18am

MONTREAL - A man who beat his neighbour to death after finding child pornography on his computer should serve six years behind bars, says the Crown.
Patrick Belanger, 28, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the July 2009 beating death of Leonard Wells, 63, in west-end Montreal.
Prosecutor Thierry Nadon told a Quebec Court judge the sentence would send a clear message to society that vigilante killings are unacceptable and that a man's pedophilic tendencies don't give citizens "a licence to kill."
Belanger will be sentenced on April 21.
He was initially charged with first-degree murder following the attack on July 25, 2009. He had been helping Wells to move and had asked to use his computer while the two were taking a break.
He flew into a rage when he stumbled across images of children being sexually assaulted. Belanger called 911 and warned he would take matters into his own hands unless Wells was arrested immediately. He began punching and kicking the man when police failed to arrive after 20 minutes.
Belanger called 911 a second time as Wells lay in a pool of his own blood. The victim was transported to hospital in a coma and died a month later.
Belanger later told the court the child-porn images triggered memories of his own father's tale of childhood sexual abuse. The defendant also said he was drunk at the time of the beating and he had been an alcoholic for several years.
But the Crown said the "horrific" and "revolting" images did not give Belanger an excuse to kill a man.
"We cannot allow people to mete out their own justice," Nadon told the court.
"(Otherwise) we would be promoting anarchy. Incidents such as this one ... do not give him a licence to kill."
The prosecutor said the fact Belanger waited 20 minutes to administer the beating was evidence the killing was premeditated.
Defence lawyer Julien Archambault countered Belanger had no criminal record and has been in alcohol rehab for two years.
He requested a three-year prison term.
Belanger told judge Louise Bourdeau he's a changed man and was "not thinking rationally" at the time of the deadly attack.
"I'll have to pay for what I did," he added. "I have no hard feelings towards the Crown. Justice must be served."

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COMMENT: Justice WAS served by killing the evil child porn guy; the human who did the justice going to prison is a mis-carriage of justice.

"But the Crown said the "horrific" and "revolting" images did not give Belanger an excuse to kill a man."

Yes, it did.

"We cannot allow people to mete out their own justice," Nadon told the court."

The question "was justice done?" must ALWAYS be asked - and answered - in deciding if a crime has been committed, and if so what punishment is appropriate if any. Mindlessly applying laws without context is evil.

"(Otherwise) we would be promoting anarchy."

No, you IDIOT; "justice" does NOT equal "anarchy." We the people institute a government because it benefits us to do so; what does the gov have to do to be LEGITIMATE?
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