Amero: “Now Is the Time” to Discuss a North American Dollar
January 26th, 2007Via: The Star:
If Canadians are going to debate the idea of a single North American currency, “now is the time it should be on the table,” according to the chief economist at Toronto Dominion Bank.
UK: Security Cameras to Watch the Speed Cameras
January 26th, 2007Via: BBC:
Speed cameras in the Scottish Borders may soon be monitored by security cameras to protect them from vandals.
It is among the measures being considered by the Lothian and Borders Safety Camera Partnership.
There have been seven camera attacks in just three years, with machines being set alight, damaged or pulled over.
Cameras on the A68, A1 and the A697 in Berwickshire have all been targeted prompting the partnership to look at ways of increasing security.
MAINE REJECTS REAL ID ACT
January 26th, 2007In New Hampshire, you’ve got an unknown number of armed people who have come to the aid of a man who has been wrongly convicted of tax evasion. And in Maine, the state next door, both chambers of the legislature flatly refused to force its citizens to use driver’s licenses that comply with diabolical Real ID Act.
It looks like Yankees are starting to draw the line.
Via: cnet:
Maine overwhelmingly rejected federal requirements for national identification cards on Thursday, marking the first formal state opposition to controversial legislation scheduled to go in effect for Americans next year.
Both chambers of the Maine legislature approved a resolution saying the state flatly “refuses” to force its citizens to use driver’s licenses that comply with digital ID standards, which were established under the 2005 Real ID Act. It asks the U.S. Congress to repeal the law.
The vote represents a political setback for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Republicans in Washington, D.C., which have argued that nationalized ID cards for all Americans would help in the fight against terrorists.
“I have faith that the Democrats in Congress will hear this from many states and will find a way to repeal or amend this in the coming months,” House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat, said in a telephone interview after the vote. “It’s not only a huge federal mandate, but it’s a huge mandate from the federal government asking us to do something we don’t have any interest in doing.”
The Real ID Act says that, starting around May 2008, Americans will need a federally approved ID card–a U.S. passport will also qualify–to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments or take advantage of nearly any government service. States will have to conduct checks of their citizens’ identification papers, and driver’s licenses likely will be reissued to comply with Homeland Security requirements.
In addition, the national ID cards must be “machine-readable,” with details left up to Homeland Security, which hasn’t yet released final regulations. That could end up being a magnetic strip, an enhanced bar code or radio frequency identification (RFID) chips.
The votes in Maine on the resolution were nonpartisan. It was approved by a 34-to-0 vote in the state Senate and by a 137-to-4 vote in the House of Representatives.
Ed Brown Blogs
January 26th, 2007I’m sure that all of you know about the armed standoff that is underway in New Hampshire over the illegal Federal Income Tax. Cryptogon reader GK let me know that a couple of blogs have sprung up that contain constantly updated information on the situation:
http://questforfairtrialinconcordnh.blogspot.com/
http://edbrownaudio.blogspot.com/
Note, however, the following from Blogger’s terms of service:
10. Termination; Suspension. Google may, in its sole discretion, at any time and for any reason, terminate the Service, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate your account. In the event of termination, your account will be disabled and you may not be granted access to your account or any files or other content contained in your account although residual copies of information may remain in our system for some time for back-up purposes.
Guys, do not rely on a free service for getting the word out. Not for something like this. In any event, prepare to update the network of us who are monitoring this situation so we know where to point readers if the Blogger sites are taken down.
This is the Alex Jones mirror.
Ford: Biggest Loss Ever
January 25th, 2007Via: CNN:
Ford Motor Co. reported the largest annual loss in company history Thursday, as the embattled automaker posted a fourth-quarter loss that was worse than analysts’ expectations and the company warned of worse showings ahead.
Weak sales of its key pickup trucks in the quarter and $9.9 billion in after-tax charges resulted in $12.7 billion loss for 2006. That works out to a loss of just over $24,000 a minute throughout the course of the year, or about the price of a Ford Mustang.
Street-Fighting Robot Challenge Announced
January 25th, 2007They want terminator robots more than anything.
Via: New Scientist:
A contest to build a robot that can operate autonomously in urban warfare conditions, moving in and out of buildings to search and destroy targets like a human soldier, was launched in Singapore on Tuesday.
The country’s Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) is offering one million Singapore dollars ($652,000) to whoever develops a robot that completes a stipulated set of tasks – yet to be revealed – in the fastest time possible.
How The Brain Rewires Itself
January 25th, 2007This is pretty wild, especially considering the mental prisons we could be building for ourselves with our thoughts…
The brain is going to build whatever structures you empower it to build (or allow others to build), good or bad.
Via: Time:
It was a fairly modest experiment, as these things go, with volunteers trooping into the lab at Harvard Medical School to learn and practice a little five-finger piano exercise. Neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone instructed the members of one group to play as fluidly as they could, trying to keep to the metronome’s 60 beats per minute. Every day for five days, the volunteers practiced for two hours. Then they took a test.
At the end of each day’s practice session, they sat beneath a coil of wire that sent a brief magnetic pulse into the motor cortex of their brain, located in a strip running from the crown of the head toward each ear. The so-called transcranial-magnetic-stimulation (TMS) test allows scientists to infer the function of neurons just beneath the coil. In the piano players, the TMS mapped how much of the motor cortex controlled the finger movements needed for the piano exercise. What the scientists found was that after a week of practice, the stretch of motor cortex devoted to these finger movements took over surrounding areas like dandelions on a suburban lawn.
The finding was in line with a growing number of discoveries at the time showing that greater use of a particular muscle causes the brain to devote more cortical real estate to it. But Pascual-Leone did not stop there. He extended the experiment by having another group of volunteers merely think about practicing the piano exercise. They played the simple piece of music in their head, holding their hands still while imagining how they would move their fingers. Then they too sat beneath the TMS coil.
When the scientists compared the TMS data on the two groups–those who actually tickled the ivories and those who only imagined doing so–they glimpsed a revolutionary idea about the brain: the ability of mere thought to alter the physical structure and function of our gray matter. For what the TMS revealed was that the region of motor cortex that controls the piano-playing fingers also expanded in the brains of volunteers who imagined playing the music–just as it had in those who actually played it.
“Mental practice resulted in a similar reorganization” of the brain, Pascual-Leone later wrote. If his results hold for other forms of movement (and there is no reason to think they don’t), then mentally practicing a golf swing or a forward pass or a swimming turn could lead to mastery with less physical practice. Even more profound, the discovery showed that mental training had the power to change the physical structure of the brain.
Screen Addiction: Manipulating America
January 25th, 2007Did you know that the Nazis provided slave laborers with prostitutes?! According to this Independent article, “The idea was conceived by Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi SS chief, as an incentive for slave labourers.”
For years, I’ve had suspicion that the ubiquitous availability of free pornography on the Internet had a PSYOP component. I didn’t bother trying to articulate the hunch, or research it further. The topic seemed too weird and disturbing, even for me.
However, after reading that Independent article about the Nazi sex slaves (and the piece below about addictions to various electronic screens), I have to wonder: Is the Internet being used as a force multiplier of the sex-for-the-slaves concept that was used by the Third Reich?
I’m sure someone with a formal psychology background could comment on the lizard brain components of our behavior, and how the visual cortex is an easy vector to access our lizard brains…
In the meantime, keep these weird concepts in mind as you read this excellent piece by Nancy Levant.
Via: News with Views:
How do free people say good-bye to freedom? This is the only real question people must ask themselves unless one happens to be a billionaire. As wealth is now the only badge of freedom, and as the American masses continue to lose jobs, private property, Constitutional rights, opportunity, and intellectual capacity, it is clear that our trajectory is spiraling downward into the new dictatorial definitions of our political handlers. Feudalism is alive and well on the homeland, and we are trapped like rats in constant states of mass manipulation and unadulterated ignorance.
It’s been obvious for centuries that clear warnings cannot be heard by historically challenged people. Americans are completely ignorant when it comes to the history of this nation and the world – remarkably ignorant. They have never studied the history of the Federal Reserve, their educational system, nor their Constitutional government. Instead, they have blindly accepted everything that televised elites have dictated on their behalf. American people STILL haven’t learned to READ pending legislation or to watch the money exchangers. They are playing the global monopoly game.
Today’s American has fallen victim to reality manipulation through all forms of screen entertainments – from tell-a-vision to computer game addictions. The “science†of visual manipulation is hard core science, and why American people are, in fact, addicted to “screens.†Between the flashing lights, colors, and sound combinations, American people are now literally addicted to computer and tell-a-vision devices. Silence in homes has become virtually impossible to bear, and both children and adults find themselves “virtual slaves†to the electronics in their possession. This addiction was not by accident. This was “science†created to pacify and capture the attention of entire nations so that a new breed of government and governors could take control unnoticed. It worked, and “it†is called mind control.
Research Credit: Life After the Oil Crash
If Tesco and Wal-Mart Are Friends of the Earth, Are There Any Enemies Left?
January 25th, 2007Via: Guardian:
You batter your head against the door until you begin to wonder whether it is a door at all. Suddenly it opens, and you find yourself flying through space. The superstores’ green conversion is astonishing, wonderful, disorientating. If Tesco and Wal-Mart have become friends of the earth, are there any enemies left?
America, China, India and South Korea All Adding to Their Oil Reserves
January 24th, 2007HA! Look at the reasons as to why these countries are boosting their reserves. Oh sure, this has nothing to do with Peak Oil!
Tell me another one.
Via: Bloomberg:
George W. Bush’s decision to double the emergency oil stockpile in the U.S. may help to stem a six- month slide in prices as China, India and South Korea also add to demand by bolstering their defenses against shortages.
Oil gained the most since September 2005 yesterday after the U.S. Energy Department said it will boost the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1.5 billion barrels over 20 years. China, where imports rose 15 percent last year, began to fill its reserve in October. India also plans to double its inventories.
The U.S. plan “helps puts a floor in the market,” said Antoine Halff, head of energy research at Fimat USA Inc. in New York. “It creates competition for the same barrels. It tightens the market on top of the strategic reserve builds elsewhere such as China.”
Oil consumers are increasing stockpiles on concern that political instability in the Middle East, terrorism and hurricanes may cause supply disruptions. Governments may buy during dips in prices, supplementing demand growth that’s forecast to slow this year by the International Energy Agency.
Related: Energy Scarcity vs. Cost of the War in Iraq
