Soviet Europe: EU Pours £3.8bn Into ‘Brainwashing Campaign’
July 6th, 2007Via: Telegraph:
The European Union is spending £3.8 billion a year on “propaganda” to win over its sceptical citizens, it is claimed.
As well as publishing a plethora of pamphlets and employing an army of public relations staff, the EU has spent hundreds of millions of pounds on teaching aids, school trips and even cartoons.
According to Lee Rotherham, the author of a new book which examines the EU’s spending on its image, such initiatives are an “outrageous and cynical attempt to brainwash the young”. The Europa Diary, a gift from the EU to schoolchildren, is one example cited by Mr Rotherham in Hearts & Minds: the Tax-funded PR Campaign to Make us Love Brussels.
The diary has been sent to 1.2 million pupils in more than 9,000 schools across Europe. Its calendar includes pages that describe the European Parliament as “the people’s voice” and claims that the EU has “improved the quality of people’s everyday lives”.
A version of the diary sent to Dutch schools describes the European Parliament as the “most important multi-national organ in the world”.
Let’s Explore Europe Together, an online teaching aid aimed at nine to 12-year-olds, describes the EU as a “really good plan that had never been tried before”.
The European Parliament has also funded a cartoon called Operation Red Dragon, featuring a daring, fictitious MEP, Elisa Correr, who becomes “embroiled in a risky and fascinating adventure while in pursuit of her parliamentary activities”.
She dodges assassins, hunts down a general who broke an arms embargo, and still has time to debate copyright law in Brussels. The text admits: “European Parliamentarians do not generally lead such dangerous lives … nevertheless you can learn about the work of an MEP and other European institutions from the story.”
In Italy, reports Mr Rotherham, children have been confronted by Camillo e l’Euro in Europa, a cartoon that champions the single currency.
Mr Rotherham said: “Much of this is outrageous propaganda cynically trying to brainwash the young into thinking the EU is an essential part of their lives.
“This stuff is relentlessly positive about the EU’s work, with only the tiniest, if any, mention of the counter-arguments or any dissenting voices. Brussels realises it is losing people’s hearts and minds and so it is spending more and more of our money on marketing material and hordes of press officers to champion its existence.”
Related Commentary: Aftermath News
Three Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions
July 6th, 2007AS sent $30, TK sent $50 and VH sent $20. Thank you all for getting July off to a nice start.
June Earnings
July 6th, 2007Total earnings for Cryptogon and Farmlet in June came to $1135.63, or 2.27X the minimum monthly goal of $500. Many thanks to all regular and new contributors, as well as all the Blue Host, Amazon, and BullionVault customers who make a conscious effort to support us through patronage of those companies. Thanks also to Financial Web for choosing to spend some of their advertising dollars on Cryptogon.
We spent all of this, and much more from our savings, on cloth baby nappies, guns (and related items: gun safe, ammo, cleaning gear, etc), and a little bit of gold.
Thanks again for your generosity and for making Cryptogon and Farmlet possible.
Mercenaries Outnumber U.S. Troops in Iraq
July 5th, 2007“The coalition of the billing.”
Via: Los Angeles Times:
The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government’s capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.
More than 180,000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
Including the recent troop buildup, 160,000 soldiers and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq.
The total number of private contractors, far higher than previously reported, shows how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of Iraq — a mission criticized as being undermanned.
“These numbers are big,” said Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar who has written on military contracting. “They illustrate better than anything that we went in without enough troops. This is not the coalition of the willing. It’s the coalition of the billing.”
The numbers include at least 21,000 Americans, 43,000 foreign contractors and about 118,000 Iraqis — all employed in Iraq by U.S. tax dollars, according to the most recent government data.
Defunding Fascists with Asymmetric Economic Warfare, or Being Happy with Less
July 5th, 2007Works for my wife and me. We took it quite a bit further than this, but you get the idea.
I wouldn’t suggest doing this for any political reason, though. Forget politics. You might find, like we did, that being able to live well on very little money leads to a happier life.
The fact that you can look at yourself in the mirror is a bonus.
Via: MyWay / AP:
When the United States invaded Iraq more than four years ago, war opponent David Gross asked his bosses for a radical pay cut, enough so he wouldn’t have to pay taxes to support the war.
“I was having a hard time looking at myself in the mirror,” Gross said. “I knew the bombs falling were in part paid with my tax dollars. I had to actually do something concrete to remove my complicity.”
The San Francisco technical writer was making close to $100,000 a year. He didn’t know exactly how big of a pay cut he would need to fall below the federal tax threshold, but later figured out he would have to make less than minimum wage.
…
Gross said he now manages to live on about $15,000 per year by carefully tracking his spending.
He acknowledged the tax resistance movement is too small to stop the war.
“But I think what we’re doing is showing the way for people in the anti-war movement,” Gross said. “I can look myself in the mirror and say at least I’m not supporting it, at least I’m not part of the machine.”
Oil Trades Near 10-Month High After Shell’s Nigeria Rig Attack
July 4th, 2007Via: Bloomberg:
Crude oil traded near a 10-month high in New York after Royal Dutch Shell Plc said militants attacked its rig in Nigeria, raising concern about further oil-supply disruptions from Africa’s largest producer.
Five expatriate contractors working for Lonestar Drilling Nigeria Ltd. were taken hostage, said Precious Okolobo, a spokesman for Shell’s Nigerian venture. The attack occurred early this morning in the Soku field, where the rig was drilling a well. No production was affected, he said.
“The oil sector is the one where geopolitical events play a very big part,” Tim Guinness, chairman of Guinness Atkinson Asset Management LLC, said from London. “We don’t know which one is going to next affect supply.”
Crude oil for August delivery rose 3 cents to $71.44 a barrel at 2:30 p.m. in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Open outcry trading is closed at Nymex today because of the Fourth of July holiday in the U.S.
At the same time, Paolo Scaroni, chief executive officer of Eni SpA, said force majeure at the company’s Nigerian Ogbainbiri flow station is still in place. Eni first made the declaration on June 19 after the facility was attacked by gunmen two days earlier.
Brent oil for August settlement gained 12 cents to $73.05 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.
The latest kidnappings in Nigeria occurred after the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, ended a one-month cease-fire this week. Jomo Gbomo, spokesman for MEND, said the group wasn’t involved.
Steorn Orbo Demo in London
July 4th, 2007DELAY 2: MORE STEORN BULLSHIT
Still nothing. They’re saying that the camera lighting is causing a problem with the Orbo machine, or some bullshit like that. Well, folks, there you have it.
Skeptics: 2
Steorn: 0
Via: Steorn:
“We are experiencing some technical difficulties with the demo unit in London. Our initial assessment indicates that this is probably due to the intense heat from the camera lighting. We have commenced a technical assessment and will provide an update later today.
As a consequence, Kinetica will not be open to the public today (5th July). We apologise for this delay and appreciate your patience.”
DELAY 1
HAHA. Well I think we all know where we can go for more information if and when anything happens.
Via: Steorn:
Due to technical difficulties we will now be live from London on the 5th July.
Free Energy Tracker has several pictures of the display windows at the Kinetica Museum in London. They are definitely gearing up for a three ring circus.
If you need any calliope music to play in the background as you wait for updates, or even as a soundtrack once the show begins, here are some tracks that I’ve played in several different IT departments when systems crashed, people were pissed and millions of dollars were going down the gurgler.
“Re-fire the boiler and check for loose cotter pins, boys, the show must go on!”
– – – – –
FOUR CAMERA VIDEO STREAMING PAGE
The demo is not up yet…
Guys, freeenergytracker.blogspot.com tracks Steorn full time.
– – – – –
I was looking for official confirmation on this, but couldn’t find any. I decided to call the Kinetica Museum in London to ask WTF is going on?!
I spoke with a Kinetica Museum employee.
I asked, “Is this Steorn thing really going to happen today?”
“Uhh,” * pause * “We can’t say anything until 6PM.”
I’m going to try to sleep now, but if any of you in London want to check out the antics, go for it!
Guys, this news just started breaking, so I’m going to provide a link to Google News on this below, sorted chronologically. I’m sure the picture will change rapidly as Steorn releases official information this evening: Google News Steorn Orbo Sort by Date
MORE: RTE CONFIRMS EVENT:
An Irish company will today reveal controversial technology that allegedly defies basic laws of physics to produce free power.
Steorn, which is based in Dublin, claims to have discovered a method of creating clean, constant energy, which it claims could end the global fuel crisis.
Called Orbo technology, it is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and has yet to be conclusively proven.
Last year, Steorn placed an advertisement in the Economist magazine and challenged the world’s scientists to test its claims.
The company picked 22 of the world’s leading scientists from Europe and the US for the review, which started in January and is not expected to be completed before the end of the year.
Steorn is contractually obliged to publish whatever the scientists conclude in full.
Today the invention will go on public display for the first time with a live working demonstration to be streamed on the internet from 6pm tonight.
Steorn Chief Executive Sean McCarthy has said the demonstration will involve a ‘very simplified version’ of the technology and it will be open to the public from Thursday 5 July to Friday 13 July at the Kinetica Museum at Spitalfields Market in London.
Sceptics can view the device lifting a weight from four different camera angles online.
Mr McCarthy said the company had decided against using the technology to illuminate a light-bulb as the use of wires would attract further suspicion from a scientific community that has already dismissed the device.
NOTE: Obviously, no matter what kind of show the boys from Steorn put on here, it’s not proof that Orbo is real. We’ll have to wait a few more months to find that out. What’s interesting is that the self confident skeptics were sure that this event would be postponed.
Woops.
Graph: The U.S. Consumes More Gasoline than the Next 20 Largest Gasoline Consumers COMBINED
July 4th, 2007Via: Economist:
THE cost of filling up a Honda Civic’s 50-litre tank varies hugely around the world. Where some countries subsidise, others tax heavily. Pity Turkish drivers, who fork out $93.83, according to Gerhard Metschies in Foreign Policy magazine. Re-nationalised oil companies and heavy subsidies keep Venezuelan motorists happy, though those in Turkmenistan fare even better, paying only $1.06 a tank. Despite protests over rising prices, filling up in America is relatively cheap at $31.06. Indeed, this may explain the country’s enormous daily petrol consumption, which in 2003 was more than the next 20 biggest consumers combined.
The Dark Side of Soy
July 3rd, 2007Via: Utne Reader:
As someone who is conscious of her health, I spent 13 years cultivating a vegetarian diet. I took time to plan and balance meals that included products such as soy milk, soy yogurt, tofu, and Chick’n patties. I pored over labels looking for words I couldn’t pronounce–occasionally one or two would pop up. Soy protein isolate? Great! They’ve isolated the protein from the soybean to make it more concentrated. Hydrolyzed soy protein? I never successfully rationalized that one, but I wasn’t too worried. After all, in 1999 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved labeling I found on nearly every soy product I purchased: “Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol that include 25 grams of soy protein a day may reduce the risk of heart disease.” Soy ingredients weren’t only safe–they were beneficial.
After years of consuming various forms of soy nearly every day, I felt reasonably fit, but somewhere along the line I’d stopped menstruating. I couldn’t figure out why my stomach became so upset after I ate edamame or why I was often moody and bloated. It didn’t occur to me at the time to question soy, heart protector and miracle food.
When I began studying holistic health and nutrition, I kept running across risks associated with eating soy. Endocrine disruption? Check. Digestive problems? Check. I researched soy’s deleterious effects on thyroid, fertility, hormones, sex drive, digestion, and even its potential to contribute to certain cancers. For every study that proved a connection between soy and reduced disease risk another cropped up to challenge the claims. What was going on?
“Studies showing the dark side of soy date back 100 years,” says clinical nutritionist Kaayla Daniel, author of The Whole Soy Story (New Trends, 2005). “The 1999 FDA-approved health claim pleased big business, despite massive evidence showing risks associated with soy, and against the protest of the FDA’s own top scientists. Soy is a $4 billion [U.S.] industry that’s taken these health claims to the bank.” Besides promoting heart health, the industry says, soy can alleviate symptoms associated with menopause, reduce the risk of certain cancers, and lower levels of LDL, the “bad” cholesterol.
Epidemiological studies have shown that Asians, particularly in Japan and China, have a lower incidence of breast and prostate cancer than people in the United States, and many of these studies credit a traditional diet that includes soy. But Asian diets include small amounts–about nine grams a day–of primarily fermented soy products, such as miso, natto, and tempeh, and some tofu. Fermenting soy creates health-promoting probiotics, the good bacteria our bodies need to maintain digestive and overall wellness. By contrast, in the United States, processed soy food snacks or shakes can contain over 20 grams of nonfermented soy protein in one serving.
…
Once considered a small-scale poverty food, soy exploded onto the American market. Studies–some funded by the industry–promoted soy’s ability to lower disease risk while absolving guilt associated with eating meat. “The soy industry has come a long way from when hippies were boiling up the beans,” says Daniel.
These days the industry has discovered ways to use every part of the bean for profit. Soy oil has become the base for most vegetable oils; soy lecithin, the waste product left over after the soybean is processed, is used as an emulsifier; soy flour appears in baked and packaged goods; different forms of processed soy protein are added to everything from animal feed to muscle-building protein powders. “Soy protein isolate was invented for use in cardboard,” Daniel says. “It hasn’t actually been approved as a food ingredient.”
Soy is everywhere in our food supply, as the star in cereals and health-promoting foods and hidden in processed foods. Even if you read every label and avoid cardboard boxes, you are likely to find soy in your supplements and vitamins (look out for vitamin E derived from soy oil), in foods such as canned tuna, soups, sauces, breads, meats (injected under poultry skin), and chocolate, and in pet food and body-care products. It hides in tofu dogs under aliases such as textured vegetable protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and lecithin–which is troubling, since the processing required to hydrolyze soy protein into vegetable protein produces excitotoxins such as glutamate (think MSG) and aspartate (a component of aspartame), which cause brain-cell death.
Related: Weston A Price Foundation on Soy
The International Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project
July 3rd, 2007“Man needs only to exercise his engineering ingenuity to convert the ocean’s surge into a great national asset.”
—John F. Kennedy, July 16th, 1963
“Touch one, you’ve touched them all… All these secrets are the same secret.”
—Daniel Hopsicker, Barry & ‘The Boys’
The energy scarcity scam is one of those scams that, once you sink your teeth into the thing, it’s absolutely astonishing where it takes you, if, of course, you’re brave enough to hold on.
Here we are again, in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
But let’s back up a few months.
President John F. Kennedy, Remarks in Response to a Report on the Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project, July 16th, 1963:
I AM pleased to meet today with Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives from New England to discuss the report on the International Passamaquoddy Tidal Project submitted by Secretary Udall. Two years ago, I asked Secretary Udall, in cooperation with the Corps of Engineers, to restudy the proposed project, and the hydroelectric potential of the St. John River in Maine to determine whether recent developments in electric power technology had enhanced the economic feasibility of these projects.
This report has been presented to me this morning, and its major conclusions are most encouraging. The report reveals that this unique international power complex can provide American and Canadian markets with over a million kilowatts for the daily peak period in addition to 250,000 kilowatts of firm power. Electric power rates in the New England region are among the highest in the United States, and the survey indicates that a massive block of power can be produced and delivered at a cost of about 4 mills, approximately 25 percent below the current wholesale cost of power in the region.
I am pleased to note also that the development plan proposed would preserve the superb recreational areas of the Allagash River from flooding, and that an area suitable for a new national park would be preserved in this scenic part of Maine.
Any proposed resource development project must, of course, meet the national interest test. It must strengthen the economy of the whole country and enable America to compete better in the market places of the world. I understand that, measured by the customary feasibility standards, the Passamaquoddy-St. John project now meets the national interest test.
During the last three decades American taxpayers, through their Federal Government, have invested vast sums of money in developing the water resources of the great rivers of this country–the Columbia, the Missouri, the Colorado, the Tennessee, and others. These investments are producing daily dividends for our country, and it is reasonable to assume that a similar investment in conserving the resources of New England will also benefit the Nation. It is also reasonable to assume that a New England development will stimulate more diversified industry, increase commerce, and provide more jobs.
Our experience in other regions and river valleys shows that private utility customers as well as public agency power users benefit from lowering the basic cost of electric energy.
Harnessing the energy of the tides is an exciting technological undertaking. France and the Soviet Union are already doing pioneering work in this field. Each day, over a million kilowatts of power surge in and out of the Passamaquoddy Bay. Man needs only to exercise his engineering ingenuity to convert the ocean’s surge into a great national asset. It is clear, however, that any development of this magnitude and new approach must also be considered in the context of the National Energy Study currently being undertaken by an interdepartmental committee under the chairmanship of the Director of the Office of Science and Technology, Dr. Wiesner.
These projects involve international waters, and equitable agreements must therefore be reached with the Canadian Government. Therefore, I am requesting the Secretary of State to initiate negotiations immediately with the Government of Canada looking toward a satisfactory arrangement for the sharing of the benefits of these two projects. Also, to insure full consideration of these proposals, I am directing that the Interior Department and the Corps of Engineers accelerate their work on the remaining studies of details.
The power-producing utilities of the United States are second to none in the world. The combined effort of science, private industry, and Government will surely keep this Nation in the forefront of technological progress in energy and electric power.
I think that this can be one of the most astonishing and beneficial joint enterprises that the people of the United States have ever undertaken and, therefore, I want to commend the Department of the Interior for its initiative in working on this matter the past 2 years, the congressional delegation from Maine which has been interested in this for many years, and the Members of Congress from New England who have supported this great effort. I think it will mean a good deal to New England and a good deal to the country.
Note: The President spoke at 10 a.m. in the Flower Garden at the White House. The text of brief remarks by Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall and Senators Margaret Chase Smith and Edmund S. Muskie of Maine was also released.
The report (93 pp.) is dated July 1963 and entitled “The International Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project and Upper Saint John River Hydroelectric Power Development.” A 24-page “Summary Report” was also released.
For the President’s request for a restudy of the project, see 1961 volume, this series, Item 197.
If you can track this down, it would make for some interesting reading.
The international Passamaquoddy tidal power project and Upper Saint John River hydroelectric power development.
Report to President John F. Kennedy in response to a letter of May 20, 1961.
Passamaquoddy-Saint John River Study Committee.
1963
United States
Related: Dream of Passamaquoddy
