This is rock # 7

Check out Dana Carey. He isn't afraid to slam a drum head really hard. Its amazing how appropriate and good the sound is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAlcvIcjFI4

Tool rocks.

How many will die?

So we are just sitting back and allowing this guy to build nuclear reactors and Klingon looking airplanes. (Ahmadinejad)

I have a feeling that as long as this guy is in power that a war with the west is inevitable. I could easily be way wrong. After all, Kim Jong and Castro have the same feeling and they both seem to be withering away. I hope Iran is just another Cuba and N Korea. Someone to keep an eye on but no real threat.

The Bible Is Questionable

Whether it be the Zoroastrian influence over the Jews during the exile(the style and image of God significantly changed from before the exile, if you don't believe it then read the Old Testament), contradictions in the narrative(one of many examples would be the number of soldiers the army in 1 Chronicles 21:5 and 2 Samuel 24:9), the changing of the new testament in order to compete with other religions(New Testament writers may have drawn their "Divine Man themes" of Jesus in order to compete with Greco-Roman Mystery Religions from the Hellenization of the Middle East), or the Elohist and Jahwist author's of the Torah having
God favor their respective region of Israel...the Bible seems too malleable to me. It is analogous of a political smear campaign. We bitch and moan on RTP's so much about nasty politics and the Bible seems up to par with it. Did you know there are over 30,000 protestant christian faiths? We can't even agree on the message. Its a puzzle. Whenever I discuss these matters with a Christian they always end up with, "well you just have to have faith."This tells me that there is no reason behind their beliefs.( 2nd definition of faith on dictionary.com is "belief that is not based on proof"). Why do we slam communists that still believe socialism is a good cause if all reason and proof are against it? They must be going on faith.

What I think that is undeniable is that there is a creator. We can see him in nature. We can see him through reason. But our religions are made by humans and inspired by humans. It seem is obvious.

Here are some quotes by Thomas Paine in his book The Age of Reason that inspired me "It has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion. . . . The circumstance that has now taken place in France of the total abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity and of the theology that is true.""I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe."

Go ahead...kick me off the blog...I dare you...

Excellent History Lesson on Useful Idiots from the BBC(!)

Hat Tip Ace:  An awesome two-part documentary (unfortunately audio-only) by the BBC on people Joseph Stalin labelled "useful idiots".  They discuss Useful Idiots from Stalin's time up to the present.  They define Useful Idiots in the program, but, my quick definition would be Western Intelligentsia that are enamoured of dictators (most cases Socialist/Communist) who apologize for or willfully overlook the horrors those dictators committed because they were pursuing policies the Useful Idiots thought were for the greater good. 

They start with the New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Walter Duranty,who wrote in the New York Times that there was no mass starvation in the Ukraine, that Russia was an awesome socialist paradise, when in fact hundreds of thousands of people were starving to death, and Duranty knew it.  They continue on through Mao, throw the left a bone by covering Apartheid South Africa and Chile under Pinochet, and end up with Saddam in Iraq and the Iranian theocracy. 

They interview many of the surviving Useful Idiots themselves, some of whom have repented and some of whom still cling to their favored dictators.  Useful Idiots seem to be mostly found on the Left/Liberal side of things as they are prone to favor strong governments to force the desired change on the nation; being so well-educated, they think they can take a nuanced view of things and accept that you need to "break a few eggs to make an omelet" as Lenin said.  Hmm, can we see any cases of this in present-day America?  How 'bout you current New York Times Pulitzter Prize-winning journalist Tom Friedman? How about you famous movie star Sean Penn?  As the reporter says, Conservatives tend to be generally skeptical and independent so are not as naturally drawn to these Strong Men, but it happens.  A Liberal would of course say, "oh yeah, what about Hitler you right wing neanderthal?!"  Any RTP&GGer would quickly slap that shit down by pointing out that Hitler was a Socialist too, and not Conservative at all.

That a government-controlled and generally liberal agency like the BBC would do this, when they have been guilty of many cases of Useful Idiotism themselves, is surprising and admirable. 

Part 1 you can play from the link above.  It covers the worst cases (Stalin and Mao).  The later cases are covered in Part 2, which I can only find as a download version, but is also very worth your time.  There is no coverage of Hitler, maybe because The Left hated him anyway, so didn't apologize for him.  Of course, Stalin and Mao's atrocities dwarfed Hitler's (as horrible as they were).

I think these are Must Listen.  They're about 20 minutes each.

Social Security is a one million dollar rip off!

This is not news for anyone. But this very short article will illustrate using dollar amounts as to how big of a rip off it is. Most people simply don't care that social security is a rip off that the government uses to take more of your money. This is a issue that I think the younger generation needs to get a little angry over and demand from politicians that some serious reforms be made to the system. (This article is a little long and is not the main article but well worth reading.) Social security, an unfunded liability, is also at the heart of America's looming debt bomb.

The debt numbers start to get really hairy when you add in liabilities under Social Security and Medicare — in other words, when you account for the present value of those future payments in the same way that businesses have to account for the obligations they incur[GAAP rules]. Start with the entitlements and those numbers get run-for-the-hills ugly in a hurry: a combined $106 trillion in liabilities for Social Security and Medicare, or more than five times the total federal, state, and local debt we’ve totaled up so far. In real terms, what that means is that we’d need $106 trillion in real, investable capital, earning 6 percent a year, on hand, today, to meet the obligations we have under those entitlement programs. For perspective, that’s about twice the total private net worth of the United States. (A little more, in fact.)

This quote is a little bit of a digression from the main point of the post, but his illustrates the fact that the most if not all of the money that the younger generation is paying into the system will simply not be there when we retire and the fact that social security is at the heart of America's coming bankruptcy. (Take away the unfunded liabilities and America's debt problem is still very significant and will be a major drain on the economy's future ability to produce which will not leave enough to fund these programs.) Social security and Medicare taxes take about 15% of your monthly income, assuming you earn a modest, not so modest for me at the moment, 3000 dollars a month this would be 450 dollars a month. Where is this 15% of your monthly income or 450 dollars a month going? It is being wasted and squandered. So how much money could a person born in 1988 expect to have if he took the this 15% of his monthly income and invested it in an investment with a modest 5% return?

Social Security and Medicare taxes are 15.3% of his income. If he[ the person born in 1988 who makes 30,000 a year for his life] invested that 15.3% of his income instead, he would be investing $4,590. Supposing that this annual contribution was invested each year for the next 48 years and the principal was collecting 5% interest, instead of the Social Security value of $212,938.88, he would have $863,036.55! That's a little more than four times the return that Social Security is 'promising.'

So basically social security is not only stealing 212,938.88 dollars of your income directly from taxes, 450 dollars a month--which is in reality much more than that as I am sure most of us here plan on earning at least 60,000 a year plus the fact that the tax will have to go up so the initial amount invested or the money directly taxed would be at least doubled and the return from the private investment would be more than double the million dollars rate of return-- it is also stealing the potential uses of this money which could include the potential of earning you 1 million dollars over your lifetime. So basically the government will have stolen over 1 million dollars of the average person's total lifetime income. This is very ingenious way of stealing a significant sum of money from you over your lifetime. The average yearly income earned is 50,000 times this by 40 and you get a total lifetime income of about 2 million dollars. Add this 1 million, still assuming the 30,000 yearly income, and you get three million. So about a potential third of your lifetime income is being stolen.

This is only one little way that the government and the economic system is stealing the fruits of our labor. Combine this with the system of credit, look at how much of your mortgage payments actually go towards the principal; the deprecation of the dollar through inflation,; and all of the other taxes to name a few. Combine all of these together and a significant percentage of our income is being consumed by the government. In the case of social security is could be costing you 1 million dollars over the course of your lifetime and around 450 dollars a month. No big deal though. (Our whole economy is one big bubble after another, none of it is real. While all of these developments in the political and economic realm are nothing new the effects that these various cycles or bouts have are cumulative and is leading to a very big economic upheaval that will occur in our lifetimes which will basically take what little we have left, and along with the transformative effects this will have with our relationship to the government.)

An Example of How Crushing Benefits and Taxes Suppress Hiring

Just a quick link to a good short article in the Wall Street Journal where the author uses his own business to explain why he refrains from hiring new employees.  It's not a big article, I'll just quote the summary :

A life in business is filled with uncertainties, but I can be quite sure that every time I hire someone my obligations to the government go up. From where I sit, the government's message is unmistakable: Creating a new job carries a punishing price.

Mind control. Is it possible?

(This is another very broad topic that covers how a child's mind develops and learns to think and operate. I don't have the knowledge to completely illustrate my point. So there will probably be holes, but the basic ideal is correct. This post will probably be hard to follow. I plan to develop this topic in far greater detail for a thesis. I am sure others have done this with this topic.) This topic reminds me of the Mule out of the "Foundation" novels who can control people's minds or "1984". A device to control the minds of men is still in the future but there exists today a way to control the thoughts and functioning of the human mind that is a permanent part of our society/culture and political dialogue. This topic deals with the process by which the human mind operates on a basic level and how the, to most people, scary thought of being called racist or prejudice is an attempt to prevent the human mind from functioning or thinking. This goes into the realm of political correctness which has the same chilling and paralyzing effect on the mind as the above mentioned words. As can be shown by studying the development of the human mind and how it operates, it would be no exaggeration to label these dreaded and destructive labels as mind control. To be labeled with one of these words can mean the end of a person's career and physical harm done to them by the angry zombie mob who can not stand the harsh rebuke of one who dares to think and point out reality to them. This process of preventing thinking is prevalent through the education system and helps to cripple the development of children's minds. Why would there be a need to control people's minds? Because in order for politicians to push through their agenda that most people don't support requires that people suspended thinking. What better way to do this than by making people to think that the normal functioning of the human mind is racist, prejudices or in general a bad thing. This "mind control runs deep throughout our culture.

This is a quote from the beginning of "The Second Foundation". The Mule, who can control men's minds, is having a conversation with Pritcher, a man that was once an enemy of the Mule but is now converted into a loyal follower of the Mule by the Mule's mind control powers. The mule is trying to find the Second Foundation and is sending out an unconverted person to scour space for this Foundation. The Mule needs Pritcher to go along and watch this unconverted man to prevent him from going against the Mule.

"'No, I imagine not. But he's got an agile mind[the unconverted man], he's ambitious-and he's not Converted.'"
Pritcher's long jaw trembled for a bare instant, "I fail to see the advantage in that.'"
"'There is one, Pritcher. You're a resourceful and experienced man. You have given me good service,. But you are Converted. Your motivation is simply an enforced and helpless loyalty to myself. When you lost you native motivations, you lost something, some subtle drive, that I cannot possibly replace.'"
"'I don't feel that, sir, '" said Pritcher, grimly. "'I recall myself quite well as I was in the days when I was an enemy of yours. I feel none the inferior.'"
"'Naturally not,'" and the Mule's mouth twitched into a smile. "'Your judgment in this mater is scarcely objective.'" [The Mule goes on to state that the unconverted man has full use of his mind and has initiative.] "'Then'", said Pritcher, still insistent, "'why not remove my own Conversion, if you think that will improve me. I can scarcely be mistrusted, now.'" "'That never, Pritcher. While you are within arm's reach, or blaster reach, of myself, you will remain firmly held in Conversion. If I were to release you this minute, I would be dead the next'"
The general's nostrils flared. "'I am hurt that you should think so.'"
"'I don't mean to hurt you, but it is impossible for you to realize what your feelings would be if free to form themselves along the lines of your natural motivation. The human mind resents control. The ordinary human hypnotist cannot hypnotize a person against his will for that reason. I can, because I'm not a hypnotist, and, believe me, Pritcher, the resentment that you cannot show and do not even know you possess is something I wouldn't want to face.'"
Pritcher's head bowed. Futility wrenched him and left him gray and haggard inside.'"

This very real mind control has the very same effect that this fictitious Mule has Pritcher.

This is a observation that I made while having a discussion where I ended up being, somewhat, jokingly called a racist. (Having a racial preference for a future wife is also racist.) In the conversation, I referred to Koreans and Japanese people as all Chinese. This is racist to group these people together and refer to them as the same thing. Historically, Japanese and Koreans developed from the Chinese culture. To group these people together in our minds based on similar characteristics: from the perspective of an outsider to these cultures these people all look very similar; have similar writing systems; similar religions; hear one of these people speaking in their native tongue, see famous landmarks or their countries and look at their books, one would not be able to distinguish these cultures apart unless one were educated about these cultures. It would also be racist to be walking down the street at night and become more alert when one sees a black male walking with a hoody on. This would be prejudice--or to pre judge a situation or something. The fact is that people do put people's into groups. This becomes a problem for the person doing the stereotyping when their previous beliefs interfere with their ability to judge the person as a individual when they actually come into contact with that person. Although this is the process by which the human mind develops and functions, grouping things based on their similarities in our minds is racist and not to be done: in other words, don't think.

Grouping, or putting things into groups based on their similarities is fundamental to how the human mind develops and works, "When a child observes that two objects (which he will later learn to designate a 'tables') resemble each other, but are different from four other objects ('chairs'), his mind is focusing on a particular attribute of the objects (their shape), then isolating them according to their differences, and integrating them as units into separate groups according to their similarities. [...] The ability to regard entities as units is man's distinctive method of cognition..." This is the same process that a person, maybe uneducated about the different people's of the world, uses to distinguish these various peoples: one groups these people together based on their similar characteristics. When one sees a person or object, their mind groups them into categories based on the characteristics of that person. The normal functioning of your mind is racist.

"Fox News host Greta Van Susteren is apologizing for 'a doozy of a mistake' made on her show Monday when a picture of Shirley Sherrod was used to illustrate a segment on Rep. Maxine Waters, the Huffington Post reports." This somewhat illustrates this topic. I bet Greta and Fox News will be labeled racist before long. The fact is that all people of a different race than the one you belong to do all look very similar. Well why is this racist? Why is the normal functioning of the human mind racist?

This thought control has the effect of stupefying a people, preventing them from thinking, and suppressing thought and action.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

This post does not go into great detail into how the human mind functions, so the point that political correctness and the labels racist and prejudice is a form of mind control will seem a hyperbole to most; but if one reads about the functioning of the human mind and how it develops, this will not seem such an exaggeration. A good book for this topic is Ayn Rand's "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" or any other book on the topic. If humans lived in the ocean like a fish, would they realize that they are wet? Or in a simpler form, does a fish know that it is wet? Do people realize that their thoughts and minds are being controlled in a subtle way? How many times have you had to not voice what you were really thinking for fear of being labeled something? Do people realize the fact that most are enslaved to the system of credit? Do we realize that our economic system is not capitalist? Taking early America as a base by which to judge the level of freedoms we have, how free are we? Thinking is becoming a dangerous thing to do. Who ever invented this method of mind control deserves a lot of respect for their genius, although maybe in a bad way.