Yes beautiful, but that rifle was made in China? Russia? Israel? USA?
I am just saying that when you look a little deeper into this picture, a beautiful African Warrior who is carrying a weapon made by the enemies of all Africans.
When she needs more ammunition or another rifle she has to go to the ones who manufacture these weapons, and they are most likely, as I am sure they are, of European or Asian Descent. And as we know these are the same people who have invaded and colonized the African peoples for way too long. Europeans through the gun, bible, disease and intimidation, and Asians through the slow subliminal take over of their natural resources and infrastructure.
Look at any picture of Africans fighting against other Africans. Where are their weapons manufactured? That is the question that comes to mind when I see this picture. Besides the beauty, I see behind it, the destruction of African civilizations down through the ages. The difference here is that she is not wearing Army fatigues, or a bullet proof vest or any other such armor to protect her from an incoming or errant bullet from another’s rifle.
Hopefully, she is on her way to hunt some food for her family and not on her way to kill another African!!
When this man first came on the scene, I was very skeptical. It became mortal combat to even mention that he may not be the “Savior” Messiah that folks had been waiting for. So, I quietly took my place among the dissenters and waited. It has become clear that I was waiting for the masses to wake up, not for him to change. Clearly, he has been what he has been all along. Clear indicators were his assessment that 911 was caused by Arabs with box cutters, no indictment for Bush/Chaney war crimes, and let’s get out of Iraq and go into Afghanistan. Those positions alone should have alerted the entire world community, that under that handsome face and dancing swagger was a war monger, the likes we have seen from the days of blatant Roman & Ottoman Empire builders to name a few.
Now, look at his eyes. Even this picture with his hands up in the manner that a marionette would be held, display invisible strings. He is a puppet of the first degree, a mind-controlled marionette who does and most like has to do the will of his controllers.
He has lost any semblance of autonomy, sovereignty or self-determination. He does not think, he does not question, he does not rebel. He cannot. The part of his brain that once housed free thinking, free will, has been entirely lobotomized. Here we see, a clear picture of a man who is lost, completely lost from reality, troops on the ground, in the air, or anywhere.
“God bless our troops” is a misnomer….. until he verifies which “God” he is speaking of, and even then, it is highly unlikely that the “God” of which he speaks is at all concerned with blessing the troops. Unless, of course, we realize that there are many “Gods” and to whom he is bequeathing his troops, is a question that requires serious scrutiny. That “God” is a blood thirsty hater of truth, justice and peace. That “God” seeks vengeance and lusts off the souls, and bodies of brutally murdered and assassinated innocent men, women and children. That “God” feeds off despair and agony and like a vicious swarm of locusts, that “God” sends its minions to devour the grotesquely disembodied. That “God” waits in the war theaters created around the world and drinks with luscious delight the carnage and spillage of blood sprouting from the open head, leg and neck wounds of those who barely knew what hit them. That “God” hysterically laughs at the ignorance of those who are led to it. That “God” is the absolute epitome of Psycho-pathic-sado-masochistic Psychosis that makes the most horrid of beings look beautiful. That “God” has promised a nice warm seat in the heart of hell for its puppet and all the minions who follow.
Unfortunately, it may be too late to ring the alarm bell, and wake this ONE up! Whatever he had, has been lost. And it is very sad. A golden opportunity to move the entire world into a new directions, based on the influence that the US has, and yet, the entire world is now much worse off than it was before he came into office. I wonder what happened to all those New Age Channellers who were lauding the praises of this “man” and what he represented. Even the astrologers caused one to wonder if they were authentic or just sock puppets like the rest. It appears as though the entire world was hijacked into believing that “CHANGE HAD REALLY COME”!
Things have definitely changed. The access to alternative media has made it virtually impossible for the “false flag” scenarios to hold the attention of the masses for too long. I firmly believe as I have stated before, that the election of Barack Hussein Obama into the position of the 44th President of the United states was the biggest hoax, psyops, media ramping up of the “Big Lie”, etc, more than any other situation in human history since the invention of Jesus Christ! His election has served so many purposes on so many levels it is mind boggling to watch all the pieces fall right into place. The Grand Chess board and design for a new American Century took its last major leap be making sure that BHO got elected!! He ushered in the NWO in a way that no other world event or crisis or natural disaster could. He represents ALL OF these and much more by his position and presence in the White House.
Whether he goes down in history as the worst president of the United states or the most misguided president of the United States, one thing is certain, he will leave a legacy behind to be topped by none, short of a complete take over and colonization of the entire Planet via an Alien Invasion.
Obama Charged With ‘Imperial Hubris’ Unmatched Even By Bush
Following his announcement to bomb Syria without congressional approval, president slammed for total disregard for constitutional safeguards regarding war-making.
A day after President Obama told the American public he was preparing to bomb targets inside the sovereign state of Syria and that he did not need congressional approval to do so, critics are lashing out against what Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale University, described as “imperial hubris” on Friday.
In his scathing op-ed in the New York Times, Ackerman writes:
President Obama’s declaration of war against the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria marks a decisive break in the American constitutional tradition. Nothing attempted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, remotely compares in imperial hubris.
Mr. Bush gained explicit congressional consent for his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In contrast, the Obama administration has not even published a legal opinion attempting to justify the president’s assertion of unilateral war-making authority. This is because no serious opinion can be written.This became clear when White House officials briefed reporters before Mr. Obama’s speech to the nation on Wednesday evening. They said a war against ISIS was justified by Congress’s authorization of force against Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that no new approval was needed.But the 2001 authorization for the use of military force does not apply here. That resolution — scaled back from what Mr. Bush initially wanted — extended only to nations and organizations that “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the 9/11 attacks.
And Ackerman’s not alone.
Robert Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, told theDaily Beast this week that Obama’s claim of authority to bomb ISIS targets in Syria was “on its face” an “implausible argument.”
“The 2001 AUMF requires a nexus to al Qaeda or associated forces of al Qaeda fighting the United States,” explained Chesney, but “since ISIS broke up with al Qaeda it’s hard to make” the case that authority granted by the AUMF still applies. Continue reading here: Obama Charged With ‘Imperial Hubris’ Unmatched Even By Bush
Yes beautiful, but that rifle was made in China? Russia? Israel? USA?
I am just saying that when you look a little deeper into this picture, a beautiful African Warrior who is carrying a weapon made by the enemies of all Africans.
When she needs more ammunition or another rifle she has to go to the ones who manufacture these weapons, and they are most likely, as I am sure they are, of European or Asian Descent. And as we know these are the same people who have invaded and colonized the African peoples for way too long. Europeans through the gun, bible, disease and intimidation, and Asians through the slow subliminal take over of their natural resources and infrastructure.
Look at any picture of Africans fighting against other Africans. Where are their weapons manufactured? That is the question that comes to mind when I see this picture. Besides the beauty, I see behind it, the destruction of African civilizations down through the ages. The difference here is that she is not wearing Army fatigues, or a bullet proof vest or any other such armor to protect her from an incoming or errant bullet from another’s rifle.
Hopefully, she is on her way to hunt some food for her family and not on her way to kill another African!!
When this man first came on the scene, I was very skeptical. It became mortal combat to even mention that he may not be the “Savior” Messiah that folks had been waiting for. So, I quietly took my place among the dissenters and waited. It has become clear that I was waiting for the masses to wake up, not for him to change. Clearly, he has been what he has been all along. Clear indicators were his assessment that 911 was caused by Arabs with box cutters, no indictment for Bush/Chaney war crimes, and let’s get out of Iraq and go into Afghanistan. Those positions alone should have alerted the entire world community, that under that handsome face and dancing swagger was a war monger, the likes we have seen from the days of blatant Roman & Ottoman Empire builders to name a few.
Now, look at his eyes. Even this picture with his hands up in the manner that a marionette would be held, display invisible strings. He is a puppet of the first degree, a mind-controlled marionette who does and most like has to do the will of his controllers.
He has lost any semblance of autonomy, sovereignty or self-determination. He does not think, he does not question, he does not rebel. He cannot. The part of his brain that once housed free thinking, free will, has been entirely lobotomized. Here we see, a clear picture of a man who is lost, completely lost from reality, troops on the ground, in the air, or anywhere.
“God bless our troops” is a misnomer….. until he verifies which “God” he is speaking of, and even then, it is highly unlikely that the “God” of which he speaks is at all concerned with blessing the troops. Unless, of course, we realize that there are many “Gods” and to whom he is bequeathing his troops, is a question that requires serious scrutiny. That “God” is a blood thirsty hater of truth, justice and peace. That “God” seeks vengeance and lusts off the souls, and bodies of brutally murdered and assassinated innocent men, women and children. That “God” feeds off despair and agony and like a vicious swarm of locusts, that “God” sends its minions to devour the grotesquely disembodied. That “God” waits in the war theaters created around the world and drinks with luscious delight the carnage and spillage of blood sprouting from the open head, leg and neck wounds of those who barely knew what hit them. That “God” hysterically laughs at the ignorance of those who are led to it. That “God” is the absolute epitome of Psycho-pathic-sado-masochistic Psychosis that makes the most horrid of beings look beautiful. That “God” has promised a nice warm seat in the heart of hell for its puppet and all the minions who follow.
Unfortunately, it may be too late to ring the alarm bell, and wake this ONE up! Whatever he had, has been lost. And it is very sad. A golden opportunity to move the entire world into a new directions, based on the influence that the US has, and yet, the entire world is now much worse off than it was before he came into office. I wonder what happened to all those New Age Channellers who were lauding the praises of this “man” and what he represented. Even the astrologers caused one to wonder if they were authentic or just sock puppets like the rest. It appears as though the entire world was hijacked into believing that “CHANGE HAD REALLY COME”!
Things have definitely changed. The access to alternative media has made it virtually impossible for the “false flag” scenarios to hold the attention of the masses for too long. I firmly believe as I have stated before, that the election of Barack Hussein Obama into the position of the 44th President of the United states was the biggest hoax, psyops, media ramping up of the “Big Lie”, etc, more than any other situation in human history since the invention of Jesus Christ! His election has served so many purposes on so many levels it is mind boggling to watch all the pieces fall right into place. The Grand Chess board and design for a new American Century took its last major leap be making sure that BHO got elected!! He ushered in the NWO in a way that no other world event or crisis or natural disaster could. He represents ALL OF these and much more by his position and presence in the White House.
Whether he goes down in history as the worst president of the United states or the most misguided president of the United States, one thing is certain, he will leave a legacy behind to be topped by none, short of a complete take over and colonization of the entire Planet via an Alien Invasion.
Obama Charged With ‘Imperial Hubris’ Unmatched Even By Bush
Following his announcement to bomb Syria without congressional approval, president slammed for total disregard for constitutional safeguards regarding war-making.
A day after President Obama told the American public he was preparing to bomb targets inside the sovereign state of Syria and that he did not need congressional approval to do so, critics are lashing out against what Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale University, described as “imperial hubris” on Friday.
In his scathing op-ed in the New York Times, Ackerman writes:
President Obama’s declaration of war against the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria marks a decisive break in the American constitutional tradition. Nothing attempted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, remotely compares in imperial hubris.
Mr. Bush gained explicit congressional consent for his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In contrast, the Obama administration has not even published a legal opinion attempting to justify the president’s assertion of unilateral war-making authority. This is because no serious opinion can be written.
This became clear when White House officials briefed reporters before Mr. Obama’s speech to the nation on Wednesday evening. They said a war against ISIS was justified by Congress’s authorization of force against Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that no new approval was needed.
But the 2001 authorization for the use of military force does not apply here. That resolution — scaled back from what Mr. Bush initially wanted — extended only to nations and organizations that “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the 9/11 attacks.
And Ackerman’s not alone.
Robert Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, told theDaily Beast this week that Obama’s claim of authority to bomb ISIS targets in Syria was “on its face” an “implausible argument.”
“The 2001 AUMF requires a nexus to al Qaeda or associated forces of al Qaeda fighting the United States,” explained Chesney, but “since ISIS broke up with al Qaeda it’s hard to make” the case that authority granted by the AUMF still applies. Continue reading here: Obama Charged With ‘Imperial Hubris’ Unmatched Even By Bush
EXCERPT: “Johnny Sutton, the lead prosecutor at Trottie’s trial, said …………………….’He hunted them down,’ Sutton said. ‘The self-defense claim is absolutely ridiculous. He kicked in their door. … They already were worried about him. He was making threats and trying to run her off the road.’This one was so cold and calculated.’
NB COMMENTARY
I fail to understand how one type of murder is better than another type of murder. For example, if I planned to kill someone after a 20 year stay locked up in my basement, would that not be considered per-meditated murder?
How any of this “killing” makes any sense, is beyond me.
Killing another person who killed another person does not bring that person back, nor can the latter go and get them and bring them back. It’s a total waste of time and resources.
I also wonder about the so called “witnesses”. Aren’t they complicit in this murder? No they didn’t pull the trigger, but weren’t they at the scene of the crime? How many people have been arrested and jailed for just being there?
I wonder about the mental stability of this entire system that condones, implements and financially supports this type of murder, that is blatant and cold, and out in the open with no question of who done it. Yet others are arrested, tried and convicted, sometimes even wrongfully and given the death penalty.
What a backwards psychology!
How does the person who administers the punishment sleep at night without nightmares and visits in the dream world from the person they just killed. Yet, this society wishes that the so-called convict sleep restlessly forever, with no peace in their lives ever.
And, quiet as it’s kept, the so-called criminal given the death penalty has friends, family and loved ones too. What makes their pain of the loss of their loved one less than the loss of the family who feels so right in killing the criminal who killed their mother, brother, sister, father or friend??
These and other questions plague my mind as I watch the way the human beings treat each other. And in this case, they are actually conversing, debating and fighting over which way to kill someone is more humane. I am not sure what the DSM-IV would diagnose this condition of the mind as, but it is certainly a pervasive mental illness.
A Missouri inmate became the eight was put to death in the early hours of this morning for the killing of two people during a restaurant robbery in 1998.
Earl Ringo Jr., 40, was executed at 12:22am by lethal injection after a plea for a stay of execution – based on irregularities in the use of lethal injection drugs in the state – was refused.
Ringo’s last words came from the Quran and expressed belief and wishes for after death. He wiggled his feet as the process began, breathed deeply a few times, then closed his eyes, all in a matter of seconds.
Earl Ringo Jr., 40, was executed today for the killing of two people during a restaurant robbery in 1998
He had declined to request a last meal, eating instead the Salisbury steak and macaroni and cheese offered to other inmates.
In the early hours of July 4, 1998, Ringo and an accomplice killed delivery driver Dennis Poyser and manager trainee JoAnna Baysinger at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Columbia.
Both victims were shot dead at point-blank range.
The run-up to Ringo’s execution was shrouded by controversy, as Missouri continues to use the sedative, midazolam, despite claims that the pre-execution drug is inhumane.
Earlier this year in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona.
In April, gruesome scenes accompanied the execution of Clayton Lockett, a murderer and rapist who shot his 19-year-old victim and ordered a friend to bury her alive.
It was a full 43 minutes after the drug was administered in the Oklahoma execution chamber that the convicted killer died. During this time, Lockett thrashed violently, lurching forward against his restraints, writhing and attempting to speak.
Willie Trottie, who turned 45 Monday, shot and killed 24-year-old Barbara Canada, and her brother, Titus
Witnesses described his body twisting, and his head reaching up from the gurney, before the curtains were drawn around the chamber obscuring Lockett’s final minutes from public view.
In January, convicted murderer and rapist Dennis McGuire appeared to gurgle, gasp for air and convulse for around 10 minutes after being sentenced to death using an experimental two-drug concoction including midazolam.
Chilling scenes also occurred in the Arizona execution chamber in July, when Joseph Rudolph Wood took nearly two hours to die from the lethal injection.
Witnesses told how the murderer appeared to be struggling to breathe after the sedation and then gasped desperately for breath at least 600 times before falling still.
Ringo’s attorneys had argued that the drug could dull his senses and leave him unable to express any pain or suffering during the process.
They had asked a federal appeals court to postpone the execution until a hearing over Missouri’s use of midazolam.
Attorney Richard Sindel claimed that Missouri’s use of midazolam essentially violates its own protocol, which provides for pentobarbital as the lone execution drug. But the courts and Gov. Jay Nixon had refused to halt Ringo’s execution over the concerns.
The Missouri Department of Corrections says it administers midazolam before executions and not as part of its execution protocol.
‘It should not be lost in the national debate over the death penalty that Earl Ringo Jr. was responsible for the murders of two innocent Missourians. For 16 years he avoided payment for this crime. Tonight he has paid the penalty,’ Missouri’s Attorney General, Chris Koster, said in a statement.
A clemency petition to Nixon had also cited concerns about the fact that Ringo was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury.
Ringo was sentenced to death by lethal injection (file picture). His execution is the eighth in Missouri this year
Chilling scenes accompanied the executions of Joseph Rudolph Wood, left, Dennis McGuire, centre and Clayton Lockett, right, who were all administered the pre-execution sedative midazolam
On July 3, 1998, Ringo told his accomplice Quentin Jones about his plan to rob the Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Columbia, where he once worked. Jones agreed to join him.
Before sunrise on July 4, Ringo and Jones hid behind a grease pit in the back of the restaurant. Poyser and Baysinger arrived and entered the restaurant. Ringo followed them and shot Poyser, 45, killing him instantly.
He then ordered Baysinger, 22, to open a safe. She pulled out $1,400 and gave it to him.
Ringo gave the gun to Jones, who stood with the weapon pointed at Baysinger’s head for a minute and a half before pulling the trigger.
Interviews with restaurant workers and former workers led police to Ringo. Detectives found a blue ski mask, gun receipt, bulletproof vest and other evidence at the home of his mother.
THE CASE OF WILLIAM HAPP
Happ – who raped and killed Angie Crowley, 21, in 1986 – died by lethal injection in 2013
William Happ, 51, was the first death row inmate to be injected with midazolam hydrochloride.
The execution began at 6.02pm at Florida State Prison. Happ’s eyes opened and he blinked several times.
He closed and opened them again two minutes later. He then yawned and his jaw dropped open.
At 6.08pm, the official overseeing the execution tugged at Happ’s eyelids and grasped his shoulder to check for a response. There was none.
A minute later, Happ’s head began moving back and forth and shortly thereafter his breathing stopped.
He was pronounced dead at 6.16pm.
Ringo admitted to the robbery but claimed the shootings were in self-defense. He was convicted in 1999 and sentenced to death.
Jones, of Louisville, Kentucky, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison, but he was spared the death penalty when he agreed to testify against Ringo.
Jama Brown, who was married for to Poyser for 24 years, asked that people remember the victims.
‘I can only tell you there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him or wonder what my life would be like today, not only for myself, but for my kids,’ she said.
In a statement she added: ‘Please do not make this about how executions shouldn’t take place. Put your effort on how we can stop people from committing these terrible actions.
‘Please remember these two wonderful people who just wanted to go to work on the Fourth of July to support their families.’
Ringo’s execution is the eighth in the state this year and the tenth since November.
St. Louis Public Radio reported last week that Missouri administered midazolam to all nine inmates put to death since November. Corrections department spokesman David Owen said midazolam ‘is used to relieve the offender’s level of anxiety’ and is not part of the actual execution process.
The execution was one of two scheduled for today in the U.S. This afternoon Texas plans to execute Willie Trottie for killing his common-law wife and her brother in 1993.
Trottie’s execution will be Texas’ eighth this year. Florida has performed seven executions in 2014, and all other states have a combined six.
Both Missouri and Texas use pentobarbital as their execution drug but decline to disclose where the drug is obtained.
‘They don’t tell you what it is and where it comes from,’ Trottie told The Associated Press. ‘What I’ve learned in 20 years here on death row is all you can do is say, ‘OK.’
‘I’m ready whichever way it goes. If God says, ‘Yes,’ I’m ready.’
Trottie, who turned 45 Monday, shot and killed 24-year-old Barbara Canada, and her 28-year-old brother, Titus, at the Canada family home in Houston. Canada’s mother and sister were also wounded.
Lawyers for Trottie argued in their appeal that the one-time deliveryman and security guard suffered poor representation in his initial trial.
They said his counsel failed to present witnesses who would have told jurors Trottie and Barbara Canada were romantically engaged at the time of the killings. Late Monday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal.
Trottie said he and Barbara Canada were on ‘good terms’ despite an on-again, off-again relationship. Trottie said he was defending himself against Titus Canada, who shot first. He said the shooting of his wife was accidental.
‘It wasn’t like I just walked in there and gunned her down,’ he said.
Johnny Sutton, the lead prosecutor at Trottie’s trial, said evidence showed that’s exactly what happened.
‘He hunted them down,’ Sutton said. ‘The self-defense claim is absolutely ridiculous. He kicked in their door. … They already were worried about him. He was making threats and trying to run her off the road.
EXCERPT: “Johnny Sutton, the lead prosecutor at Trottie’s trial, said …………………….‘He hunted them down,’ Sutton said. ‘The self-defense claim is absolutely ridiculous. He kicked in their door. … They already were worried about him. He was making threats and trying to run her off the road.‘This one was so cold and calculated.’
NB COMMENTARY
I fail to understand how one type of murder is better than another type of murder. For example, if I planned to kill someone after a 20 year stay locked up in my basement, would that not be considered per-meditated murder?
How any of this “killing” makes any sense, is beyond me.
Killing another person who killed another person does not bring that person back, nor can the latter go and get them and bring them back. It’s a total waste of time and resources.
I also wonder about the so called “witnesses”. Aren’t they complicit in this murder? No they didn’t pull the trigger, but weren’t they at the scene of the crime? How many people have been arrested and jailed for just being there?
I wonder about the mental stability of this entire system that condones, implements and financially supports this type of murder, that is blatant and cold, and out in the open with no question of who done it. Yet others are arrested, tried and convicted, sometimes even wrongfully and given the death penalty.
What a backwards psychology!
How does the person who administers the punishment sleep at night without nightmares and visits in the dream world from the person they just killed. Yet, this society wishes that the so-called convict sleep restlessly forever, with no peace in their lives ever.
And, quiet as it’s kept, the so-called criminal given the death penalty has friends, family and loved ones too. What makes their pain of the loss of their loved one less than the loss of the family who feels so right in killing the criminal who killed their mother, brother, sister, father or friend??
These and other questions plague my mind as I watch the way the human beings treat each other. And in this case, they are actually conversing, debating and fighting over which way to kill someone is more humane. I am not sure what the DSM-IV would diagnose this condition of the mind as, but it is certainly a pervasive mental illness.
A Missouri inmate became the eight was put to death in the early hours of this morning for the killing of two people during a restaurant robbery in 1998.
Earl Ringo Jr., 40, was executed at 12:22am by lethal injection after a plea for a stay of execution – based on irregularities in the use of lethal injection drugs in the state – was refused.
Ringo’s last words came from the Quran and expressed belief and wishes for after death. He wiggled his feet as the process began, breathed deeply a few times, then closed his eyes, all in a matter of seconds.
Earl Ringo Jr., 40, was executed today for the killing of two people during a restaurant robbery in 1998
He had declined to request a last meal, eating instead the Salisbury steak and macaroni and cheese offered to other inmates.
In the early hours of July 4, 1998, Ringo and an accomplice killed delivery driver Dennis Poyser and manager trainee JoAnna Baysinger at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Columbia.
Both victims were shot dead at point-blank range.
The run-up to Ringo’s execution was shrouded by controversy, as Missouri continues to use the sedative, midazolam, despite claims that the pre-execution drug is inhumane.
Earlier this year in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona.
In April, gruesome scenes accompanied the execution of Clayton Lockett, a murderer and rapist who shot his 19-year-old victim and ordered a friend to bury her alive.
It was a full 43 minutes after the drug was administered in the Oklahoma execution chamber that the convicted killer died. During this time, Lockett thrashed violently, lurching forward against his restraints, writhing and attempting to speak.
Willie Trottie, who turned 45 Monday, shot and killed 24-year-old Barbara Canada, and her brother, Titus
Witnesses described his body twisting, and his head reaching up from the gurney, before the curtains were drawn around the chamber obscuring Lockett’s final minutes from public view.
In January, convicted murderer and rapist Dennis McGuire appeared to gurgle, gasp for air and convulse for around 10 minutes after being sentenced to death using an experimental two-drug concoction including midazolam.
Chilling scenes also occurred in the Arizona execution chamber in July, when Joseph Rudolph Wood took nearly two hours to die from the lethal injection.
Witnesses told how the murderer appeared to be struggling to breathe after the sedation and then gasped desperately for breath at least 600 times before falling still.
Ringo’s attorneys had argued that the drug could dull his senses and leave him unable to express any pain or suffering during the process.
They had asked a federal appeals court to postpone the execution until a hearing over Missouri’s use of midazolam.
Attorney Richard Sindel claimed that Missouri’s use of midazolam essentially violates its own protocol, which provides for pentobarbital as the lone execution drug. But the courts and Gov. Jay Nixon had refused to halt Ringo’s execution over the concerns.
The Missouri Department of Corrections says it administers midazolam before executions and not as part of its execution protocol.
‘It should not be lost in the national debate over the death penalty that Earl Ringo Jr. was responsible for the murders of two innocent Missourians. For 16 years he avoided payment for this crime. Tonight he has paid the penalty,’ Missouri’s Attorney General, Chris Koster, said in a statement.
A clemency petition to Nixon had also cited concerns about the fact that Ringo was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury.
Ringo was sentenced to death by lethal injection (file picture). His execution is the eighth in Missouri this year
Chilling scenes accompanied the executions of Joseph Rudolph Wood, left, Dennis McGuire, centre and Clayton Lockett, right, who were all administered the pre-execution sedative midazolam
On July 3, 1998, Ringo told his accomplice Quentin Jones about his plan to rob the Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Columbia, where he once worked. Jones agreed to join him.
Before sunrise on July 4, Ringo and Jones hid behind a grease pit in the back of the restaurant. Poyser and Baysinger arrived and entered the restaurant. Ringo followed them and shot Poyser, 45, killing him instantly.
He then ordered Baysinger, 22, to open a safe. She pulled out $1,400 and gave it to him.
Ringo gave the gun to Jones, who stood with the weapon pointed at Baysinger’s head for a minute and a half before pulling the trigger.
Interviews with restaurant workers and former workers led police to Ringo. Detectives found a blue ski mask, gun receipt, bulletproof vest and other evidence at the home of his mother.
THE CASE OF WILLIAM HAPP
Happ – who raped and killed Angie Crowley, 21, in 1986 – died by lethal injection in 2013
William Happ, 51, was the first death row inmate to be injected with midazolam hydrochloride.
The execution began at 6.02pm at Florida State Prison. Happ’s eyes opened and he blinked several times.
He closed and opened them again two minutes later. He then yawned and his jaw dropped open.
At 6.08pm, the official overseeing the execution tugged at Happ’s eyelids and grasped his shoulder to check for a response. There was none.
A minute later, Happ’s head began moving back and forth and shortly thereafter his breathing stopped.
He was pronounced dead at 6.16pm.
Ringo admitted to the robbery but claimed the shootings were in self-defense. He was convicted in 1999 and sentenced to death.
Jones, of Louisville, Kentucky, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison, but he was spared the death penalty when he agreed to testify against Ringo.
Jama Brown, who was married for to Poyser for 24 years, asked that people remember the victims.
‘I can only tell you there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him or wonder what my life would be like today, not only for myself, but for my kids,’ she said.
In a statement she added: ‘Please do not make this about how executions shouldn’t take place. Put your effort on how we can stop people from committing these terrible actions.
‘Please remember these two wonderful people who just wanted to go to work on the Fourth of July to support their families.’
Ringo’s execution is the eighth in the state this year and the tenth since November.
St. Louis Public Radio reported last week that Missouri administered midazolam to all nine inmates put to death since November. Corrections department spokesman David Owen said midazolam ‘is used to relieve the offender’s level of anxiety’ and is not part of the actual execution process.
The execution was one of two scheduled for today in the U.S. This afternoon Texas plans to execute Willie Trottie for killing his common-law wife and her brother in 1993.
Trottie’s execution will be Texas’ eighth this year. Florida has performed seven executions in 2014, and all other states have a combined six.
Both Missouri and Texas use pentobarbital as their execution drug but decline to disclose where the drug is obtained.
‘They don’t tell you what it is and where it comes from,’ Trottie told The Associated Press. ‘What I’ve learned in 20 years here on death row is all you can do is say, ‘OK.’
‘I’m ready whichever way it goes. If God says, ‘Yes,’ I’m ready.’
Trottie, who turned 45 Monday, shot and killed 24-year-old Barbara Canada, and her 28-year-old brother, Titus, at the Canada family home in Houston. Canada’s mother and sister were also wounded.
Lawyers for Trottie argued in their appeal that the one-time deliveryman and security guard suffered poor representation in his initial trial.
They said his counsel failed to present witnesses who would have told jurors Trottie and Barbara Canada were romantically engaged at the time of the killings. Late Monday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal.
Trottie said he and Barbara Canada were on ‘good terms’ despite an on-again, off-again relationship. Trottie said he was defending himself against Titus Canada, who shot first. He said the shooting of his wife was accidental.
‘It wasn’t like I just walked in there and gunned her down,’ he said.
Johnny Sutton, the lead prosecutor at Trottie’s trial, said evidence showed that’s exactly what happened.
‘He hunted them down,’ Sutton said. ‘The self-defense claim is absolutely ridiculous. He kicked in their door. … They already were worried about him. He was making threats and trying to run her off the road.
Medical workers of the John F Kennedy hospital of Monrovia show the aprons they have been wearing during a strike. Photograph: Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images
It seems that the militarization and military dominance of the Western World Powers are in full swing. Of course they experiment first on the least able to resist their control and then move towards the higher stakes.
There are many fields of conquest taking place at this moment, a sign that the steady plan by plan operations do not work reminiscent of how at the end of the battle all the ammo that is left is hoisted upon the enemy. Western powers are losing their dominion over the world, economically, politically and spiritually. There desire for a New World Order by culling the masses has become exposed for all to see. As a result, they have found the need to resort to even more treacherous strategies. Ebola is bio-chemical warfare, hence the need for boots on the ground. They care not who they endanger as those wearing the boots are just as expendable as those who are affected by this virus.
The design of worldwide population reduction is in full swing and they are now testing one of the deadliest man-made virus in recent history. When the initial outbreak occurred the loss of life was not astronomical. Now they have gotten to a people on the African continent who were already broken and now even more so, hence their inability to fight the infection. The human’s immune system can be render useless with varying conditions of stress, strife, struggle, heart break, wars and various other events that happen in the life of human beings on this planet.
From my point of view, it is quite clear that the propaganda campaign that has been launched against the virus and the African people is a clear indicator that this disease has been set loose on the African populations. We must also look at the natural resources in the areas hit hardest by the outbreak and connect the dots.
Western Powers are plummeting into the depths of despair. Economically, politically and spiritually they are losing control over the masses as seen by the many protests against their governments. Their economies are collapsing as we speak and once the great Euro-American Empires collapse all those entrenched in their way of life will collapse as well. It will go down in the annals of time as the True and Unequivocal fall of man.
Africans who have lusted after the Western Way of Life, have forsaken their ancient values for Capitalism. Once a beacon in the world for Community and support for family and traditional institutions; Africa’s Leaders have become Westernized in their climb to the so-called top of the ladder. They are finding out slowly but surely that the Euro-Americans and their schemes for advancement cannot be trusted.
While the “Obama Trojan” horse was set loose on
unknowing masses of Blacks in Africa, the Black leaders are lining their pockets with promises of riches, Western riches…. Ignoring their own profitability in their home grown resources as well as ingenuity. Euro-American Powers want to trump the advancement of China into Africa. This is a war on many fronts and all not done with weapons of mass destruction as they have been deployed in the past.
It is an insidious, creeping into the very fiber of the African being, a scraping away of all ethical and community connections; a masking of a great cancer that has rendered Africans in their quest for acknowledgement and acceptance by the beast who colonized it in the first place.
We are definitely living in some seriously trying times as wars wage across the planet. Our host Mother Earth has seen nothing like this before in her history, as we are much more populated and given to warring with each other than ever before.
Is there any hope? I am not too sure of that. In my opinion, attempting to gather together a Union of African countries numbering 50+ (as some countries have seceded and formed additional countries on the continent) the division among African people as a whole is daunting. Where are the true African leaders who will or can bridge the gap? Qaddafi is gone along with so many others. Where are the true leaders of the African people who have the vision to see that their dependence on Euro-American assistance is a death knell?
I believe that Africans swallowed the Euro-American belief systems, religious, economic and political. These systems are antithesis to what ancient traditional Africa stood for. It flies in the face of the Ancient Ancestral traditions. It is a divide and conquer mechanism that has destroyed the very “immune” system of the Continental African. Ebola is just a sign of a deeper and more shattering phenomenon. Africa is infected with Western ideology, and as a result, Africa will fall ill with its disease and suffer a great loss until the cure is discovered. What is the cure?
Sankofa!
Self Reliance!
Deporting any and all Euro-American ideology in all its forms. Taking back its true nature from the vulture who consumed it.
Until then, Africa will drown in the sinking ship of Western Imperialism.
Medical workers of the John F Kennedy hospital of Monrovia show the aprons they have been wearing during a strike. Photograph: Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images
It seems that the militarization and military dominance of the Western World Powers are in full swing. Of course they experiment first on the least able to resist their control and then move towards the higher stakes.
There are many fields of conquest taking place at this moment, a sign that the steady plan by plan operations do not work reminiscent of how at the end of the battle all the ammo that is left is hoisted upon the enemy. Western powers are losing their dominion over the world, economically, politically and spiritually. There desire for a New World Order by culling the masses has become exposed for all to see. As a result, they have found the need to resort to even more treacherous strategies. Ebola is bio-chemical warfare, hence the need for boots on the ground. They care not who they endanger as those wearing the boots are just as expendable as those who are affected by this virus.
The design of worldwide population reduction is in full swing and they are now testing one of the deadliest man-made virus in recent history. When the initial outbreak occurred the loss of life was not astronomical. Now they have gotten to a people on the African continent who were already broken and now even more so, hence their inability to fight the infection. The human’s immune system can be render useless with varying conditions of stress, strife, struggle, heart break, wars and various other events that happen in the life of human beings on this planet.
From my point of view, it is quite clear that the propaganda campaign that has been launched against the virus and the African people is a clear indicator that this disease has been set loose on the African populations. We must also look at the natural resources in the areas hit hardest by the outbreak and connect the dots.
Western Powers are plummeting into the depths of despair. Economically, politically and spiritually they are losing control over the masses as seen by the many protests against their governments. Their economies are collapsing as we speak and once the great Euro-American Empires collapse all those entrenched in their way of life will collapse as well. It will go down in the annals of time as the True and Unequivocal fall of man.
Africans who have lusted after the Western Way of Life, have forsaken their ancient values for Capitalism. Once a beacon in the world for Community and support for family and traditional institutions; Africa’s Leaders have become Westernized in their climb to the so-called top of the ladder. They are finding out slowly but surely that the Euro-Americans and their schemes for advancement cannot be trusted. While the “Obama Trojan” horse was set loose on
unknowing masses of Blacks in Africa, the Black leaders are lining their pockets with promises of riches, Western riches…. Ignoring their own profitability in their home grown resources as well as ingenuity. Euro-American Powers want to trump the advancement of China into Africa. This is a war on many fronts and all not done with weapons of mass destruction as they have been deployed in the past.
It is an insidious, creeping into the very fiber of the African being, a scraping away of all ethical and community connections; a masking of a great cancer that has rendered Africans in their quest for acknowledgement and acceptance by the beast who colonized it in the first place.
We are definitely living in some seriously trying times as wars wage across the planet. Our host Mother Earth has seen nothing like this before in her history, as we are much more populated and given to warring with each other than ever before.
Is there any hope? I am not too sure of that. In my opinion, attempting to gather together a Union of African countries numbering 50+ (as some countries have seceded and formed additional countries on the continent) the division among African people as a whole is daunting. Where are the true African leaders who will or can bridge the gap? Qaddafi is gone along with so many others. Where are the true leaders of the African people who have the vision to see that their dependence on Euro-American assistance is a death knell?
I believe that Africans swallowed the Euro-American belief systems, religious, economic and political. These systems are antithesis to what ancient traditional Africa stood for. It flies in the face of the Ancient Ancestral traditions. It is a divide and conquer mechanism that has destroyed the very “immune” system of the Continental African. Ebola is just a sign of a deeper and more shattering phenomenon. Africa is infected with Western ideology, and as a result, Africa will fall ill with its disease and suffer a great loss until the cure is discovered. What is the cure?
Sankofa!
Self Reliance!
Deporting any and all Euro-American ideology in all its forms. Taking back its true nature from the vulture who consumed it.
Until then, Africa will drown in the sinking ship of Western Imperialism.
Whether she is Instagramming her butt, or spending$827,000 on gold-plated toilets for her new mansion, or in her latest exploit, posing nude on silver sheets for GQ, Kim Kardashian has the American media in a fawning frenzy of non-stop headlines.
Kardashian represents the pinnacle values of late-stage American-style capitalism: opportunism, effortless celebrity, obsession with wealth and image, narcissism, and above all, making a fortune doing nothing useful.
In her ripened curves, the fruits of unbridled capitalism are made flesh. In her dogged ambition to be rich and be seen, she is the Lady Bountiful of the Celebrity-Industrial Complex, endorsing any product that will have her, no matter how contradictory. Diet systems? Of course! McDonald’s? Mais oui! The mirror image of the market stripped of regulation, she is the marketer unburdened by responsibility.
Turning the world into a camera, Kardashian takes self-obsession to new heights: She is the queen of the selfie, compiling a 352-page series of snaps into an unpublished book called “Selfish,” soon available to all in hardcover. Her smartphone gaming app, “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,” invites players to follow her animated image as she frolics through a commercial playground. The app is already worth $200 million after a midsummer release, its candy-colored cartoons perfectly reflecting the infantile ethos she represents.
Kim Kardashian is simply the id of capitalism run wild, the narcissistic force that wants what it wants, when it wants it, an incarnation of the fulfilled wish to talk and think about absolutely nothing while rolling in snuggly designer sheets. Unattached and oblivious, the spoiled child becomes the American avatar of freedom and self-expression, something elevated and even holy.
Americans love to fetishize wealth, viewing a person’s monetary success as a direct sign of righteousness. So revered is the act of marketing the self that Kardashian’s cartoon image accrues metaphysical weight. For a certain strain of Gen Y, Kim Kardashian is held up as a feminist icon: Katie Gonzalez of Elite Daily gushes that “Kim has become another voice that attempts to uplift her fellow females,” while Suchi Sundaram of Feminspire explores her mythic dimension: “From Helen of Troy to Kim Kardashian, women have been constantly defining their roles and powers in a patriarchal society.”
Not only can you be famous for absolutely nothing, you can be feminist, too. Why not a Nobel Prize winner? The poet laureate? No need for action or insight. Accumulation and consumption are the only skills required.
So why are we stuck with her? The answer lies in the fact that the American economy is in a stage where most people are not getting what we need, much less what we want. As we become more alienated and work harder and harder for our neo-feudal overlords, our dreams are constricted and our futures foreclosed. Celebrities are the gods we create to distract ourselves from our own incompleteness, from the hunger for things we cannot have. We spend our lives following their every move to get our attention away from the lack that we will always feel until this system is overthrown.
Kim Kardashian has just been named British GQ magazine’s Woman of the Year, but perhaps she is more than that. She is the woman of the era, the most visible symptom of our society’s particular sickness. In a healthy society, the id cannot dominate, and milking a twisted system for all it’s worth is not seen an act of heroism, but the mark of a person for whom the human condition is nothing more than perpetual imprisonment in the self. Appropriately, Kim Kardashian is very fond of corsets. She is the illusion of bounty and freedom that covers the deformation and restriction of the human spirit.
Is it all her fault? Of course not. She’s the prison we made for ourselves.
Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of “Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture.” She received her Ph.D. in English and cultural theory from NYU. She is the director of AlterNet’s New Economic Dialogue Project. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.
Rising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report.
It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.
Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth’s atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.
This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by a Nasa-affiliated scientist and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University that, while considered unlikely, they say could play out were humans and alien life to make contact at some point in the future.
Shawn Domagal-Goldman of Nasa’s Planetary Science Division and his colleagues compiled a list of plausible outcomes that could unfold in the aftermath of a close encounter, to help humanity “prepare for actual contact”………….
It’s saying maybe the threat of being annihilated by ETI could stop humanity from destroying itself and the planet. Baa Humbug, I say to that. Where were they thousands of years ago before Atlantis was destroyed? Where were they when the so-called great flood happened? Where were they when Mars, supposedly destroyed itself? What about their intercession when Venus was in trouble?
Too funny, if they are smart, they will not bother us, cause we can take em on!!! And we can still destroy our planet and move out into the Cosmos with our diseases in the mind, body and spirit.
Don’t they know that they cannot wipe us out??We are like roaches.. We will come back as we have done over and over again. We have suffered through all types of calamities. Wars, hunger, drought, wars, pestilence, death and destructions, wars and atom bombs, mini nukes, Fukishimo, Oil Spills, fracking, tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricane Katrina.. wars and starvation, Ebola and Boko Haram. We will survive ISIS and the New World Order. Don’t they know that is how we got here in the first place.
Don’t they know that they sent the worse of the worse here because we were so incorrigible we couldn’t make it there?
Silly, Aliens, they think they can deter us from destroying our planet, filling our seas with plastic and drying up our water supplies. They oughta know we will take them vaccines, plug all kinds of micro-chips in us, become cyborgs, and travel to other planets for safe refuge.
Don’t they know that our underground bunkers are no match for their stupid technology. Don’t they know we been hiding out here on the edge of our Galaxy for eons just so we could show them how powerful and resilient we are?
Who cares how big they are? We tame the wildest and biggest beasts in the jungle. Ain’t nobody scared of no darned Aliens.
We got weapons in space and we can see them coming and we are practicing on downing asteroids before they hit the planet. We are holding them off already in space, and every time we get one of them, we hear weird sounds all over the place on earth, they tell us we are winning.
Don’t they know that we are covering the earth with chemtrails so that their stupid technology can’t pierce through our cloud of barium, aluminum and nano particles of blood plasm. Shucks, them Aliens better wake up and find some other planet to mess with, cause we ain’t going out like that!!!!!
Whether she is Instagramming her butt, or spending$827,000 on gold-plated toilets for her new mansion, or in her latest exploit, posing nude on silver sheets for GQ, Kim Kardashian has the American media in a fawning frenzy of non-stop headlines.
Kardashian represents the pinnacle values of late-stage American-style capitalism: opportunism, effortless celebrity, obsession with wealth and image, narcissism, and above all, making a fortune doing nothing useful.
In her ripened curves, the fruits of unbridled capitalism are made flesh. In her dogged ambition to be rich and be seen, she is the Lady Bountiful of the Celebrity-Industrial Complex, endorsing any product that will have her, no matter how contradictory. Diet systems? Of course! McDonald’s? Mais oui! The mirror image of the market stripped of regulation, she is the marketer unburdened by responsibility.
Turning the world into a camera, Kardashian takes self-obsession to new heights: She is the queen of the selfie, compiling a 352-page series of snaps into an unpublished book called “Selfish,” soon available to all in hardcover. Her smartphone gaming app, “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,” invites players to follow her animated image as she frolics through a commercial playground. The app is already worth $200 million after a midsummer release, its candy-colored cartoons perfectly reflecting the infantile ethos she represents.
Kim Kardashian is simply the id of capitalism run wild, the narcissistic force that wants what it wants, when it wants it, an incarnation of the fulfilled wish to talk and think about absolutely nothing while rolling in snuggly designer sheets. Unattached and oblivious, the spoiled child becomes the American avatar of freedom and self-expression, something elevated and even holy.
Americans love to fetishize wealth, viewing a person’s monetary success as a direct sign of righteousness. So revered is the act of marketing the self that Kardashian’s cartoon image accrues metaphysical weight. For a certain strain of Gen Y, Kim Kardashian is held up as a feminist icon: Katie Gonzalez of Elite Daily gushes that “Kim has become another voice that attempts to uplift her fellow females,” while Suchi Sundaram of Feminspire explores her mythic dimension: “From Helen of Troy to Kim Kardashian, women have been constantly defining their roles and powers in a patriarchal society.”
Not only can you be famous for absolutely nothing, you can be feminist, too. Why not a Nobel Prize winner? The poet laureate? No need for action or insight. Accumulation and consumption are the only skills required.
So why are we stuck with her? The answer lies in the fact that the American economy is in a stage where most people are not getting what we need, much less what we want. As we become more alienated and work harder and harder for our neo-feudal overlords, our dreams are constricted and our futures foreclosed. Celebrities are the gods we create to distract ourselves from our own incompleteness, from the hunger for things we cannot have. We spend our lives following their every move to get our attention away from the lack that we will always feel until this system is overthrown.
Kim Kardashian has just been named British GQ magazine’s Woman of the Year, but perhaps she is more than that. She is the woman of the era, the most visible symptom of our society’s particular sickness. In a healthy society, the id cannot dominate, and milking a twisted system for all it’s worth is not seen an act of heroism, but the mark of a person for whom the human condition is nothing more than perpetual imprisonment in the self. Appropriately, Kim Kardashian is very fond of corsets. She is the illusion of bounty and freedom that covers the deformation and restriction of the human spirit.
Is it all her fault? Of course not. She’s the prison we made for ourselves.
Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of “Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture.” She received her Ph.D. in English and cultural theory from NYU. She is the director of AlterNet’s New Economic Dialogue Project. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.
Rising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report.
It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.
Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth’s atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain. This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by a Nasa-affiliated scientist and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University that, while considered unlikely, they say could play out were humans and alien life to make contact at some point in the future. Shawn Domagal-Goldman of Nasa’s Planetary Science Division and his colleagues compiled a list of plausible outcomes that could unfold in the aftermath of a close encounter, to help humanity “prepare for actual contact”………….
It’s saying maybe the threat of being annihilated by ETI could stop humanity from destroying itself and the planet. Baa Humbug, I say to that. Where were they thousands of years ago before Atlantis was destroyed? Where were they when the so-called great flood happened? Where were they when Mars, supposedly destroyed itself? What about their intercession when Venus was in trouble?
Too funny, if they are smart, they will not bother us, cause we can take em on!!! And we can still destroy our planet and move out into the Cosmos with our diseases in the mind, body and spirit.
Don’t they know that they cannot wipe us out??We are like roaches.. We will come back as we have done over and over again. We have suffered through all types of calamities. Wars, hunger, drought, wars, pestilence, death and destructions, wars and atom bombs, mini nukes, Fukishimo, Oil Spills, fracking, tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricane Katrina.. wars and starvation, Ebola and Boko Haram. We will survive ISIS and the New World Order. Don’t they know that is how we got here in the first place.
Don’t they know that they sent the worse of the worse here because we were so incorrigible we couldn’t make it there?
Silly, Aliens, they think they can deter us from destroying our planet, filling our seas with plastic and drying up our water supplies. They oughta know we will take them vaccines, plug all kinds of micro-chips in us, become cyborgs, and travel to other planets for safe refuge.
Don’t they know that our underground bunkers are no match for their stupid technology. Don’t they know we been hiding out here on the edge of our Galaxy for eons just so we could show them how powerful and resilient we are?
Who cares how big they are? We tame the wildest and biggest beasts in the jungle. Ain’t nobody scared of no darned Aliens.
We got weapons in space and we can see them coming and we are practicing on downing asteroids before they hit the planet. We are holding them off already in space, and every time we get one of them, we hear weird sounds all over the place on earth, they tell us we are winning.
Don’t they know that we are covering the earth with chemtrails so that their stupid technology can’t pierce through our cloud of barium, aluminum and nano particles of blood plasm. Shucks, them Aliens better wake up and find some other planet to mess with, cause we ain’t going out like that!!!!!
“Can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair” Alan Alda
Sometimes, I just can’t understand the rationale that we stand on when a celebrity dies. It’s as if they have some sort of super power, some beyond human experience, existence that makes them more of an IDOL, than a real living breathing human.
The adoration and adulation is so displaced. A great attention given to a person who barely knows who he/she is outside of the admiration thrust upon them by their audience. In real life, beyond the big scream, they cry, they fart, they throw up and catch the flu. But on screen they are more than human, they are more than super human, they are GODS.
Somewhere in the human psyche we need to have these GODS, these DEITIES, who seem to give us this false sense of hope and a false sense of reality. We never see them sweat except as part of the act. We don’t see what it takes to get one scene together to fit the big screen. But alas, we are manipulated and mezmorized by their “bigger than life” persona.
Yet, by the same token we will walk over a homeless person lying in the gutter. Some of us will actually bring harm to them, as if they are not human and deserving of being treated as a living, breathing human manifestation of the Divine. We are also the same ones who will vote for the killing of thousands of children in other people’s homes. How is that possible? How do these two opposing beliefs come from the same species. Even in the animal kingdom you see a compassion that far outweighs what we tend to portray for one another, particularly in the more privileged side of the human family.
Robin Williams, brought us all a taste of a world beyond our own abilities to manifest in the sense that he could be all of us and none of us at the same time. He could be almost any character and make it so real, we really believed it. Yet who was he, and did he hurt every time he heard that another Palestinian home had been bombed and another 50 children killed in an areal assault? Did he pay attention to what was happening in the world outside of his fame? I tend to believe he did, but that could simply be a personal bias.
My point is this… Here we are mourning the likes of a ROBIN WILLIAMS, another human being who had the opportunity to make us laugh so hard, we’d better stop before we damage our hearts, yet, we are divorced from the sadness, the grief, the despair, the depression of others who are not on the Big Screen.
What gives them carte-blanche to our sympathies? What makes their pain bigger than any one else’s and what makes them so important, even more important than the thousands of Yazidi fleeing into war torn Syria. What kind of world is this? Imagine just for a moment what that must feel like, when 20 members of your immediate family is killed in an instance and you are the only one who survives. Would you consider the fact that this lone survivor could give into the deepest darkest despair and kill himself or become a suicide bomber? Would his suicide make headline news??
Why are we so divorced from the chemical, electro-magnetic impact that death and destruction has on all of us, in every single corner of this globe. Is one death and its reason more significant than the death of an old man who gave up after being shut away in an old folks’ home for 20 years where no one came to visit him? How is it, that Robin’s depression is a clarion call for folks to focus on remedies for it, and questions about it and how can we avoid it in others….?? How is that possible when we are constantly bombarded with all types of violence against one another and others we don’t even know? How in the same breath, we weep and cry and wish we knew before it was too late, and then say that Israel’s disproportionate force against Gaza is justifiable? How do we support the arming of rebels around the globe who have no compassion at all for their victims and their families as they slaughter, maimed and behead them. What type of mind do we as a human family have that we can go so deep into the mirror over a superficial SUPER STARwho told us himself that“NO MOVIES ARE REAL!” yet we are lacking in our ability to comprehend, respond or change the conditions of our world where distress, pain and misery lie.
Seriously, is the fact that Robin Williams was depressed more of a headline than the deep despair that Liberian Mother feels whose child succumbed to Ebola? Or the Ferguson’s mother whose son was shot several times and killing all his chances to go to college this coming September? How displaced is our attention, concern and adulations when it comes to a so-called Hollywood Celebrity than for our family and neighbors who live in our midst? How displaced is our concern when we spend ours and dollars on Pop Culture and ignore the pain of those who are on the other side of the globe, who are awakened from their sleep in the middle of the night to the rhythmic sequence of bombs falling on their neighborhood, a neighborhood they could not escape. What about their despair, what about their depression, grief and feelings of loss?
And finally, how can we avoid it? Sometimes, I think the Universe let’s it happen to us so we can see what it feels like and maybe, just maybe we will have more empathy for others. I wonder how effective that method is however. It seems we get more self gratification weighing in on our favorite celeb, sports start or politician than we do on the real issues. We are all one human family sharing one home, Earth, and surely, whatever is happening anywhere in the world is happening everywhere.
We hear so much about honoring the dead, honoring their families, giving the families of these famous deceased folks their privacy, etc., etc. ad infanitum, yet, who honors those that are killed by our tax dollars and warmongering Politicians? Who stops and places a yellow ribbon on their hearts for them. Who refuses to participate in their annihilation? If it meant that the way we could save Robin from his ill fated demise meant that we stop supporting the industry that killed him, would we do it. Would we release ourselves from the joys of his mania and allow him, the artist to live in peace? Would we rally around programs that brought peace into his life if it meant he would make no more movies for our gawking eyes and selfish idol worship to enjoy? Would we stop if it meant that we would have to find something else to entertain us or find a way to entertain ourselves without destroying the idol of our worship? Would we? Could we? Are we all crying out loud because we cannot live without Robin Williams, our major distraction from what is really happening in the real world????
Yes, another IDOL has succumbed to the ravishes of an industry that kills it. And to what does that mean? Save we shall simply find another distraction and move ever more from reality and deeper into the matrix of mind control.
I hope that Robin is doing well, wherever he is. I hope he realizes that our worshipping of him was a sickness as much as his desire to be worshipped and that if he comes back he will love himself, more than any mass of emotionally starved and derranged human beings could ever love him. Rest In Power, Robin Williams, and all those who preceeded you and all those who follow and particularly the forgotten ones whose physical bodies are wasting away under the rubble of human ignorance and cruelty.
Opinion
Alan Alda: A Niagaraof Wit Falls Silent Aug. 12, 2014Can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair?
Within minutes we were telling one another he was gone. His genius, that had burned so hot, was cold, and the whole country felt the chill at once. For years, we had watched with awe as a Niagara of wit poured from his unconscious. Where did that manic waterfall of funny have its source? And where did his fearlessness come from? The night that he and Jane Fonda and I hosted the Academy Awards show together, he kept coming up with outrageous jokes in the wings. But before he went out on stage, he seemed to be using me as his taste monitor. He would think of a line and say, “Is that too tasteless?” Invariably, I’d say, “Yes, it’s too tasteless,” and invariably he’d go on stage, say the line and kill with it. Unfortunately, sometimes the mind that runs so fast it can’t keep up with itself also has its down time. I didn’t know he suffered from depression, although it doesn’t surprise me. But it makes me want to dosomething. I hope it makes us all want to do something. While the whole country, and much of the world, feels this moment of sadness at his death, can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair? Can we educate one another to recognize the early signs of depression? Can we make it clear to one another how dangerous it is? We all know now that drunk driving kills. But, when I looked up the numbers, I was astonished. Each year there are more than twice as many suicides attributed to depression as deaths on the road due to alcohol. Maybe our grief can be transformed into an awakening. The man who enriched our lives could be the focus of saving countless other lives. Robin Williams could be with us a little longer.
“Can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair” Alan Alda
Sometimes, I just can’t understand the rationale that we stand on when a celebrity dies. It’s as if they have some sort of super power, some beyond human experience, existence that makes them more of an IDOL, than a real living breathing human.
The adoration and adulation is so displaced. A great attention given to a person who barely knows who he/she is outside of the admiration thrust upon them by their audience. In real life, beyond the big scream, they cry, they fart, they throw up and catch the flu. But on screen they are more than human, they are more than super human, they are GODS.
Somewhere in the human psyche we need to have these GODS, these DEITIES, who seem to give us this false sense of hope and a false sense of reality. We never see them sweat except as part of the act. We don’t see what it takes to get one scene together to fit the big screen. But alas, we are manipulated and mezmorized by their “bigger than life” persona.
Yet, by the same token we will walk over a homeless person lying in the gutter. Some of us will actually bring harm to them, as if they are not human and deserving of being treated as a living, breathing human manifestation of the Divine. We are also the same ones who will vote for the killing of thousands of children in other people’s homes. How is that possible? How do these two opposing beliefs come from the same species. Even in the animal kingdom you see a compassion that far outweighs what we tend to portray for one another, particularly in the more privileged side of the human family.
Robin Williams, brought us all a taste of a world beyond our own abilities to manifest in the sense that he could be all of us and none of us at the same time. He could be almost any character and make it so real, we really believed it. Yet who was he, and did he hurt every time he heard that another Palestinian home had been bombed and another 50 children killed in an areal assault? Did he pay attention to what was happening in the world outside of his fame? I tend to believe he did, but that could simply be a personal bias.
My point is this… Here we are mourning the likes of a ROBIN WILLIAMS, another human being who had the opportunity to make us laugh so hard, we’d better stop before we damage our hearts, yet, we are divorced from the sadness, the grief, the despair, the depression of others who are not on the Big Screen.
What gives them carte-blanche to our sympathies? What makes their pain bigger than any one else’s and what makes them so important, even more important than the thousands of Yazidi fleeing into war torn Syria. What kind of world is this? Imagine just for a moment what that must feel like, when 20 members of your immediate family is killed in an instance and you are the only one who survives. Would you consider the fact that this lone survivor could give into the deepest darkest despair and kill himself or become a suicide bomber? Would his suicide make headline news??
Why are we so divorced from the chemical, electro-magnetic impact that death and destruction has on all of us, in every single corner of this globe. Is one death and its reason more significant than the death of an old man who gave up after being shut away in an old folks’ home for 20 years where no one came to visit him? How is it, that Robin’s depression is a clarion call for folks to focus on remedies for it, and questions about it and how can we avoid it in others….?? How is that possible when we are constantly bombarded with all types of violence against one another and others we don’t even know? How in the same breath, we weep and cry and wish we knew before it was too late, and then say that Israel’s disproportionate force against Gaza is justifiable? How do we support the arming of rebels around the globe who have no compassion at all for their victims and their families as they slaughter, maimed and behead them. What type of mind do we as a human family have that we can go so deep into the mirror over a superficial SUPER STARwho told us himself that“NO MOVIES ARE REAL!” yet we are lacking in our ability to comprehend, respond or change the conditions of our world where distress, pain and misery lie.
Seriously, is the fact that Robin Williams was depressed more of a headline than the deep despair that Liberian Mother feels whose child succumbed to Ebola? Or the Ferguson’s mother whose son was shot several times and killing all his chances to go to college this coming September? How displaced is our attention, concern and adulations when it comes to a so-called Hollywood Celebrity than for our family and neighbors who live in our midst? How displaced is our concern when we spend ours and dollars on Pop Culture and ignore the pain of those who are on the other side of the globe, who are awakened from their sleep in the middle of the night to the rhythmic sequence of bombs falling on their neighborhood, a neighborhood they could not escape. What about their despair, what about their depression, grief and feelings of loss?
And finally, how can we avoid it? Sometimes, I think the Universe let’s it happen to us so we can see what it feels like and maybe, just maybe we will have more empathy for others. I wonder how effective that method is however. It seems we get more self gratification weighing in on our favorite celeb, sports start or politician than we do on the real issues. We are all one human family sharing one home, Earth, and surely, whatever is happening anywhere in the world is happening everywhere.
We hear so much about honoring the dead, honoring their families, giving the families of these famous deceased folks their privacy, etc., etc. ad infanitum, yet, who honors those that are killed by our tax dollars and warmongering Politicians? Who stops and places a yellow ribbon on their hearts for them. Who refuses to participate in their annihilation? If it meant that the way we could save Robin from his ill fated demise meant that we stop supporting the industry that killed him, would we do it. Would we release ourselves from the joys of his mania and allow him, the artist to live in peace? Would we rally around programs that brought peace into his life if it meant he would make no more movies for our gawking eyes and selfish idol worship to enjoy? Would we stop if it meant that we would have to find something else to entertain us or find a way to entertain ourselves without destroying the idol of our worship? Would we? Could we? Are we all crying out loud because we cannot live without Robin Williams, our major distraction from what is really happening in the real world????
Yes, another IDOL has succumbed to the ravishes of an industry that kills it. And to what does that mean? Save we shall simply find another distraction and move ever more from reality and deeper into the matrix of mind control.
I hope that Robin is doing well, wherever he is. I hope he realizes that our worshipping of him was a sickness as much as his desire to be worshipped and that if he comes back he will love himself, more than any mass of emotionally starved and derranged human beings could ever love him. Rest In Power, Robin Williams, and all those who preceeded you and all those who follow and particularly the forgotten ones whose physical bodies are wasting away under the rubble of human ignorance and cruelty.
Opinion
Alan Alda: A Niagaraof Wit Falls Silent Aug. 12, 2014Can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair?
Within minutes we were telling one another he was gone. His genius, that had burned so hot, was cold, and the whole country felt the chill at once. For years, we had watched with awe as a Niagara of wit poured from his unconscious. Where did that manic waterfall of funny have its source? And where did his fearlessness come from? The night that he and Jane Fonda and I hosted the Academy Awards show together, he kept coming up with outrageous jokes in the wings. But before he went out on stage, he seemed to be using me as his taste monitor. He would think of a line and say, “Is that too tasteless?” Invariably, I’d say, “Yes, it’s too tasteless,” and invariably he’d go on stage, say the line and kill with it. Unfortunately, sometimes the mind that runs so fast it can’t keep up with itself also has its down time. I didn’t know he suffered from depression, although it doesn’t surprise me. But it makes me want to dosomething. I hope it makes us all want to do something. While the whole country, and much of the world, feels this moment of sadness at his death, can we turn the loss of this artist we loved so much into something that pushes back against the ravages of despair? Can we educate one another to recognize the early signs of depression? Can we make it clear to one another how dangerous it is? We all know now that drunk driving kills. But, when I looked up the numbers, I was astonished. Each year there are more than twice as many suicides attributed to depression as deaths on the road due to alcohol. Maybe our grief can be transformed into an awakening. The man who enriched our lives could be the focus of saving countless other lives. Robin Williams could be with us a little longer.
Published 8 August 2014 The killing train transcends each separate war, inequity, and injustice, and ultimately, and this is, of course, the point – so must our opposition. The killing train is fueled by poverty, disease, starvation, indignity, death squads, racism, sexism, class division, bombs, and more bombs.Many years back, moved by the first Gulf War, I wrote a piece with the above title, Stop the Killing Train. I am revisiting the same subject because, regrettably, the topic remains at the forefront even if the precipitating violence is different.
For the purpose of the exercise, please use your imagination.
Suppose a hypothetical god got tired of what we humans do to one another and decided that from January 1, 1991 onward all corpses unnaturally created anywhere in or by the hand of the “free world” would cease to decompose. Anyone dying for want of food or medicine, anyone hung or garroted to death, shot or beaten to death, raped or bombed to death, anyone dying unjustly and inhumanely for want of clean air or water or other necessities of life, would, as a corpse, persist without decomposing. The permanent corpse would then automatically enter a glass-walled cattle car attached to an ethereal train traveling monotonously across the U.S., state by state, never stopping. The hypothetical God would tirelessly display our achievements for us all to see.
One by one the corpses would divinely load onto the cattle cars. After every thousand corpses piled in a car, a new car would hitch up and begin filling in turn. Mile after mile the killing train would roll along, each corpse visible through the train’s transparent walls. We can suppose it fills at the rate of 200 new corpses a minute, or one new car every five minutes, day and night, without pause.
By the end of 1991, on its first birthday, the killing train would easily measure over 2,500 miles long. Traveling at 20 miles an hour it would take about five days to pass any intersection across the U.S. Imagine you are sitting at a railroad crossing. You watch this horror go past, 24 hours a day, for five full days. Every car contains 1,000 corpses, all clearly visible. This hypothetical God knows how to communicate so we can’t ignore reality.
By the year 2000, assuming no dramatic change in institutions and behavior, the train would stretch from coast to coast about seven times. It would take about six weeks from the time its engine passed the Statue of Liberty to when its caboose would go by. Would the God still wonder when pitiful, aspiring humanity would get the message?
By 2014 – you can safely just double the ugly statistics. Deaths accelerate, unless, of course, we had gotten the message. So, coast to coast it would stretch, about 14 times. Every corpse an indictment.
Think how a young child sometimes points to a picture in a book or magazine and asks for an explanation, “Tell me about a tree?” A car? A boat? Or a train? A big train? The killing train? Go ahead, try to answer that one. Perhaps that explains why this image isn’t, in fact, a common one on our TVs and in our never-ending streams of information.
Bad enough, way worse than bad enough, it could even get worse. Consider that climate change will before long start to wrack up even larger kill lists. But, of course, those dead would pile into the killing train too, since with only modest exceptions they too are preventable.
The killing train, in any event, no matter how each moribund commuter who need not have been on board got his or her ticket, is horrendous.
Imagine the lost opportunity and lost love. Imagine as well the network of negative influences that radiate from the unnecessary deaths displayed by the killing train stretching from coast to coast and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Consider the horrendous impact, not only on those on board, but on every person that any of those corpses ever loved or would have loved, fed or would have fed, taught or would have taught.
Who rides the killing train? Certainly citizens of the “Third World,” selling their organs for food, selling their babies to save their families, suffering disappearances and starvation. They live in Brazil, the Philippines, El Salvador, but also New York. They enter the killing train, every day. It isn’t a peace train. It isn’t a justice train. It isn’t a love train. It is a killing train. Its current most bloody loading platform: Gaza. But don’t forget those who starve and die of preventable diseases in the Third World and in the first world too. All are onboard.
Is the gigantic sprawling disgusting image exaggerated? 10 million kids die yearly for lack of basic medical aid that the U.S. could provide at almost no cost in countries whose economies Exxon and the Bank of America have looted. Preventable death fills the killing train. To the sane, it is mass murder. The grotesque image I offer is actually understated.
Bloated diseased bodies are victims of murder just as surely as bullet-riddled bodies tossed into rivers by death squads, or shrapnel shredded bodies prone in the piles of blasted hospitals and homes. Denying medicine by out of reach pricing or preventable shortages is no less criminal than denying medicine by blowing up pharmacies and demolishing hospitals is no less criminal than supplying torture racks, stealing resources, and paving roads with bomblets. Bombing electric power stations and pulverizing hospitals enlarges the train. Deaths by starvation and disease are no less unnatural than those by bomblet and bullet, and enlarge the train.
Evolution has given humans the capacity to perceive, think, feel, and imagine. During war time—as now exists in so many places —if we get aroused to action we begin to see the whole train as it persists day in and day out. When this happens, what do we do about it? Do we become depressed? Cynical? Anguished? Cry? Daydream of Armageddon? Daydream of justice? Or do we hand out a leaflet?
Once we begin to see the killing train, how do we face the killing train? Part of me says these crimes are so grotesque, so inhumane, that the perpetrators deserve to die, now. A little tiny killing train for the killers and no more big killing train for everyone else. An eye for a million eyes. What other step makes more sense? Was this the hypothetical God’s plan?
But, of course, that’s not the way the world works. Yes, people give the orders. People wield the axes, withhold the food, pay the pitiful salaries, blow up the power stations, spew the garbage, lie, steal, cheat, obey – and produce corpses. But institutions create the pressures that mold the people.
When an institutional cancer spreads through the human patient, what kind of surgeon can cut it away? Is the imprint of accumulated repression so deep it can never be excised.
At first, becoming attuned to our country’s responsibility for the corpses stacked behind transparent cattle-car walls makes handing out leaflets, or writing essays, or arguing for peace with a co-worker, or urging a relative to think twice about paying taxes, or going to a demonstration, or sitting in, or doing civil disobedience, or even taking over a workplace, seem insignificant. But the fact is, these are the acts that the hypothetical God, tired of our behavior, would be calling for if she were to actually parade the “free world’s” corpses down our main streets in killing trains. These are the acts that can accumulate into a firestorm of informed protest that raises the cost of profiteering and domination, of war making and pollution so high that the institutions breeding such behavior start to buckle.
The fact is, when fighting a behemoth, “You lose, you lose, you lose, and then you win.” Every loss, understood properly to learn its lessons, is part of the process that leads to transforming institutions so that there can be no people as vile as Hussein or Bush, as Netanyahu or Obama. No more “Good Germans” or “Good Americans.” No more incinerated Jews or decapitated, starved, poisoned, starved, bulleted Palestinians.
War is invariably unjustly motivated. War is always horrendously harmful. War is an orchestrated atrocity that mandates our militant, unswerving opposition. But so too does exploitation, racism, sexism, the systematic deprivation of any one community at the hands of any other.
But even after the Gaza crimes of the little thug Israel and of its guardian angel the big thug, America, ends, the on-going U.S. war against “free world” people who it has consigned to ride the killing train will, if it continues, remain a enormous crime against humanity. The killing train transcends each separate war, inequity, and injustice, and ultimately, and this is, of course, the point – so must our opposition. The killing train is fueled by poverty, disease, starvation, indignity, death squads, racism, sexism, class division, bombs, and more bombs. The power plant of the death, destruction, and generalized deprivation is our basic institutions.
Leaked documents reveal one of New Zealand’s richest families was for a time at the heart of a major international tax haven company that hit the news in the United States last week. John Spencer, New Zealand’s richest man in the 1980s and still incredibly wealthy, was – with his family – majority owners of the company called TrustNet, whose extremely secret client records have been leaked en masse to a Washington DC-based journalism organisation. The leaks reveal the identity of tens of thousands of people who use tax havens: some involved in dodgy activities and evading tax, others in lawful activities including companies doing business across political borders and individuals living in multiple countries or legitimately minimising their tax.
Surprisingly, the leaks show New Zealanders are involved extensively in this shadowy world of offshore companies and secret bank accounts.
The company at the centre of the Washington leaks was set up by New Zealanders, has been staffed by many New Zealanders and for 14 years was majority-owned by the Spencers.
The Spencers have courted controversy. John Spencer waged a 19-year battle to stop public access to the Stony Batter gun emplacement on his Waiheke Island farm, including barricading a public road. The Star-Times revealed in 2005 that his son Berridge and daughter Mertsi were secret National Party donors. And now Spencer is the Kiwi connection to secret tax haven records that may be the largest leak of financial information in history.
They expose the hidden activities of wealthy, secretive or criminal people in around 150 countries and territories. In total, about one-and-a-half million documents were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), an independent network of reporters who work together on cross-border investigations. There is currently hot debate around the world about corporations which don’t pay tax and the respectable bankers and lawyers who assist them.
The Tax Justice Network and other organisations are pushing for governments like New Zealand’s to stop tolerating tax havens and work together to close them down. TrustNet has helped set up and manage companies, trusts and bank accounts in tax havens for about 80,000 individual clients.
According to overseas news stories based on the leaks, they include the mega-rich, corrupt regimes, corporations dodging tax, fraudsters, companies shifting wealth out of poor countries, companies with controversial or secretive business, mercenaries and spies, and also many ordinary people who want to move their money and business “offshore”.
The Tax Justice Network estimates that about one-third of the world’s wealth is held offshore and about half of all the world’s trade flows through tax havens. New Zealanders have had occasional glimpses of the offshore world. Star-Times stories have exposed: * Geoffrey Taylor, and his sons Ian and Michael, setting up companies in New Zealand for North Korean arms trading and organised crime; * an Auckland Burger King cook was a director for some of these companies; * and a Nelson woman who supposedly owned a Moldovan TV station, again through a chain of Taylor companies. Mostly these people and their shell companies have been pawns in a much bigger system.
KIWIS IN KEY ROLES The TrustNet leaks show New Zealanders in key roles helping to run the system. TrustNet markets itself today as the largest independent offshore services company in Asia. It was set up 25 years ago by Kiwis in what was then the newly established Cook Islands tax haven.
In the early 1980s business lobbyists from New Zealand and Australia persuaded the Cook Islands government that becoming a tax haven would bring riches to the small island group. These lobbyists included New Zealander lawyer Trevor Clarke, “father of the Cook Islands tax haven”, who with others used the new tax haven laws to build a company called European Pacific.
Documents about European Pacific’s tax schemes were leaked and tabled in the New Zealand Parliament by MP Winston Peters, igniting the Winebox scandal (see breakout).
Another key figure was New Zealand lawyer Mike Mitchell, the Cook Islands solicitor-general in the early 1980s and main government adviser as the tax haven was established. He resigned from that role in 1986 to move into the offshore business himself. On April 29, 1987, he established an offshore services company called Pacific Trustee Company. The company was later renamed TrustNet, the company at the centre of last week’s leaks.
TrustNet’s first chief executive was another New Zealand lawyer, Steve Breed, who was joined a few years later by fellow Auckland law school graduate David Sceats. Early staff included people who’d worked on the Cook Islands Winebox schemes. The European Pacific tax expert accused in court of leaking the Winebox documents, New Zealand lawyer George Couttie, had moved on to work for TrustNet in Hong Kong. But soon after this accusation was made, according to internal documents, senior TrustNet staff recorded a terse company resolution that “accepted” his resignation “effective from the date hereof”. In contrast, European Pacific’s former senior executive Geoff Barry was later hired by TrustNet and rose to become the chief executive officer. Today, 10 years later, he is executive director of TrustNet’s Hong Kong office.
Spencer’s ownership of TrustNet was never publicised. It came to light only during analysis of the leaked records. A note about an obscure offshore entity says “Client is our big boss, John Spencer”. Spencer, who had inherited his family’s Caxton toilet paper empire, owned, with his family, a majority share of TrustNet from July 1990 until September 2004, through a Bahamas company called International Trustee Holding Company Limited. John and Berridge Spencer also used TrustNet to place some of their own money and investments in a complex web of offshore companies and trusts. These were based in the British Virgin Islands and Cook Islands, with names such as Northern Lights Trust, Star One Trust and Tristar Capital Service Limited. A spokesperson for the Spencer family said neither John nor Berridge Spencer have been New Zealand residents since the 1990s and in those circumstances it was hardly surprising that the family have assets invested outside of New Zealand.
With the Spencers’ backing TrustNet grew quickly, opening offices in Hong Kong in 1991, the British Virgin Islands in 1993 and Singapore in 1994. The early clients included a controversial Indonesian rainforest logging tycoon named Prajogo Pangestu, who had four British Virgin Islands companies.
TREVOR CLARKE Another TrustNet client was the former European Pacific manager Trevor Clarke. He had his own set of offshore companies and trusts administered by TrustNet. They were home to millions of dollars of assets, the leaked documents reveal, and TrustNet staff were given special instructions about keeping them secret. One document reads: “We are to contact Trevor by phone only unless otherwise instructed . . . No documents are to be kept here. All docs are to be held in our Hong Kong office.”
Clarke was appointed chair of the Cook Islands’ new Financial Supervisory Commission from 2003 until 2010, which was set up to oversee the offshore industry. Throughout those years he had the secretive offshore trusts and companies. Clarke responded that he was not “a user of any Cook Islands entities” – his companies and trusts were in Samoa and the British Virgin Islands – and said these were set up well before his role as FSC chair. He had disclosed them to a number of authorities. He said there were lots of reasons for people to want to have assets outside the country where they live. The secrecy instructions did not come from him, he said.
The TrustNet files also show a close relationship between the company and the BNZ and ANZ banks, which had dedicated staff for offshore banking. The leaked documents show bank staff routinely helping TrustNet move money in and out of its clients’ offshore bank accounts held at the BNZ Singapore branch and ANZ Cook Islands branch.
In September 2004, the Spencers sold TrustNet to a Singaporean offshore lawyer named David Chong. But many of the New Zealanders, especially lawyers, continued to work in the company and be part of tax haven politics.
Lawyers created the offshore world and lawyers and accountants run it. They lobby in each tax haven for special laws to attract clients and often actually write the laws themselves. The leaked TrustdhNet papers show this clearly in the minutes of the Cook Islands Trusdhtee Company Association. The offshore services company heads are seen sitting around deciding what laws they want, putting the hat around for money to have them drafted and then arranging to predhsent the new laws to the Cook Islands government. The same lawyers then use these laws to help their clients.
They also deal with the problems when things go wrong. One of TrustdhNet’s New Zealand lawyers Penny Purcell was on duty, for instance, when two officers from the Hong Kong Commercial Crime Bureau turned up on August 20, 2007, at TrustNet’s harbour-front offices. They were investigating a fraud case involving a British Virgin Islands company called Sound Financial Management Limited.
The secret TrustNet files include Purcell’s written record of the meeting. Detective Sergeant Steven Lam produced a formal letter from the Hong Kong commissioner of police requesting ‘‘all relevant documents’’ about Sound Financial Management Limited and details of the company’s director and shareholder. Purcell replied that the officers would need to contact TrustNet’s British Virgin Islands office and, according to her own notes, assured them ‘‘we do not keep any files or records here’’.
She said the police ‘‘were surprised’’ the office had no records and asked how this could be ‘‘if the client is based here in Hong Kong’’. ‘‘I then explained,’’ Purcell wrote, ‘‘that we acted as a marketing/secretarial office but that all information including the registers of the Company were kept in its registered office.’’ Detective Sergeant Lam tried one last time, she wrote, asking if they kept any information there in Hong Kong, including correspondence. ‘‘I said no,’’ Purcell wrote. A few days later TrustNet repeated the denial by letter. ‘‘Portcullis TrustNet (Hong Kong) Limited does not hold any corporate or statutory records of the Company, nor is it required to,’’ the letter said. However, the details the police were looking for would have been instantly available on Purdhcell’s computer. The leaked TrustdhNet documents show that she routinely used the company’s Offshore Management Information System (OMIS), which was available in all the TrustNet offices and contained all the client records.
The OMIS database, which was leaked to ICIJ, lists Sound Financial Management’s director and shareholder as Glen Douglas Crankshaw, a Canadian living near Bangkok. TrustNet helped his company open a bank account at the Standard Chartered Bank, Hong Kong branch, located on the ground floor of the same building as TrustNet. According to Purcell’s notes, she told them none of this. Two years later the Hong Kong police issued an arrest warrant for Crankshaw for ‘‘dealing with property known or reasonably believed to represent the proceeds of indictable crime’’. They had traced him through a different offshore company, with the similar name ‘‘GS Sound Management Limited’’.
Purcell has since returned to help run TrustNet’s office on Auckland’s North Shore. She remains part of a network of New Zealand offshore lawyers scattered in tax havens around the world. They include former TrustNet lawyer Barry Mitchell who, according to court documents, gave assistance during the setting up of the Trinity investment scheme, New Zealand’s largest tax avoidance case; and Act Party-aligned blogger Cathy Odgers (‘‘Cactus Kate’’) who has worked as an offshore lawyer in the British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong.
Various offshore lawyers have brought their skills home, taking advantage of New Zealand’s loose company and trust law. The original TrustNet lawyers, Breed and Sceats, came home and set up Nexus Trust, promoting New Zealand’s tax haven potential to foreign clients. Two other former Cook Island lawyers, Nick Shepherd and (former European Pacific executive) Mike Reynolds set up Anchor Trustees which offers services to ‘‘non-resident families and corporates’’.
Long-term TrustNet client Tim Brears on Auckland’s North Shore offers clients advice on the ‘‘advantages of moving ownership and control of assets and investment offshore out of New Zealand’’.
Nicky Hager has worked in a multi-country team for the past 15 months analysing the leaked materials and co-ordinating local journalists in Asia, Africa and part of Europe who collaborated in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists project, www.icij.org.
The killing train transcends each separate war, inequity, and injustice, and ultimately, and this is, of course, the point – so must our opposition. The killing train is fueled by poverty, disease, starvation, indignity, death squads, racism, sexism, class division, bombs, and more bombs.
Many years back, moved by the first Gulf War, I wrote a piece with the above title, Stop the Killing Train. I am revisiting the same subject because, regrettably, the topic remains at the forefront even if the precipitating violence is different.
For the purpose of the exercise, please use your imagination.
Suppose a hypothetical god got tired of what we humans do to one another and decided that from January 1, 1991 onward all corpses unnaturally created anywhere in or by the hand of the “free world” would cease to decompose. Anyone dying for want of food or medicine, anyone hung or garroted to death, shot or beaten to death, raped or bombed to death, anyone dying unjustly and inhumanely for want of clean air or water or other necessities of life, would, as a corpse, persist without decomposing. The permanent corpse would then automatically enter a glass-walled cattle car attached to an ethereal train traveling monotonously across the U.S., state by state, never stopping. The hypothetical God would tirelessly display our achievements for us all to see.
One by one the corpses would divinely load onto the cattle cars. After every thousand corpses piled in a car, a new car would hitch up and begin filling in turn. Mile after mile the killing train would roll along, each corpse visible through the train’s transparent walls. We can suppose it fills at the rate of 200 new corpses a minute, or one new car every five minutes, day and night, without pause.
By the end of 1991, on its first birthday, the killing train would easily measure over 2,500 miles long. Traveling at 20 miles an hour it would take about five days to pass any intersection across the U.S. Imagine you are sitting at a railroad crossing. You watch this horror go past, 24 hours a day, for five full days. Every car contains 1,000 corpses, all clearly visible. This hypothetical God knows how to communicate so we can’t ignore reality.
By the year 2000, assuming no dramatic change in institutions and behavior, the train would stretch from coast to coast about seven times. It would take about six weeks from the time its engine passed the Statue of Liberty to when its caboose would go by. Would the God still wonder when pitiful, aspiring humanity would get the message?
By 2014 – you can safely just double the ugly statistics. Deaths accelerate, unless, of course, we had gotten the message. So, coast to coast it would stretch, about 14 times. Every corpse an indictment.
Think how a young child sometimes points to a picture in a book or magazine and asks for an explanation, “Tell me about a tree?” A car? A boat? Or a train? A big train? The killing train? Go ahead, try to answer that one. Perhaps that explains why this image isn’t, in fact, a common one on our TVs and in our never-ending streams of information.
Bad enough, way worse than bad enough, it could even get worse. Consider that climate change will before long start to wrack up even larger kill lists. But, of course, those dead would pile into the killing train too, since with only modest exceptions they too are preventable.
The killing train, in any event, no matter how each moribund commuter who need not have been on board got his or her ticket, is horrendous.
Imagine the lost opportunity and lost love. Imagine as well the network of negative influences that radiate from the unnecessary deaths displayed by the killing train stretching from coast to coast and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Consider the horrendous impact, not only on those on board, but on every person that any of those corpses ever loved or would have loved, fed or would have fed, taught or would have taught.
Who rides the killing train? Certainly citizens of the “Third World,” selling their organs for food, selling their babies to save their families, suffering disappearances and starvation. They live in Brazil, the Philippines, El Salvador, but also New York. They enter the killing train, every day. It isn’t a peace train. It isn’t a justice train. It isn’t a love train. It is a killing train. Its current most bloody loading platform: Gaza. But don’t forget those who starve and die of preventable diseases in the Third World and in the first world too. All are onboard.
Is the gigantic sprawling disgusting image exaggerated? 10 million kids die yearly for lack of basic medical aid that the U.S. could provide at almost no cost in countries whose economies Exxon and the Bank of America have looted. Preventable death fills the killing train. To the sane, it is mass murder. The grotesque image I offer is actually understated.
Bloated diseased bodies are victims of murder just as surely as bullet-riddled bodies tossed into rivers by death squads, or shrapnel shredded bodies prone in the piles of blasted hospitals and homes. Denying medicine by out of reach pricing or preventable shortages is no less criminal than denying medicine by blowing up pharmacies and demolishing hospitals is no less criminal than supplying torture racks, stealing resources, and paving roads with bomblets. Bombing electric power stations and pulverizing hospitals enlarges the train. Deaths by starvation and disease are no less unnatural than those by bomblet and bullet, and enlarge the train.
Evolution has given humans the capacity to perceive, think, feel, and imagine. During war time—as now exists in so many places —if we get aroused to action we begin to see the whole train as it persists day in and day out. When this happens, what do we do about it? Do we become depressed? Cynical? Anguished? Cry? Daydream of Armageddon? Daydream of justice? Or do we hand out a leaflet?
Once we begin to see the killing train, how do we face the killing train? Part of me says these crimes are so grotesque, so inhumane, that the perpetrators deserve to die, now. A little tiny killing train for the killers and no more big killing train for everyone else. An eye for a million eyes. What other step makes more sense? Was this the hypothetical God’s plan?
But, of course, that’s not the way the world works. Yes, people give the orders. People wield the axes, withhold the food, pay the pitiful salaries, blow up the power stations, spew the garbage, lie, steal, cheat, obey – and produce corpses. But institutions create the pressures that mold the people.
When an institutional cancer spreads through the human patient, what kind of surgeon can cut it away? Is the imprint of accumulated repression so deep it can never be excised.
At first, becoming attuned to our country’s responsibility for the corpses stacked behind transparent cattle-car walls makes handing out leaflets, or writing essays, or arguing for peace with a co-worker, or urging a relative to think twice about paying taxes, or going to a demonstration, or sitting in, or doing civil disobedience, or even taking over a workplace, seem insignificant. But the fact is, these are the acts that the hypothetical God, tired of our behavior, would be calling for if she were to actually parade the “free world’s” corpses down our main streets in killing trains. These are the acts that can accumulate into a firestorm of informed protest that raises the cost of profiteering and domination, of war making and pollution so high that the institutions breeding such behavior start to buckle.
The fact is, when fighting a behemoth, “You lose, you lose, you lose, and then you win.” Every loss, understood properly to learn its lessons, is part of the process that leads to transforming institutions so that there can be no people as vile as Hussein or Bush, as Netanyahu or Obama. No more “Good Germans” or “Good Americans.” No more incinerated Jews or decapitated, starved, poisoned, starved, bulleted Palestinians.
War is invariably unjustly motivated. War is always horrendously harmful. War is an orchestrated atrocity that mandates our militant, unswerving opposition. But so too does exploitation, racism, sexism, the systematic deprivation of any one community at the hands of any other.
But even after the Gaza crimes of the little thug Israel and of its guardian angel the big thug, America, ends, the on-going U.S. war against “free world” people who it has consigned to ride the killing train will, if it continues, remain a enormous crime against humanity. The killing train transcends each separate war, inequity, and injustice, and ultimately, and this is, of course, the point – so must our opposition. The killing train is fueled by poverty, disease, starvation, indignity, death squads, racism, sexism, class division, bombs, and more bombs. The power plant of the death, destruction, and generalized deprivation is our basic institutions.
Leaked documents reveal one of New Zealand’s richest families was for a time at the heart of a major international tax haven company that hit the news in the United States last week. John Spencer, NewZealand’s richest man in the 1980s and still incredibly wealthy, was – with his family – majority owners of the company called TrustNet, whose extremely secret client records have been leaked en masse to a Washington DC-based journalism organisation. The leaks reveal the identity of tens of thousands of people who use tax havens: some involved in dodgy activities and evading tax, others in lawful activities including companies doing business across political borders and individuals living in multiple countries or legitimately minimising their tax.
Surprisingly, the leaks show NewZealanders are involved extensively in this shadowy world of offshore companies and secret bank accounts.
The company at the centre of the Washington leaks was set up by New Zealanders, has been staffed by many NewZealanders and for 14 years was majority-owned by the Spencers.
The Spencers have courted controversy. John Spencer waged a 19-year battle to stop public access to the Stony Batter gun emplacement on his Waiheke Island farm, including barricading a public road. The Star-Times revealed in 2005 that his son Berridge and daughter Mertsi were secret National Party donors. And now Spencer is the Kiwi connection to secret tax haven records that may be the largest leak of financial information in history.
They expose the hidden activities of wealthy, secretive or criminal people in around 150 countries and territories. In total, about one-and-a-half million documents were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), an independent network of reporters who work together on cross-border investigations. There is currently hot debate around the world about corporations which don’t pay tax and the respectable bankers and lawyers who assist them.
The Tax Justice Network and other organisations are pushing for governments like NewZealand’s to stop tolerating tax havens and work together to close them down. TrustNet has helped set up and manage companies, trusts and bank accounts in tax havens for about 80,000 individual clients.
According to overseas news stories based on the leaks, they include the mega-rich, corrupt regimes, corporations dodging tax, fraudsters, companies shifting wealth out of poor countries, companies with controversial or secretive business, mercenaries and spies, and also many ordinary people who want to move their money and business “offshore”.
The Tax Justice Network estimates that about one-third of the world’s wealth is held offshore and about half of all the world’s trade flows through tax havens. NewZealanders have had occasional glimpses of the offshore world. Star-Times stories have exposed: * Geoffrey Taylor, and his sons Ian and Michael, setting up companies in NewZealand for North Korean arms trading and organised crime; * an Auckland Burger King cook was a director for some of these companies; * and a Nelson woman who supposedly owned a Moldovan TV station, again through a chain of Taylor companies. Mostly these people and their shell companies have been pawns in a much bigger system.
KIWIS IN KEY ROLES The TrustNet leaks show NewZealanders in key roles helping to run the system. TrustNet markets itself today as the largest independent offshore services company in Asia. It was set up 25 years ago by Kiwis in what was then the newly established Cook Islands tax haven.
In the early 1980s business lobbyists from New Zealand and Australia persuaded the Cook Islands government that becoming a tax haven would bring riches to the small island group. These lobbyists included New Zealander lawyer Trevor Clarke, “father of the Cook Islands tax haven”, who with others used the new tax haven laws to build a company called European Pacific.
Documents about European Pacific’s tax schemes were leaked and tabled in the NewZealand Parliament by MP Winston Peters, igniting the Winebox scandal (see breakout).
Another key figure was NewZealand lawyer Mike Mitchell, the Cook Islands solicitor-general in the early 1980s and main government adviser as the tax haven was established. He resigned from that role in 1986 to move into the offshore business himself. On April 29, 1987, he established an offshore services company called Pacific Trustee Company. The company was later renamed TrustNet, the company at the centre of last week’s leaks.
TrustNet’s first chief executive was another New Zealand lawyer, Steve Breed, who was joined a few years later by fellow Auckland law school graduate David Sceats. Early staff included people who’d worked on the Cook Islands Winebox schemes. The European Pacific tax expert accused in court of leaking the Winebox documents, NewZealand lawyer George Couttie, had moved on to work for TrustNet in Hong Kong. But soon after this accusation was made, according to internal documents, senior TrustNet staff recorded a terse company resolution that “accepted” his resignation “effective from the date hereof”. In contrast, European Pacific’s former senior executive Geoff Barry was later hired by TrustNet and rose to become the chief executive officer. Today, 10 years later, he is executive director of TrustNet’s Hong Kong office.
Spencer’s ownership of TrustNet was never publicised. It came to light only during analysis of the leaked records. A note about an obscure offshore entity says “Client is our big boss, John Spencer”. Spencer, who had inherited his family’s Caxton toilet paper empire, owned, with his family, a majority share of TrustNet from July 1990 until September 2004, through a Bahamas company called International Trustee Holding Company Limited. John and Berridge Spencer also used TrustNet to place some of their own money and investments in a complex web of offshore companies and trusts. These were based in the British Virgin Islands and Cook Islands, with names such as Northern Lights Trust, Star One Trust and Tristar Capital Service Limited. A spokesperson for the Spencer family said neither John nor Berridge Spencer have been New Zealand residents since the 1990s and in those circumstances it was hardly surprising that the family have assets invested outside of NewZealand.
With the Spencers’ backing TrustNet grew quickly, opening offices in Hong Kong in 1991, the British Virgin Islands in 1993 and Singapore in 1994. The early clients included a controversial Indonesian rainforest logging tycoon named Prajogo Pangestu, who had four British Virgin Islands companies.
TREVOR CLARKE Another TrustNet client was the former European Pacific manager Trevor Clarke. He had his own set of offshore companies and trusts administered by TrustNet. They were home to millions of dollars of assets, the leaked documents reveal, and TrustNet staff were given special instructions about keeping them secret. One document reads: “We are to contact Trevor by phone only unless otherwise instructed . . . No documents are to be kept here. All docs are to be held in our Hong Kong office.”
Clarke was appointed chair of the Cook Islands’ new Financial Supervisory Commission from 2003 until 2010, which was set up to oversee the offshore industry. Throughout those years he had the secretive offshore trusts and companies. Clarke responded that he was not “a user of any Cook Islands entities” – his companies and trusts were in Samoa and the British Virgin Islands – and said these were set up well before his role as FSC chair. He had disclosed them to a number of authorities. He said there were lots of reasons for people to want to have assets outside the country where they live. The secrecy instructions did not come from him, he said.
The TrustNet files also show a close relationship between the company and the BNZ and ANZ banks, which had dedicated staff for offshore banking. The leaked documents show bank staff routinely helping TrustNet move money in and out of its clients’ offshore bank accounts held at the BNZ Singapore branch and ANZ Cook Islands branch.
In September 2004, the Spencers sold TrustNet to a Singaporean offshore lawyer named David Chong. But many of the NewZealanders, especially lawyers, continued to work in the company and be part of tax haven politics.
Lawyers created the offshore world and lawyers and accountants run it. They lobby in each tax haven for special laws to attract clients and often actually write the laws themselves. The leaked TrustdhNet papers show this clearly in the minutes of the Cook Islands Trusdhtee Company Association. The offshore services company heads are seen sitting around deciding what laws they want, putting the hat around for money to have them drafted and then arranging to predhsent the new laws to the Cook Islands government. The same lawyers then use these laws to help their clients.
They also deal with the problems when things go wrong. One of TrustdhNet’s NewZealand lawyers Penny Purcell was on duty, for instance, when two officers from the Hong Kong Commercial Crime Bureau turned up on August 20, 2007, at TrustNet’s harbour-front offices. They were investigating a fraud case involving a British Virgin Islands company called Sound Financial Management Limited.
The secret TrustNet files include Purcell’s written record of the meeting. Detective Sergeant Steven Lam produced a formal letter from the Hong Kong commissioner of police requesting ‘‘all relevant documents’’ about Sound Financial Management Limited and details of the company’s director and shareholder. Purcell replied that the officers would need to contact TrustNet’s British Virgin Islands office and, according to her own notes, assured them ‘‘we do not keep any files or records here’’.
She said the police ‘‘were surprised’’ the office had no records and asked how this could be ‘‘if the client is based here in Hong Kong’’. ‘‘I then explained,’’ Purcell wrote, ‘‘that we acted as a marketing/secretarial office but that all information including the registers of the Company were kept in its registered office.’’ Detective Sergeant Lam tried one last time, she wrote, asking if they kept any information there in Hong Kong, including correspondence. ‘‘I said no,’’ Purcell wrote. A few days later TrustNet repeated the denial by letter. ‘‘Portcullis TrustNet (Hong Kong) Limited does not hold any corporate or statutory records of the Company, nor is it required to,’’ the letter said. However, the details the police were looking for would have been instantly available on Purdhcell’s computer. The leaked TrustdhNet documents show that she routinely used the company’s Offshore Management Information System (OMIS), which was available in all the TrustNet offices and contained all the client records.
The OMIS database, which was leaked to ICIJ, lists Sound Financial Management’s director and shareholder as Glen Douglas Crankshaw, a Canadian living near Bangkok. TrustNet helped his company open a bank account at the Standard Chartered Bank, Hong Kong branch, located on the ground floor of the same building as TrustNet. According to Purcell’s notes, she told them none of this. Two years later the Hong Kong police issued an arrest warrant for Crankshaw for ‘‘dealing with property known or reasonably believed to represent the proceeds of indictable crime’’. They had traced him through a different offshore company, with the similar name ‘‘GS Sound Management Limited’’.
Purcell has since returned to help run TrustNet’s office on Auckland’s North Shore. She remains part of a network of NewZealand offshore lawyers scattered in tax havens around the world. They include former TrustNet lawyer Barry Mitchell who, according to court documents, gave assistance during the setting up of the Trinity investment scheme, NewZealand’s largest tax avoidance case; and Act Party-aligned blogger Cathy Odgers (‘‘Cactus Kate’’) who has worked as an offshore lawyer in the British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong.
Various offshore lawyers have brought their skills home, taking advantage of NewZealand’s loose company and trust law. The original TrustNet lawyers, Breed and Sceats, came home and set up Nexus Trust, promoting NewZealand’s tax haven potential to foreign clients. Two other former Cook Island lawyers, Nick Shepherd and (former European Pacific executive) Mike Reynolds set up Anchor Trustees which offers services to ‘‘non-resident families and corporates’’.
Long-term TrustNet client Tim Brears on Auckland’s North Shore offers clients advice on the ‘‘advantages of moving ownership and control of assets and investment offshore out of NewZealand’’.
Nicky Hager has worked in a multi-country team for the past 15 months analysing the leaked materials and co-ordinating local journalists in Asia, Africa and part of Europe who collaborated in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists project, www.icij.org.
Fear of The Unknown Is Creating Hysteria In Every Part of Our Lives And It’s Becoming Accepted As The Norm
Being afraid of the unknown is not a new concept. From birth to death we’ve been trained to fear everything for a very long time. The dangers of modern life have a stranglehold on people’s imaginations. Sociologists call the phenomenon a risk society, describing cultures increasingly preoccupied with threats to safety, both real and perceived, but most definitely imagined. Most institutions today, whether they be academic, medical, religious, government and all others, would not exist in the way, shape or form they do today if it were not for the element of fear. The Earth you see before you today and the Earth of the future will be at a distinct contrast when it comes to how afraid we are of the unknown. Many of you see it coming already.
It’s why wars exist. It’s why modern medicine exists. It’s why politics exists. It’s why laws exist. We fear everything, so we must naturally attempt to control or prevent what we fear most. A majority of people will agree that the world is more dangerous than ever before. Even in the face of evidence that negates this misperception, there is no relief. We lock our doors, say our prayers, marvel at our own pessimism and then wonder why we still can’t get to sleep. We are immersed in a culture of fear.
Neurolinguistic programming, emulating psychosis, television, advertising, the illusion of terrorism and several other remarkable concepts affect every facet of our lives and our world at the expense of our health, safety and security.
If there is a disease, we must develop a vaccine or drug. If there is a terrorist, we must develop anti-terrorist measures. If there are criminals, we must create laws. If there are bullies, we must create anti-bullying policies. It is our nature. It is human nature. Well at least when it comes to modern humans.
Try and access any social media platform on the internet without getting bombarded by a fearful audience. It’s impossible. People are scared of everything. So they criticize, argue, belittle, antagonize and resort to ad hominem attacks that focus on the character of others because they cannot fathom a truth which is not their own. It’s a protective measure to guard against the unknown.
What Does Fear Do To Us?
Fear keeps us focused on the past and constantly worried about the future. It creates desperation and indecision that paralyzes our logic, thinking and actions. We can’t live freely because we can’t stop living in fear.
People who are fearful are very hesitant to explore new concepts or embrace other possibilities. You can always estimate the level of a person’s fear by how they explore new surroundings and inspect objects around them. This ultimately affects our personality and how other behavioral traits affect our physiology including what kind of impacts these traits have on our overall health and life span.
There is an international consortium of scientists who are working aggressively to find ways to control fear in both the public and military. Is this the answer to our fearful ways? Certainly not as the initiatives themselves stem from fear.
Fear is tearing our society apart. In the past, fear has engendered solidarity, but today it throws wedges between all of humanity. This isolation, in turn, renders the public ever more fearful. What’s more, media outlets, politicians, modern medicine and businesses all have learned to capitalize on this distinctly modern sense of dread, and thus profit from finding ways to cultivate it. Until we find a way to resist fear, we’ll live at the mercy of these emotional entrepreneurs–and in doing so, be party to the personal, cultural, and political consequences.
Much of our concept of ourselves and our attitudes as individuals in control of our destinies underpins much of our reality or what we think about our existence.
A Negative Attitude Is The Basis of Cyclical Fears
When people retain negative attitudes about anything that disagrees with their own version of reality, they are more likely to experience a continued sense of fear than people whose attitudes are less negative. Physiological markers such as heart rate and anticipatory anxiety always increase when measurements are taken in people whose attitudes remain negative.
Some of these attitudes are often based on a powerful association between a fear and a negative feeling that is so strong, that many people can’t see or even think about the fear without experiencing that automatic negative reaction. For example, many people around the world devoted to their religion absolutely fear atheists. They refuse to relate to their position. They will not even conceive the right of atheists to their own opinions and feel extremely threatened by any content promoting the principles of atheism. The same can be true if we reverse the two roles. Neither position will ever advance the other if each can only think negatively about the other. This creates self-righteousness, divisions of superiority and of course ignorance.
Negative reactions to the unknown instills a sense of weakness in our character, specifically a lack of strength in our own convictions. When people have the need to strongly chastise others for their opinions and information they present, it shows a genuine deficit of attributes related to confidence about our own belief systems, morals and values.
Those who have confidence in their doctrines do not have to identify all those things they dislike so much in others or attempt to magnify those flaws to please their own conscience. In essence, they feel they must right-fight to support their own belief system since in their minds, a competing system must be incorrect.
Modern Fear Is Viral
What’s unique about 21st-century fear is how people experience fear. Since the 1980s, society at large has bolted frantically from one panic to the next. Fear of crime reduced us to wrecks, but before long we were also howling about deadly diseases, drug abusers, online pedophiles, avian flu, ebola, teens gone wild, mad cows, anthrax, immigrants, environmental collapse, and–let us not forget–terrorists.
“There isn’t a single fear that defines our era,” says sociologist Frank Furedi, author of Culture of Fear: Risk-Taking and the Morality of Low Expectation and Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right. “What we have is a more promiscuous, pluralistic form of fearing. The very important implication to this is that while my parents feared together, you and I have a more isolated, private experience. We fear on our own.”
Our brains are poorly equipped to weigh risks that don’t result in immediate negative consequences. Marketers, politicians, and entertainers grasp with precision how brains misfire, and they apply this knowledge to great gain. Few can doubt how well fearmongering has worked for pharmaceutical companies who use the fear of disease to sell drugs and vaccines by the billions.
As networks battle for ratings and newspapers grasp at disappearing readers, the urge to lead with sensational stories grows. The gap between the reported and the commonplace skews our subconscious stockpile of reference points, while hunger for the next big story inevitably broadens our catalog of things that go bump in the night.
It’s Time To Abandon Fear To Change This World
People need not abandon fear altogether. Our ability to judge risk is sophisticated, and instinctual decisions often serve us well. But when something doesn’t quite seem to sync up, gut to head, then it’s time to pause and at least question what’s causing the discrepancy.
The new Earth will see people working to reduce or eliminate fear like never before. If you have a fear, first understand the nature of the object that arouses it. Let us say you are afraid of your future. What you really fear is the uncertainty that surrounds events yet to happen. By living totally in the present and by planning ahead you can reduce the uncertainty and fear. You cannot plan for all uncertainties but being prepared to an extent reduces your fear of uncertainties. Learn the art of enjoying it, too.
The psychological programming inside you, your subconscious mind, should change before any real change can happen. Your subconscious mind comprises engrams — mental traces that have been created over life experiences. These consist of both positive and negative associations and act like computer programmes. So long as the programming remains the same, the computer will function only in the manner dictated by that programme.
Similarly, we have to change the programming of our mind. Wise thinking leads to discrimination of the good and the bad. When you have changed your programming, you start perceiving and acting positively. So it is wise thinking that holds the key to a positive frame of mind.
Once people start thinking this way, it’s impossible to stop: Every television program, every advertisement, every stump speech that hangs its hat on scare tactics will be thrown into acute relief. That is where we are headed. We are all eventually going to give up allowing fears to define us, and focus instead on which ones are worth tackling together. When we do that, we won’t just free politicians from fear-inducing rhetoric or stymie fearmongering marketers; but we’ll also give ourselves some much-needed relief.
Fear of The Unknown Is Creating Hysteria In Every Part of Our Lives And It’s Becoming Accepted As The Norm
Being afraid of the unknown is not a new concept. From birth to death we’ve been trained to fear everything for a very long time. The dangers of modern life have a stranglehold on people’s imaginations. Sociologists call the phenomenon a risk society, describing cultures increasingly preoccupied with threats to safety, both real and perceived, but most definitely imagined. Most institutions today, whether they be academic, medical, religious, government and all others, would not exist in the way, shape or form they do today if it were not for the element of fear. The Earth you see before you today and the Earth of the future will be at a distinct contrast when it comes to how afraid we are of the unknown. Many of you see it coming already.
It’s why wars exist. It’s why modern medicine exists. It’s why politics exists. It’s why laws exist. We fear everything, so we must naturally attempt to control or prevent what we fear most. A majority of people will agree that the world is more dangerous than ever before. Even in the face of evidence that negates this misperception, there is no relief. We lock our doors, say our prayers, marvel at our own pessimism and then wonder why we still can’t get to sleep. We are immersed in a culture of fear.
Neurolinguistic programming, emulating psychosis, television, advertising, the illusion of terrorism and several other remarkable concepts affect every facet of our lives and our world at the expense of our health, safety and security.
If there is a disease, we must develop a vaccine or drug. If there is a terrorist, we must develop anti-terrorist measures. If there are criminals, we must create laws. If there are bullies, we must create anti-bullying policies. It is our nature. It is human nature. Well at least when it comes to modern humans. Try and access any social media platform on the internet without getting bombarded by a fearful audience. It’s impossible. People are scared of everything. So they criticize, argue, belittle, antagonize and resort to ad hominem attacks that focus on the character of others because they cannot fathom a truth which is not their own. It’s a protective measure to guard against the unknown.
What Does Fear Do To Us?
Fear keeps us focused on the past and constantly worried about the future. It creates desperation and indecision that paralyzes our logic, thinking and actions. We can’t live freely because we can’t stop living in fear.
People who are fearful are very hesitant to explore new concepts or embrace other possibilities. You can always estimate the level of a person’s fear by how they explore new surroundings and inspect objects around them. This ultimately affects our personality and how other behavioral traits affect our physiology including what kind of impacts these traits have on our overall health and life span.
There is an international consortium of scientists who are working aggressively to find ways to control fear in both the public and military. Is this the answer to our fearful ways? Certainly not as the initiatives themselves stem from fear.
Fear is tearing our society apart. In the past, fear has engendered solidarity, but today it throws wedges between all of humanity. This isolation, in turn, renders the public ever more fearful. What’s more, media outlets, politicians, modern medicine and businesses all have learned to capitalize on this distinctly modern sense of dread, and thus profit from finding ways to cultivate it. Until we find a way to resist fear, we’ll live at the mercy of these emotional entrepreneurs–and in doing so, be party to the personal, cultural, and political consequences.
Much of our concept of ourselves and our attitudes as individuals in control of our destinies underpins much of our reality or what we think about our existence.
A Negative Attitude Is The Basis of Cyclical Fears
When people retain negative attitudes about anything that disagrees with their own version of reality, they are more likely to experience a continued sense of fear than people whose attitudes are less negative. Physiological markers such as heart rate and anticipatory anxiety always increase when measurements are taken in people whose attitudes remain negative.
Some of these attitudes are often based on a powerful association between a fear and a negative feeling that is so strong, that many people can’t see or even think about the fear without experiencing that automatic negative reaction. For example, many people around the world devoted to their religion absolutely fear atheists. They refuse to relate to their position. They will not even conceive the right of atheists to their own opinions and feel extremely threatened by any content promoting the principles of atheism. The same can be true if we reverse the two roles. Neither position will ever advance the other if each can only think negatively about the other. This creates self-righteousness, divisions of superiority and of course ignorance.
Negative reactions to the unknown instills a sense of weakness in our character, specifically a lack of strength in our own convictions. When people have the need to strongly chastise others for their opinions and information they present, it shows a genuine deficit of attributes related to confidence about our own belief systems, morals and values.
Those who have confidence in their doctrines do not have to identify all those things they dislike so much in others or attempt to magnify those flaws to please their own conscience. In essence, they feel they must right-fight to support their own belief system since in their minds, a competing system must be incorrect.
Modern Fear Is Viral
What’s unique about 21st-century fear is how people experience fear. Since the 1980s, society at large has bolted frantically from one panic to the next. Fear of crime reduced us to wrecks, but before long we were also howling about deadly diseases, drug abusers, online pedophiles, avian flu, ebola, teens gone wild, mad cows, anthrax, immigrants, environmental collapse, and–let us not forget–terrorists.
“There isn’t a single fear that defines our era,” says sociologist Frank Furedi, author of Culture of Fear: Risk-Taking and the Morality of Low Expectation and Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right. “What we have is a more promiscuous, pluralistic form of fearing. The very important implication to this is that while my parents feared together, you and I have a more isolated, private experience. We fear on our own.”
Our brains are poorly equipped to weigh risks that don’t result in immediate negative consequences. Marketers, politicians, and entertainers grasp with precision how brains misfire, and they apply this knowledge to great gain. Few can doubt how well fearmongering has worked for pharmaceutical companies who use the fear of disease to sell drugs and vaccines by the billions.
As networks battle for ratings and newspapers grasp at disappearing readers, the urge to lead with sensational stories grows. The gap between the reported and the commonplace skews our subconscious stockpile of reference points, while hunger for the next big story inevitably broadens our catalog of things that go bump in the night.
It’s Time To Abandon Fear To Change This World
People need not abandon fear altogether. Our ability to judge risk is sophisticated, and instinctual decisions often serve us well. But when something doesn’t quite seem to sync up, gut to head, then it’s time to pause and at least question what’s causing the discrepancy.
The new Earth will see people working to reduce or eliminate fear like never before. If you have a fear, first understand the nature of the object that arouses it. Let us say you are afraid of your future. What you really fear is the uncertainty that surrounds events yet to happen. By living totally in the present and by planning ahead you can reduce the uncertainty and fear. You cannot plan for all uncertainties but being prepared to an extent reduces your fear of uncertainties. Learn the art of enjoying it, too.
The psychological programming inside you, your subconscious mind, should change before any real change can happen. Your subconscious mind comprises engrams — mental traces that have been created over life experiences. These consist of both positive and negative associations and act like computer programmes. So long as the programming remains the same, the computer will function only in the manner dictated by that programme.
Similarly, we have to change the programming of our mind. Wise thinking leads to discrimination of the good and the bad. When you have changed your programming, you start perceiving and acting positively. So it is wise thinking that holds the key to a positive frame of mind.
Once people start thinking this way, it’s impossible to stop: Every television program, every advertisement, every stump speech that hangs its hat on scare tactics will be thrown into acute relief. That is where we are headed. We are all eventually going to give up allowing fears to define us, and focus instead on which ones are worth tackling together. When we do that, we won’t just free politicians from fear-inducing rhetoric or stymie fearmongering marketers; but we’ll also give ourselves some much-needed relief.
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