Socialism: A Definition Essay in Two Parts

The definitions of Socialism, Capitalism, and Communism to be found in dictionaries and encyclopedias are designed by those who serve the ruling class to prevent the establishment of legitimate government; therefore, new – correct – definitions are needed.

Socialism, a Meaning Untangled

Under Capitalism, the owners of a business venture externalize most of the costs of the business onto the employees, customers, environment, and/or whoever happens to be in the area of operations or where waste is dumped. Then the owners keep most of the profits for themselves, and the government fails to intervene to stop this parasitism. The human rights of the majority of the people will inevitably be violated in this system; therefore, it is inherently evil. A perfect example is the little-known practice of mountain-top mining. According to non-profit organization Coal River Wind's website,

"When externalities such as public health and environmental quality are factored in, a mountaintop removal mine ends up losing $600 million over its expected 17 year life. The costs of these externalities are taken in by the public in the form of health expenses and environmental clean up costs as well as lost resources..."

If the owners of the for-profit MTR (Mountain-Top Removal) company had to account for all of that six hundred mil, their balance sheet would look a little different.

Under Communism, The Collective is all; both the individual and the family are subjugated to the State. The human rights of most people will inevitably be violated under this system also; it is therefore also inherently evil – and for the same reason as Capitalism. The example of Communism most familiar to Americans would probably be “Communist China” (officially “The People's Republic of China”). From suppression of democracy and spirituality to forced family planning, Communist China is invasive and abusive (very much like a parent in a dysfunctional family). It can also be very inefficient; whereas Capitalism exerts too little control, Communism exerts too much control.

Under Socialism, the costs of a venture are spread out over the employees, customers, and possibly others, but unlike in Capitalism the profits are also spread out, and the environment can be protected. Whereas Capitalism pretends that nothing anyone does affects anyone else, and Communism pretends that the individual exists only as a member of a group, Socialism uniquely can recognize both that I am not you, and that everything everyone does affects everyone else in some way to some degree. The few who are profiting hugely from Capitalism have spent much time and effort indoctrinating the masses of this country to have a knee-jerk reaction to the word “Socialism”; they are scared witless at the prospect of their gravy train being interrupted. One area where most Americans are ready to accept Socialism, however, is in health-care. Why does health-care cost the U.S. so much every year? Because the U.S. does not have a health-care system; instead we have the Medical Business. And what do businesses do? Yes, they seek profit; but they also seek growth. The Capitalists have tried hard to erase the distinction between Socialism and Communism in the minds of most Americans; unfortunately, they have gotten a lot of help in this from... Socialists and Communists.

Karl Marx, Tragic Hero

No discussion of Socialism would be complete without mentioning the author of The Communist Manifesto, Mr. Karl Marx. Mr. Marx was incredibly prescient; he was born into the first generation after Europe had finally completed its transition from the Mercantile era to the Capitalist era, and he already saw the problems inherent in Capitalism. He also saw that Socialism was the cure for the problems of Capitalism. That was very intelligent, rational, and visionary of him. Unfortunately, that was where he lost it.

Dictionary.com defines tragic hero as “a literary character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on a tragedy.” Although Karl was not a literary character, he had noble qualities and very high ability; his fatal error was in concluding that Socialism was merely a stepping stone on the way to Communism, which he predicted was inevitable. As we saw above, that is incorrect.

We the People institute a government because it benefits us to do so; the government, in turn, makes itself legitimate by protecting the people – all of the people. (Those who oppose legitimate government identify themselves as such by using the term “protection-ism” as though it is something to be avoided at all costs.) Socialism will not bring about a “worker's paradise.” What it will do is make possible that unrealized dream: legitimate government.

We Still Need Higher Quality Outrage

[An essay I wrote for English class.]

A clear majority of Americans voted for “change” in the 2008 presidential election; why haven't we gotten it yet? The wars/occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan are still going, military spending has increased, “Gitmo” has not been shut down, the criminals who created the financial crisis/recession are not being prosecuted. Perhaps it is related to an idea put forth by Deborah Tannen (author of The Argument Culture) in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, in “We Need Higher Quality Outrage.” Indeed, we do; however, the examples she gave in her piece were weak, and sometimes even examples of what she was criticizing. I will now correct that error.

Tannen opines “one can decry the fact that many of the contracts for rebuilding Iraq were awarded to Halliburton without claiming that the war was undertaken in order to enrich the company the vice president once led.” Well, sort of. Claiming that is the reason for the war may be unjustified, but criticizing (then V.P.) Dick Cheney for profiting from rebuilding a country he oversaw the destruction of is valid. Her statement that “one can argue that having received medals for heroic deeds in the Vietnam war does not equip John Kerry to execute the war in Iraq without seeking to discredit not only his, but all, Purple Hearts” is unarguably true. However, Tannen then fantasizes that “one can validly defend the way the war was conducted without accusing one's critics of undermining the war efforts.” No. Criticizing the way the Iraq war was conducted does undermine the war effort, and it should.

She really fails to engage in “higher quality outrage” with regard to 9/11, saying “one can argue that the president [then-president Bush] is using the Sept. 11 attacks to bolster his public profile without going so far as to claim (as does a message circulating on the internet) that he played a role in authorizing those attacks.” Well, even in 2004 there was a whole lot more than “a message” on the internet about that. In fact, even a cursory investigation makes it blindingly obvious that 9/11 could not have happened – the way it did actually happen – without top-level U.S. Government foreknowledge and co-operation. If you need a jump to get you going, try “Did 9/11 Justify the War in Afghanistan? Using the McChrystal Moment to Raise a Forbidden Question” by David Ray Griffin, and “Revealing new aerial photos of 9/11 attack released” by James Fetzer (be sure to watch the five-minute video by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth at the end of the article). Then, after you're done “being sick,” go to the website of Partnership for a New American Century. This NPO was created by the aforementioned Dick Cheney along with Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Judith Miller (then a reporter for the New York Times) and some others. They released a White Paper (“Rebuilding America's Defenses”) describing their plan for world domination via the U.S. Military controlling the global oil supply. Acknowledging that this would require a huge increase in military spending and that the American people had no appetite for that, they said they would need “a new Pearl Harbor” (p. 51); and, regarding invading Iraq and establishing permanent military bases there to use as a staging area for conducting attacks throughout the Middle East and Asia, they said Saddam Hussein's regime “provides the immediate justification” (p.14). They put these things in writing one year before 9/11.

On the issue of journalistic balance, Tannen also fails to achieve the desired quality in her outrage. The balanced approach in news coverage comes from our legal system, called the “adversarial system,” in which two opposing sides each state their case, presided over by a judge. This goes back to medieval times, which used “trial by combat” with the winner assumed to have been picked by God (DeBarba). So now the TV audience plays the role of God, and the news media offers up opposing views for us to pick from. Using Global Warming as an example, Tannen wails that “balance” requires one of “the few greenhouse skeptics” be given equal time, when “the vast majority agree” that it is true. Unfortunately for her and those “scientists,” agreement has nothing to do with science; it's what the evidence proves, and the evidence does not prove the “greenhouse effect.” As I put it in a paper I wrote on this subject, the greenhouse believers “duplicated an amount of energy from one stage of the process to the next, when in reality there is energy lost each time it is transferred from one place to another or from one form to another; this is eerily similar to the mechanism of hiding debt the Wall Street scammers engaged in that caused the financial crisis of 2008."

Tannen then calls for “peaceful yet passionate outrage.” Why that magical combination? “The challenges we face are monumental. Among them are the spread of nuclear weapons, the burgeoning number of individuals and groups who see the United States as a threat, and the question of how far to compromise our liberties and protections in the interest of security.” Again, no. There are monumental challenges we face, but those aren't them.

The first elephant in the room is the subject of the psychopaths: people whose brain defect makes them unable to feel they've done anything wrong. They know what society considers wrong, but they feel that's an unjust limit on their freedom. According to Canadian Ph.D. Psychologist Robert Hare, who has spent over three decades studying them, although psychopaths make up only one percent of the population, they are responsible for 50% of all crime. The complete failure of the mainstream media to acknowledge this huge factor in our society means most people know nothing about the great science that's been done on the subject. This allows the psychopaths to have an influence far outside their numbers, leading to a “culture of lying”; every year there are more stories of widespread cheating in schools, and the exposure of yet more fraud in both business and science.

The other elephant in the room is another one percent of the population: the richest one percent. In “Power in America: Wealth, Income, and Power,” hosted on the web by the sociology department of the University of California, Santa Cruz, William Domhoff reports that the share of the nation's wealth owned by the richest one percent has increased from 30% ten years ago to 35% today. Also, the top ten percent have 70% of the wealth and the top 20% have 85% of the wealth. To look at that from the other side, it means the bottom 80% have only 15% of the nation's wealth spread out among them, and even the bottom 90% have only 30% of the nation's wealth. So, when you are told we have a “representative system of government,” whose interests do you think they're going to represent? The president, senators, and governors have carte blanche to ignore 90% of the citizens (and maybe even 99%), because there are zero consequences for them when they do.

So, what can you do? Well, you have three options: one, mindless obedience while the government protects the right of the corporations to profit from poisoning you and your children; two, try to change the world – but you can't because the richest one percent have all the power and they are not going to let you change the world, so you will just waste your energy; or three, follow the clues and connect the dots with a willingness to find out what the truth is no matter what it turns out to be (and a willingness to allow that discovery to transform you into who you really are) which will grow your awareness like unto a shield, thereby significantly reducing the effect of the attack so you can recover from the attack even while still under attack. Then, if an opportunity generated from outside the system should occur in your lifetime, you will be able to take advantage of it by acting in favor of a better, more human, world.

Actually, Virginia, There Isn't a Greenhouse Effect

Energy prices through the roof, food shortages killing millions (billions?), and a drastic decrease in living standards; are these going to be the result of man-made Global Warming (Anthropogenic Global Warming, or AGW)? Or the result of a belief in a lie? There is no such thing as a greenhouse gas, and the Greenhouse Model of Global Warming has never been scientific.

The vast majority of climate scientists agree that AGW has been proven. As recently as January 2009, CNN.com reported on a survey in which 97% of climatologists said they believed not only that the earth is warming, but that humans are contributing to the warming. Even a cursory perusal of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Wildlife Federation, and the Environmental Defense Fund immediately makes it clear that the science is settled. The world's scientific authorities insist AGW is real. Which is to say, carbon dioxide emissions from human industrialization are causing an increase in the greenhouse effect. Unfortunately for all these esteemed and well-funded authorities, the scientific method cares not for authority, agreement, or belief; it's what the evidence proves.

Those who promote belief in AGW like to trot out the planet Venus as “proof” of the greenhouse model. The atmosphere on Venus is full of carbon dioxide, and it's over 400 degrees C there. Pretty convincing, right? Actually no; that this has been so well received not only by the public but – alarmingly – also by many scientists shows the truly deplorable state of science education in the U.S. (and, apparently, other countries). As Steve Goddard explains in “Hyperventilating on Venus”, “...why is Venus hot? Because it has an extremely high atmospheric pressure. The atmospheric pressure on Venus is 92x greater than Earth.” He goes on to say:

Wikipedia typifies the illogical “runaway greenhouse” argument with this statement:

Without the greenhouse effect caused by the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the temperature at the surface of Venus would be quite similar to that on Earth.

No it wouldn’t. 9000 kPa atmospheric pressure would occur on earth at an altitude many miles below sea level. No such place exists, but if it did – it would be extremely hot, like Venus. A back of the envelope estimate – temperatures on earth increase by about 80C going from 20 to 100 kPa, so at 9,000 kPa we would expect temperatures to be in the ballpark of :

20C + ln(9000/(100-20)) *80C = 400C

This is very close to what we see on Venus. The high temperatures there can be almost completely explained by atmospheric pressure – not composition. If 90% of the CO2 in Venus atmosphere was replaced by Nitrogen, it would change temperatures there by only a few tens of degrees.

Al Gore – Mr. Inconvenient Truth himself – has been promoting environmentalism for decades. Who has more credibility than him? That makes him ideal to front a scam called “cap and trade,” in which a market for carbon credits has been created, and in the land of cowboy-capitalism that inevitably means of course also speculation on carbon futures – expected to be a $2 Trillion market by 2014. OK, so here's an example of how the scam works, in three easy steps: first, the venture capital firm where Al is a partner invests $75 Million in a “smart grid” start-up called Silver Spring Networks; then, Al flies all over the country and world scaring the bejeezus out of everyone about “Global Warming,” for example testifying before Congress that we must “put a price on carbon”; finally, the U.S. Energy Dept. announces $3.4 Billion dollars in “smart grid” grants (now where have I heard that term before?), of which over $500 Million goes to companies that have contracts with... wait for it... Silver Spring Networks! Ohmigod! What a great investment that turned out to be. Al also recently bought a mansion in California (for nearly nine million dollars), which has “six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms” as reported by the Los Angeles Times; that's not exactly walkin' the talk. He likes to indignantly insist that all the profits from his “green” investments go to his non-profit organization to promote environmental causes. Therefore, it's a mystery how his net worth went from under $2 Million in the year 2000 to over $100 Million just seven years later. I love the environment; wish I was worth a hundred mill.

If you research AGW in the mainstream media, you will undoubtedly come across the name of Svante Arrhenius. He allegedly proved the “Greenhouse Effect” on which all these prognostications that are being made today depend. However, as geologist Timothy Casey pointed out:

...Arrhenius' 'Greenhouse Effect' must be driven by recycling radiation from the surface to the atmosphere and back again. Thus, radiation heating the surface is re-emitted to heat the atmosphere and then re-emitted by the atmosphere backto accumulate yet more heat at the earth's surface. Physicists such as Gerlich & Tscheuschner (2007 and 2009) are quick to point out that this is a perpetuum mobile of the second kind - a type of mechanism that creates energy from nothing.

Basically, Arrhenius duplicated an amount of energy from one stage of the process to the next, when in reality there is energy lost each time it is transferred from one place to another or from one form to another; this is eerily similar to the mechanism of hiding debt the Wall Street scammers engaged in that caused the financial crisis of 2008.

So, if the Greenhouse Effect is not in effect on a global scale, then why is the earth warming? Or, is it warming? In November of 2009, someone released to the world over 1000 e-mails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU); the IPCC relies on the CRU for key datasets in its research on Global Warming. Andrew Bolt of the Melbourne (Aus) Herald Sun wrote that the e-mails suggested “...conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more”. So much for consensus. Damage control from those involved was to call the leaker a “hacker”, but Bolt dismissed this, saying the leak was “... clearly not the work of some hacker, but of an insider who’s now blown the whistle”.

We appear to be at the end of an approximately 10,000 year period of relative stability of our climate on this big blue marble; at the point of transition of a system from one state to another, the system becomes unstable. Or perhaps the Standard Model is wrong, and we really do live in an Electric Universe, and that is what is causing the warming – or is it cooling? Maybe the human race is caught in a cycle we do not comprehend, and we are destined to be the basis for the next legend of a lost civilization (the United States of Atlantis?). Or, maybe, we just don't know what is happening or why.

But no one likes that answer.

The Obamacare Catastro-Fudge: Worse Than You Think

You are a victim of psychological warfare. After many months of debate in Congress, President Barack Obama's major reform of our health care system was finally enacted. Do you remember that? It didn't happen. There was no “health care” debate, and no “health care” legislation was passed. The “debate” was only about insurance. The “health care system” in the U.S. is so expensive ($2.39T in 2008, $2.5T in 2009; “Introduction to the Health Care Industry”) because we don't have a health care system; instead, we have the Medical Business.

The business model of the “health care” industry – doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies – is the treatment of diseased conditions via drugs and surgery. If you die, that ends the revenue stream. So, they are trying to prevent that outcome. However, if you get healthy – healthy people are , by definition, not sick – that also ends the revenue stream. So, they are trying to prevent that outcome too. They need you to be somewhere between: alive, but sick. Therefore, anything that actually makes you healthy is a threat to them. Instead of the popular term “health care providers”, doctors should be called “practitioners of the Medical Business.” That's the business they're in. Perhaps, by providing the proper context, that would clear up some confusion.

Much in the same way as your car runs on gas, the Medical Business runs on fraud. A couple recent examples:
As reported in Scientific American magazine in 2009, "Over the past 12 years, anesthesiologist Scott Reuben” fabricated “at least 21” studies, which “led to the sale of billions of dollars worth of ... COX2 inhibitors” (Borrell). He's now on leave.
Then, over the winter of 2009-10, we had the swine flu/H1N1 “pandemic”... or did we? According to Gerd Gigerenzer (“director of the Centre for Adaptive Behaviour and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute in Germany”), "The problem is not so much that communicating uncertainty is difficult, but that uncertainty was not communicated. There was no scientific basis for the WHO’s estimate of 2 billion for likely H1N1 cases, and we knew little about the benefits and harms of the vaccination” (qtd. in Cohen). [Emphasis added.] But wait, it gets even worse! “Key scientists advising the World Health Organization on planning for an influenza pandemic had done paid work for pharmaceutical firms that stood to gain from the guidance they were preparing. These conflicts of interest have never been publicly disclosed by WHO, and WHO has dismissed inquiries into its handling of the A/H1N1 pandemic as 'conspiracy theories'.” (Cohen)

What we have a real epidemic of is obesity. Not just an issue of appearance or comfort, the fact of being obese significantly increases the probability of developing a wide range of other diseases, or makes them worse, warns an editorial in the American Heart Association journal Circulation (Matter and Handschin). But the million dollar question is, what is causing this obesity epidemic? The conventional wisdom is “overeating”; the Medical Business would have us believe we're fat because of an increase in calories, especially fat. Logically, then, we should all cut calories by cutting fat from our diet; and this is indeed what most doctors – pardon me, practitioners of the Medical Business – recommend. However, in 2007 science writer Gary Taubes published the results of his investigation of this issue, Good Calories, Bad Calories. In it, he documents the evidence that the vast majority of the increase in calories over the past four decades was from two sources: refined grains and sugar (neither of which is fat.) So the practitioners of the Medical Business are recommending a diet which has been proven to make most people fat and sick! “Ask your doctor if blah blah blah is right for you...”

What if we could significantly reduce costs and improve health, all without the “socialized medicine” that the conservatives are so deathly afraid of? Well, as Gary Taubes work indicates, cutting the grains and sugar instead of dietary fat could tame the obesity monster. Also, a study by Creighton University found that simply getting a little over 1,000 IU's of vitamin D3 per day (about three times the RDA) cut the incidence of all cancers in half. And then there's sleep. The National Sleep Foundation has claimed that the average American got 10 hours of sleep per night before the invention of the light bulb, compared to seven today (Sleep: part 2). Telling a chronically sleep-deprived nation to “eat less and exercise more” isn't just stupid and insane, it's evil.

So you tell the hard-charging go-getters who pretend America is so magically delicious that we can leave people to fend for themselves and it's still their fault when they're not successful, “We can't afford it!”, and then go take a nap in the early afternoon sun. Just don't burn.

Three "Must Read" Articles

Making the World Safe for Cancer
by Alison Rose Levy

Ex. "When it comes to increasing cancer rates, we've done everything right. We couldn't have done it better if we'd actually planned it...

• For 35 years, pour billions of dollars into vested institutions aiming to self-perpetuate via a perennial "war on cancer" featuring intense and costly treatments, which, according to a GAO report, failed to substantively increase actual survival rates once you factor in reductions in lung cancer deaths thanks to smoking cessation...

• Overlook numerous studies that reveal a wide range of cancer causative factors, including pesticides, toxins, metals, pollutants, food additives, industrial chemicals, endocrine disruptors and other carcinogens--80,000 of them in wide use ...

Oh, and don't overlook one crucial element: It's essential to have a health care model that:

• Claims the human organism can process anything we can dish out

• Cuts out any human body parts that can't

• Never tests an individual's body burden of toxins

• Sneers at detoxification practices..."

The Financial Oligarchy Reigns: Democracy’s Death Spiral From Greece to the United States

By David DeGraw

Ex. "... as President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.” ...

The primary reason why 99% of the American population is experiencing the beginning phase of their downward shift in living standards, and the reason the free market and our government have become a farce, as our Forefathers warned, is because large politically-dominate bankers have become so powerful that they are able to rig the market and economic system in their favor and eliminate competition.

To break it down statistically, when six inter-connected banks, all organized in the Federal Reserve system, control over 60% of GDP and have the power to issue currency, competition is impossible. The game is over. They wield so much power that society and government are effectively captured and dominated by this Oligarchy...

What happened on September 29, 2008 will go down in history as one of the greatest acts of terrorism ever.

9/29/08 proved that when you have so much power concentrated in the hands of a few, you can manipulate a computer algorithm and make the market and economy go whichever way you want it to go. So on 5/6/10, just as the power of the big banks was again threatened on the floor of the Senate and a deal on auditing the Federal Reserve was being negotiated, in came a sudden and unprecedented ten-minute 700 point market drop, a precision-guided High Frequency Trading (HFT) attack to show Congress who’s boss.

If you think the massive sudden drop happened because one lowly trader hit one wrong button, if you actually believe that the entire stock market can plunge because of one mistaken key stroke by a low-level trader, you are stunningly naïve. I hate to burst your bubble, but this was a direct attack..."


The Culture of Critique reviewed by "Stanley Hornbeck"

Ex. " ... The series is written from a sociobiological perspective that views Judaism as a unique survival strategy that helps Jews compete with other ethnic groups... While attempting to promote the brotherhood of man by dissolving the ethnic identification of gentiles, Jews have maintained precisely the kind of intense group solidarity they decry as immoral in others...

He is saying, in effect, that when Jews make the diversity-is-our-strength argument it is in support of their real goal of diluting a society's homogeneity so that Jews will feel safe. They are couching a Jewish agenda in terms they think gentiles will accept. Likewise, as the second part of the Silberman quotation suggests, Jews may support deviant movements, not because they think it is good for the country but because it is good for the Jews...

Prof. MacDonald traces the development of this diversity strategy to several sources. It is widely recognized that the German-Jewish immigrant Franz Boas (1858-1942) almost single-handedly established the current contours of anthropology, ridding it of all biological explanations for differences in human culture or behavior. Prof. MacDonald reports that he and his followers – with the notable exceptions of Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict – were all Jews with strong Jewish identities: "Jewish identification and the pursuit of perceived Jewish interests, particularly in advocating an ideology of cultural pluralism as a model for Western societies, has been the 'invisible subject' of American anthropology."

By 1915, Boas and his students controlled the American Anthropological Association and by 1926 they headed every major American university anthropology department. From this position of dominance they promoted the idea that race and biology are trivial matters, and that environment counts for everything. They completely recast anthropology so as to provide intellectual support for open immigration, integration, and miscegenation. They also laid the foundation for the idea that because all races have the same potential, the failures of non-whites must be blamed exclusively on white oppression. The ultimate conclusion of Boasian anthropology was that since environment accounts for all human differences, every inequality in achievement can be eliminated by changing the environment. This has been the justification for enormous and wasteful government intervention programs..." [Emphasis added.]

The Al-Kemi of the Amazon

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
- George Santayana

There is a man-made soil in the Amazon region of South America; it is "thousands" of years old (how many thousands? we'll get back to that); and its properties are so amazing, the best soil scientists in the world haven't been able to recreate it after decades of effort.

From Terra Preta, Magic Soil of the Lost Amazon :

"It controls water and reduces leaching
of nutrients from the rhizosphere. Rich in humus, pieces
of pre-Columbian unfired clay pottery, and black carbon, it’s
like a “microbial reef” that promotes and sustains the growth
of mycorrhizae and other beneficial microbes, and it has been
shown to retain its fertility for thousands of years. In university
trials, terra preta has increased crop yields by as much as 800
percent. It regrows itself when excavated."
(Emphasis added.)

They're all excited about the potential to reduce global warming, but I'm more interested in just how old this stuff really is, and who made it. The academic investigators assure us it was made by indigenous people in Amazonia for about 2,000 years, but it seems to me like more of an assumption than actual proved fact. First of all, the indigenous population had no idea how to make the stuff immediately after the Europeans invaded (and remember, we're still trying to figure out how to make it); also, it's so widespread throughout the Amazon basin that some have suggested the rainforest is a man-made ecosystem.

Terra preta is Portuguese for "black earth". Hmmmm, now where have I heard something like "black earth" before? Oh yeah, "alchemy" supposedly got its name from ancient Egypt, which was supposed to have been called "the black land". But that never made any sense. Egypt's soil isn't black.

Perhaps "the Art and Science of al-kemi" meant the wisdom of the culture that had created this "magical soil", preserved in symbol and allegory for ... 10,000 years? Perhaps "the Art and Science of the Black Land" should be taken quite literally.

The United States of Atlantis?

Capitalism = Parasitism, Ex. # 1: Mountaintop Mining

A non-profit organization commissioned a study from an environmental firm to compare a proposal by a coal company for REMOVING the top of a mountain with the NPO's proposal to construct a wind farm on top of the mountain.

This study found that over the 17 year expected life of the mountaintop coal mine, the Raleigh County Government would receive a total of about $30 million from the wind farm, but only a little over $600,000 in "coal severance taxes". Sounds like a pretty serious disparity, huh?

But wait - here's the kicker! The coal mine would cost $600 million "in the form of health expenses and environmental clean up costs as well as lost resources."

$600K out to get $600M back? Wow, what a great "opportunity"! But the only way the mountaintop removal company can make a profit is by "externalizing" the vast majority of the true costs onto the public, while keeping the vast majority of the revenue. Revenue - cost = profit; America really is the greatest nation ever. If the company had to bear those costs itself, why it'd be a huge loser.

I lied - that wasn't the kicker. The real kicker is: the coal company in question? It's Massey Energy. That's right, they own the mine that killed 29 employees on 4/5/10. E.J. Dionne reports that the "Upper Big Branch Mine has been cited for safety violations 1,342 times since 2005."

But if anyone dares criticize this murder-for-money, the parasites will claim that WE are parasites - or worse, "socialists" (gasp!).

The Conservative Threat

Gregory Paul, a freelance researcher/artist/author in the field of paleontology since the late 1970's, has recently put out an essay on the socio-economic impact of religion, "The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional Psychosociological Conditions." At the end of the second page is this line:

"...the development of a middle class majority that is sufficiently financially and socially secure due to progressive secular socioeconomic policies consistently results in a serious and measurable decline in religiosity." [emphasis added.]

Ahhhh, now we can understand why the religious right in the U.S.A. opposes and attacks government regulations and social programs with such fervor (and why they hate and resent the example of western Europe).

However, he makes an epistemoligical error conflating "religion"/"going to church" with spirituality; in my experience, people who score the highest on "religiosity" are the least spiritual people. According to the science of inherited preferences, 40% of the population are SJ/Conservatives; 40% SP/Artisans; 10% NT/Rationals; and 10% NF/Idealists. The SP's and NF's together are what the Conservatives call "Liberals", with the Rationals pretty much ignored in the national debate.

The problem isn't that there are these four groups, or that each one has certain characteristic qualities; the problem is trying to force the other groups to be like you. In my personal experience, the SP's, NF's, and NT's are all open to learning about this, and accepting the need to not force the way they are on other groups or individuals. The SJ/Conservatives, however, don't seem to want to know about it; they just see the way they are as the right way to be, and they think all the problems of the world are because of lack of conservatism.

The Conservatives are high in shame but low in compassion (their lack of compassion matches the psychopaths' lack of compassion, hence the Unholy Alliance). The SP's are the mirror image of the SJ's in this regard: high on compassion, but low on shame (the Conservatives like to decry the Liberals as "shameless"). The SJ's obsession with stability and security can bring benefits to society, so they do not need to be eliminated; however, their genetic inability to feel compassion means they cannot be allowed to be in charge, at any level, in business or government.

The rest of us - who make up 60% of the population - have a right to defend ourselves against the threat that the Conservatives represent. The culture of leaving people to fend for themselves is an environment that selects for the qualities of the psychopath: ignorant, arrogant, shallow, greedy and callous. People who love that culture are evil people, and should not be treated with respect or given the benefit of the doubt.

There is no limit to the value of the scientific method. America is not magical. Reality does exist here. Everything that everyone does affects everyone else in some way to some degree; so, you are not free to do whatever you want. You are not free to be whoever you want. You are not free to believe whatever you want. The truth is good; the lie is evil.

Choose.

Schizophrenia Is A Physical Ilness

With Obvious Mental and Non-Obvious Physical Symptoms

"Listen to me, coppertop."
- Switch, to Neo, in The Matrix

The term "schizophrenia" was coined by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1908 from Greek words meaning "split mind." This has led to the public confusion with "split personality" - now called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) - when the split Bleuler meant was a mind split from reality.

Unfortunately, the mistake is far worse than that; we now know after a century of science that so-called schizophrenia is not a "mental" illness at all, but a physical illness. The Medical Business (which markets itself as "the health care system") now says that what is inherited is a "susceptibility" to developing the disease, and that something in the environment "triggers" the illness; but without the physical illness, the alleged triggers don't have anything to trigger, so what role does the environment really play? The fact that all books on schizophrenia are in the Psychology section of bookstores and libraries only perpetuates the public's misconception.

Thanks to the pioneering work of two medical doctors who were also both Ph.D.'s - American Carl Pfeiffer and Canadian Abram Hoffer - and others, we now know that 80% of sufferers of so-called schizophrenia have inherited a combination of genes that makes then metabolize copper at either a much higher or much lower than normal rate. This unusual copper metabolism throws off brain levels of nicotinic acid (the original name of what's now called niacin/vit B3). The same number - 80% - "self-medicate" with tobacco cigarettes; wouldn't taking a niacin pill be better?

50% of so-called schizophrenics inherited a combination of genes that makes them metabolize copper at a much lower rate than normal. Thus a normal intake of copper builds up the copper level over many years (typical onset of mental symptoms 18-25 for men, 25-35 for women - estrogen seems to protect the women from the copper longer); this excess copper has a cascade of effects, including destroying zinc directly, and increasing the metabolism of various B vitamins, thereby lowering histamine (B-6 is needed to make the enzyme that converts amino acid histidine into hormone/neurotransmitter histamine, folic acid and B-12 together raise histamine). So, they need to:
1.) avoid copper like the plague
2.) take a B-50 after breakfast
3.) take at least 100mg niacin after lunch (Abram Hoffer used 1-6 grams/day; those amounts require doctor supervision)
4.) take 30mg zinc (Optizinc) after dinner (300mg magnesium recommended also)

Another 30% of so-called schizophrenics have the opposite problem: they inherited a combination of genes that makes them metabolize copper at a much higher rate than normal. This raises zinc and B vitamins, thereby raising histamine. This group must:
1.) strictly limit B vitamins (except for niacin)
2.) get copper
3.) no need to take extra zinc

Another 10% of so-called schizophrenia is caused by hypothyroidism (itself under-diagnosed and under-treated), which leaves only 10% from all other causes (physical and/or psychological).

What if cancer patients were told they have a "little understood mental illness", and prescribed psych-meds, which they have to take to get government benefits, but which don't help the actual problem, and which do have severe negative "side effects" (aka "effects") incl. weight gain (40-50 pounds) and dysfunction of glucose metabolism causing type 2 diabetes, and then when the cancer patients have high rates of non-compliance, the only response from the Medical Business is to repeat "It's very important to take your meds." Wouldn't that be EVIL?

Q: Then why isn't it EVIL to do that to the most vulnerable people in our society - sufferers of so-called schizophrenia (because the mental effects of their physical illness makes them unable to defend themselves against the Medical Business' predation)?
A: It IS, you sick Evil fucks.