Email from Zahir Ebrahim, Islamabad, Pakistan*

*September 11, 2012*

Dear friends and well-wishers.

AsSalaam Alekum. Greetings from Pakistan. On this eleventh anniversary of 9/11, I find myself pensively brooding over my own journey in life since that dastardly day in infamy. With my children now grown up and pursuing their professional lives in the United States, I have moved to Pakistan to
once again re-attempt to re-start my life in Islamabad after a hiatus of more than three decades. My adult life mostly being spent in the Boston area studying engineering, and in Silicon Valley, California, building or contributing to America’s great military-industrial and academic complex as
an engineer, tax-payer, and finally as parent.

From that lofty perch of “Mr. Clean hands”, I imagine it is easy to opine the following commentary as an expat. returning home to pitiful surroundings, and for which one has contributed nothing towards its
amelioration. Permit me give it a try.

Life here in Islamabad is very humorous, to say the least. For, a sense of humor is surely what it takes to survive its daily travails: the daily 6 to 8 hours of load-shedding of electricity during the hot summer which has only now abated somewhat; no water in the taps unless one is willing to pay
1500 rupees (about US $15) for a private water tanker service which appears to be financially benefitting the same governmental agency staff responsible for officially supplying tap water and for which they also bill you quarterly whether or not any water trickles out of the faucet (the scam
in fact appears to me to be a thinly veiled way to privatize all water supply by way of extortion and other pretexts of inefficiency, while drinking water has already been effectively privatized, my monthly bill being an additional 2000 rupees on the average, paid to Nestle); frequent armed police check-points on city streets as if Pakistan has moved to Palestine; long lines of taxis and small cars in front of gas stations which form every Wednesday evening because CNG (Compressed Natural Gas
which is now priced almost at parity with petrol) is not available Thursday through Saturday; continuous demoralizing news and commentary floods the 500 news channels which make the plebeian want to long for the *Messiah *and the *Mehdi;* just to mention a few items off the top of my head which must induce a great deal of humor in daily existence in order to bear it. That humor naturally leads one to seeking refuge in religion, and consequently what passes as spiritualism, meaning, a resignation to fate while *waiting for Allah*, is rapidly rising to its zenith here. The mosques are full, and there are several belonging to different sects, in almost every street. In my street alone, I have counted four, and another two or three in the next street over. I don’t need an alarm clock here because I get five wake-up calls a day in quadraphonic surround sound.

And Yet, there are also petrol-guzzling Mercedes and BMWs roaming the streets of Islamabad without a care; fancy car dealerships, shops, boutiques, and restaurants which would make the upscale hangout of *Santana Row* in San Jose California in need of a face-lift; and the elite are
living as if they have a special tunnel that daily takes them straight from their posh homes in the outskirts into *Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard,*by-passing all the misery behind the
*Iron Wall* and totally oblivious of it.

Most of my long-time friends are drawing handsome compensation packages as vaunted academics, or corporate widgets and CEOs selling cell-phones to *field niggers* or providing software services to *the white man*, or as poster-child of various governmental bodies suitably anointed with lofty
titles. Higher education being the sassiest gravy-train in the civilian sector as it evidently requires the least amount of talent and scruples to really make a killing under the strong leadership of Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission. I had previously written about it in the scandalous *Plagiarism
Case*I
had accidentally uncovered. It was evidently as dead on arrival at the *supreme court of
Pakistan*as it was among the distinguished academics of Pakistan. Diploma
mills abound in this country as if trying to compete with America’s two thousand colleges and universities in sheer numbers – numbers evidently being the hallmark of both learnedness as well as piety here.

Sheer numbers, whether it be the number of servants employed in a house (often exceeding the number of family occupants in the elite homes of Islamabad by a factor of two or three), or the number of papers published (often exceeding the highest acclaimed Nobel laureate’s in the respective
field by a factor of at least ten), or the numbers of *hajj* performed (don’t even ask), or the number of gun-totting security guards manning the front gate – all count for status here. Unfortunately, I too have one thin scare-crow sitting at my gate – but one is not a number that matters in the
race to nowhere here. Some with their dual citizenship, and the *white man’s * Passport of any color, and others eagerly trying to acquire theirs, a comfortable life-style is the carefree lot of a handful who seem to own most everything here. I am not even speaking of *Military Inc.*, who evidently own most of the wealth and real-estate of Pakistan. I am only speaking of civvies I know of.

I seem to have sadly escaped all the lofty charactership which the Pakistani society evidently cultivates among the genius of our peoples, having contributed directly into the *white man’s* military-industrial complex for the highest level of corruption which begets all others – intellectual corruption. Instead of working for the benefit of my own peoples in a labor of love as only a handful of my friends have endeavored, I have helped – like the millions of other Silicon Valley engineers –
buildup the *white man’s ability to destroy* us. So I can hardly throw stones at others
who are merely trying to do well for themselves – with the only means they know how.

The *house niggers* over here however, are a different species altogether. They are sadly funny in way. They have taken over Pakistan across the full spectrum of social intercourse – from the military to the economy to the media to the elected to the bureaucrat to the mullah to the judge to the
professor to the so called NGOs largely populated with ex-military and secular humanists with foreign degrees – in all their Hegelian Dialectic variations. I dare to think that the sex prostitutes working the streets and nearly ubiquitous, are probably the most honest and hardworking of all professionals here. I don’t know any yet, but I suspect I may rather prefer their company.

The amount of bullshit which passes for great wisdom and profound knowledge over here is simply astounding. Everyone is a saint and a scholar. “Experts” abound. I am frequently informed how honest they each are, *“not a haram morsel has been fed to my children”* is the common refrain as the
pious bow in prayer five times daily in their million dollar homes.

The trend of self-deception arguably tops the United States. The bullshit there at least stands on the giant foundations of a super-power who needs a compliant public. Here we don’t even need foundations to build tall totem poles to get a compliant public. Hey, we are ahead of the US in something!”

Aangirfan,  a very informative blog, argues that Al Jazeera is under Western intelligence control:

A. Remember that lots of Moslems work for the CIA and its friends. (Foreign Arabs clamor to join Mossad, IDF)

“Thousands of foreign Arabs have sent requests to Israeli government agencies … offering to serve … Mossad.

“Israel’s Foreign Ministry told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper that it is receiving requests even from ‘members of Arab parliaments, members of political movements and other important political figures.'”

B. Tiny Qatar played a very big part in toppling Gaddafi in Libya (Wired.com)

C. Qatar’s Al-Jazeera was set up by two French-Israelis, David and Jean Frydman.

D. The current ruler of Qatar was reportedly put into power with the help of the CIA and MI6.

E. Qatar has a giant air base used by the USA.
According to a former US intelligence contractor: the main source of support for the Libyan rebels came from Q-SOC, the Qatari special forces.

Q-SOC trained the rebels.

The Qataris were the first foreign military on the ground providing military training.

Qatar provided air support.

The Qatari military are trained by British and French forces.

Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV played its part in helping the CIA and its friends topple the regimes of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt.

Now Al-Jazeera is helping the CIA and its friends against Syria.

Let’s look at some history:

Al-Jazeera has recruited a number of former BBC journalists; BBC journalists are believed to have connections to MI6 and its friends.

Al-Jazeera also has links to the CIA’s Voice of America. (televised.)

And, Al-Jazeera has links to the Muslim Brotherhood which has long worked for MI6 and the CIA.

Thierry Meyssan, at Voltaire Network, on 26 September 2011, tells us more about Qatar’s Al-Jazeera.

(http://www.voltairenet.org/Wadah-Khanfar-Al-Jazeera-and-the)

According to Meyssan:

1. Al-Jazeera was conceived by two French-Israeli personalities, the David and Jean Frydman brothers.

2. BBC journalists were recruited to launch Al-Jazeera.

3. The new emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, had toppled his father with the help of London and Washington.

4. Sheikh Hamad authorized the Israeli Ministry of Commerce to open an office in Doha.

Mahmoud Jibril, the new boss of Libya. He is also the boss of Jtrack. And allegedly he is a CIA asset.

5. Sheikh Hamad brought in a firm called JTrack to help al-Jazeera.

“From Morocco to Singapore, JTrack has trained most of the political leaders backed by the United States and Israel, often mere heredity puppets…”

6. Al-Jazeera played its part in the Arab Spring.

“In Egypt the uprising was harnessed in the interest of a single element of the opposition: the Muslim Brotherhood…”

7. The boss of JTrack is Mahmoud Jibril.

As the the number two man in the Libyan government, Jibril organised the deregulation of Libya’s socialist economy and the privatization of its public enterprises.

8. Jibril has personal relationships with almost all the Arab and Southeast Asian leaders.

Jibril has created trading companies, including one dealing with Malaysian and Australian timber in partnership with his French friend, Bernard-Henri Levy.

9. Jibril has studied in the USA and he is a member of the the Muslim Brotherhood.

10. With Jibril as prime minister of the rebel government of Libya, “the height of duplicity was reached when a replica of the Green Square and Bab-el-Azizia was built in the studios of Al-Jazeera in Doha, where footage of false images was shot portraying pro-US ‘insurgents’ entering Tripoli.”

Al-Jazeera and Sky News broadcasted these fake images.

Lew Rockwell interviews Jesse Trentadue about the apparent murder of his brother Kenneth Trentadue over the Oklahoma City bombing and the secret infiltration of patriot groups by the sinister PATCON:

“But then, in the course of my war with the FBI, I stumbled across reference in one of the documents they produced to an operation called PATCON, P-A-T-C-O-N. I found out that PATCON was an acronym for Patriot Conspiracy. And the FBI immediately began to back-peddle away from PATCON when I pressed them about what is PATCON. They came back and said, well, it was a small operation in Alabama designed to catch some folks who had stolen night-vision goggles from the military and were selling them. But it looked bigger than that. It looked much bigger than that. When I looked at the documents, I could see there were references to PATCON Group 1, PATCON Group 2, and a whole bunch of PATCON operations all over the United States. And I, over the years, kept pushing and pushing on PATCON, and more and more information started to come out.

But where the PATCON story really took off was last summer. I received a call from a man who told me, he said, I’ve been reading the information on the Internet about PATCON. He said, you have all the pieces, you just haven’t put them together. And I said, what do you mean. He said, you don’t see the big picture, and I’ll come up and – I’ll come out and see you and tell you about it, so he came to see me. He had been one of the major undercover operatives for the FBI in PATCON for about 10 years. PATCON ran throughout the ’90s.

His health was bad. He said that he wanted to, I guess, set the record straight about what had happened. He had joined the FBI in filtrating about 23 groups. And he said his objective was, he felt that these groups were dangerous and a threat to the country. But looking back on it, he now sees that the real objective of the FBI was to infiltrate and then fight these groups so they could be crushed. And he said they targeted the right wing, the military movement, evangelical Christian right, and others who were out of favor perhaps with the government or were critical of the government. He said that Ruby Ridge was a PATCON operation, Waco was a PATCON operation. He told me that he believed Oklahoma City was a PATCON operation but he couldn’t say for sure because he wasn’t involved in that operation. But he thought it was a PATCON operation because the others who had worked with him on PATCON were there.

And PATCON is an ugly, ugly story. According to this man, that PATCON was running guns and ammunition, automatic weapons out of the same gun store in Arizona that’s now the subject of the Fast and Furious scandal, and doing it in the ’90s. So when Attorney General Holder says the government new nothing about PATCON – about Fast and Furious, that this a rogue operation run by a local ATF agent in Arizona, that’s not true. The equivalent of PATCON, the prototype of PATCON was being run by the FBI and the ATF in the mid 1990s. Only there, they were funneling weapons and ammunition to the militia movement and the right, the extreme right of this country. And that’s the real story. And if folks would get beyond Fast and Furious and look where the real story is, it will be PATCON.

I’d like to talk a little bit more about Elohim City. It’s a fascinating place because of the people who were there. McVeigh was there. The Midwest Bank Robbers were there. Guthrie was there. Strassmeir was there. And as I started to probe the FBI for information related to Elohim City, I found out the ATF had informants there. The Secret Service was involved. And recently, I discovered that the CIA was involved. Now you have to ask yourself, what in the hell is the CIA doing involved with a right wing, evangelical Christian group in eastern Oklahoma. And when I pressed the CIA for documents and records linking Strassmeir, CIA, and Elohim City to the bombing, I received a denial from the CIA. And the reason they gave for not releasing anything to me was, and I quote, “Unauthorized release of this information could cause grave damage to our national security,” unquote. For the first time in all these years I’ve been fighting the government for information under the Freedom of Information Act that is the only time that national security has ever been used as a reason not to turn over documents. And it is a bullet-proof exemption. All they have to do is say “national security,” you can’t look beyond that statement. But I think it’s telling that they raised and played that national security card when I asked for information linking Strassmeir, the CIA, Elohim City, and the bombing. Immediately, they’re back with that national security claim.”

[h/t Becky Akers, at LRC for the lead]

As soon as I read this quote in a story about Aussie mining magnate and multi-billionaire, Gina Rinehart, I knew something more was going on than a debate over the nastiness of a rich woman mouthing off in the press.

Here’s the quote from “The Iron Lady,” Sidney Morning Herald, January 12, 2012:

“Prince Philip had just met Gina Rinehart, ranked by US business media company Forbes as the 19th most powerful woman in the world – 30 places ahead of Queen Elizabeth II. Rinehart is the richest Australian in history (and far richer than the Queen), with a net worth of about $10 billion. At least, that is one recent estimate.”

Oh? Someone wants to let you know that there are much richer people than the Queen? Could that be because the Queen (the Crown) is entwined with the Rothschilds and the City of London?

That might explain the extremely negative slant of the major media toward Ms. Rinehart’s no doubt thoughtless, heartless, and superficial remarks (like that doesn’t apply to the content of most newspapers).

Articles peppered with demeaning personal references pop up.

In the piece I just mentioned, I found  this:

“He said he wanted to remember her as the ‘neat, trim, capable and attractive young lady’ she had been rather than ‘the slothful, vindictive and devious baby elephant that you have become’. “

Not too often anyone refers to the richest woman in the world in those terms.

So what’s really going on?

Some conspiratorial folks seem to have got the real story:

The Rothschild related climate-controllers (backed by the CIA/Rockefeller funding) are attacking rich magnates opposed to the climate-scam tax.

See, “Palmer says green groups funded by CIA .”

And here’s more at Barnaby is Right :

“Apparently the Canberra media gallery and the social mediasphere are all abuzz over comments by anti-CO2-derivatives-scam activist, self-made billionaire and recently honoured National Living Treasure, Clive Palmer….. here is a news article from the Brisbane Times this afternoon that does at least include a number of complete quotes from Mr Palmer’s press conference.

Since you will only see/hear selectively edited sound bites on the TV and radio news this evening – because after all, it is vital to smear the character of anyone threatening a legal challenge to the bankers’ CO2 derivatives scam – I’ll reproduce the Brisbane Times’ piece in full.

I assume that readers of this blog are significantly less predisposed to hasty judgements and attacking the messenger rather than dispassionately assessing the message, than the average egotistical narcissist twit on Twitter … and in the Canberra press gallery:

Mining magnate Clive Palmer has accused the Australian Greens and Queensland environmental campaigners of “treason” in conspiring with US powers to destroy the nation’s coal industry.

Mr Palmer was expected to give his response to the passing of the Gillard government’s mining tax at a media conference called this afternoon, but the multi-billionaire was concerned only with perceived collusion between the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency and the environmental lobby.

Mr Palmer turned his attention to a report by Greenpeace and other anti-coal groups, titled Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom, which outlined an environmental campaign designed to disrupt and delay the expansion of the industry.

While brandishing a copy of the report this afternoon, Mr Palmer said it was the result of a CIA conspiracy involving the US-based Rockefeller Foundation.

“This is funded by the CIA,” he said.

“You only have to go back and read … the reports to the US Congress that sets up the Rockefeller Foundation as a conduit of CIA funding.

“You only have to look at the secret budget which was passed by Congress last year – bigger than our whole national economy – with the CIA to ensure that.

“You only have to read the reports to US Congress where the CIA reported to the president that their role was to ensure the US competitive advantage – that’s how you know it’s funded by the CIA.”

Mr Palmer argued descendants of US oil magnate John Rockefeller had bankrolled the report, in a bid to disrupt and damage the Australian coal industry.

He went on to say that the document confirmed local environmental campaigners, including Lock the Gate Alliance president Drew Hutton and Greens leader Bob Brown, were improperly collaborating with foreign multinationals.

“The Greens have not been providing you with the full information about where their money comes from or what it’s about,” he said.

“I think the Greens [candidates] in this upcoming state election … should resign if they’re being funded by an offshore political power.

“It’s paramount [sic] to treason and something needs to be done about it.”

Mr Palmer made little mention of mining tax legislation, passed last night in the Senate, saying he had no concern with it.

“I don’t care about any tax. It won’t affect my life one way or the other,” he said.

Mr Palmer said the controversial tax, which aims to distribute the spoils of Australia’s mining boom, would have no affect on his businesses.

“It probably won’t cost me anything, because I’m not mining anything that comes under the classification of it. So, you know, it’s not something that’s worried me,” he said.

Mr Palmer said he would not join Australia’s third largest iron ore miner, Fortescue Metals, owned by Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, in mounting a legal challenge.

“Certainly Andrew Forrest has indicated he’ll do that – he has major concerns with it, because it affects him, affects his business and affects the ability of his workers,” Mr Palmer said.

UPDATE:

Andrew Bolt at least shows some restraint in joining the mockers, but does make one worthy observation (emphasis added) –

The Opposition will be thinking, oh, damn.

That’s not to say there wasn’t a straw from which this grass castle was built. From the CIA’s website, this book review:

She also does a fine job in recounting the intriguing story of how the CIA worked with existing institutions, such as the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and established numerous “bogus” foundations to “hide” its funding of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its other covert activities. Everything came a cropper in 1967, however, as a result of press articles, especially revelations in the long-gone Ramparts magazine.

An interesting post from  FauxCapitalist on the “mainstreaming” of alternative activists. You can also call this commodification of dissent or dissent-porn:

“For someone who is, by his own words, allegedly one of the biggest threats to the New World Order, Alex Jones certainly has some high-powered connections into mainstream media, as mostly vividly demonstrated by his February 28, 2011 appearance on The View.

His June 8, 2012 Infowars.com article, Alternative Media Becoming Mainstream, may have been a sign of things to come, given this celebrity lineup in the two months since, as shown on his prisonplanet.tv show archives:

Richard Belzer – August 16
“Alex is also joined by actor, stand-up comedian and author Richard Belzer. Mr. Belzer has an expansive career as an actor and has appeared in NBC police dramas such as Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

John Rocker – August 15
“On the Wednesday, August 15 edition of the Alex Jones Show, Alex talks with John Rocker, the retired American Major League Baseball relief pitcher who played for the Atlanta Braves and other teams.”

Dave Mustaine – July 26
“On the Thursday July 25th edition of the Alex Jones Show, Alex airs an interview he recorded this past weekend with American virtuoso guitarist and legendary lead vocalist for the almost three-decade strong, highly influential thrash-metal band Megadeth, Dave Mustaine.”

Charlie Daniels – July 20
“Alex also welcomes back to the show to country and southern rock music legend Charlie Daniels.”

I dug up this piece on “good debt” and its problems from the Baltimore Chronicle (2006). It’s my second “Penny Whys” column. There were only two, because I got busy with writing “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets” after that.

As you can see, I was sounding off against college education a long time back.

And folks who know me know that the sounding off goes back to childhood. Getting me to even stick with high school was a protracted battle.

I wanted out at around 11 or 12. I day-dreamed  of working my way around the world.

If I couldn’t be a sailor (like Conrad), I could at least do something practical.

I would have liked to work for National Geographic. For which education wasn’t necessary, I thought. I could write. Why wouldn’t they hire me? Well, apparently, they wouldn’t.

I’m sure they don’t open letters from thirteen year olds in India.  I wrote to Boris Spassky around the same time,  asking about his latest strategy against Fischer. He didn’t reply either.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t a good student. I was.  But I learned much better on my own, had interests that didn’t match my subjects, and hated all the extra things that went with school.

As some kind of bitter karma, I ended up getting a Master’s in India (the minimum needed to get a job above starvation wages) and then had to redo my education in the US, which tends not to accept degrees from other countries. Out the door went all the books I had pent up inside. Between working several badly paid jobs, household duties, a small business, and night-school, there was less and less time for writing.

I wanted to go to a Catholic school and study theology and music theory. But I didn’t drive in those days, and I couldn’t make the classes on the bus. So I ended up in political science at Hopkins, which was the only place that offered classes that fit.

Course by course, working my way through at the rate of a couple a semester, I Iearned the Byzantine treacheries of the academic world, its ghettos, mafias, and Tammany Halls.

I don’t regret going through it, any more than soldiers regret going to war or mothers regret having children. It’s not possible to regret something that takes up half your life. You can only live with it as well as possible.

[The first column was “A Twelve Step Program for Debtaholics.”]

“In our last little chat, I talked about the addiction that drives consumers to spend in America, an addiction driven by a desperate loss of control over their financial future. No longer is a house, an education, or good health care a genteel burden your average upstanding citizen can shoulder on his own. Instead, it has become debt bondage….life-long servitude. And the enslaved ones yank at their chains in the only way they know—by recklessly throwing away money on consumer goods they hope will compensate them for their slavery. They buy to fill the queasy emptiness unsettling the pit of their stomachs.

But salvation by stuff is not in any gospel that Penny ever read. King Solomon—he of the supernumerary wives—had plenty of stuff too. But didn´t he sigh wearily that it was all vanity? Or was that the preacher in Ecclesiastes? Twenty years out of school, these things can get foggy.

The point is, the urge to look outside yourself for solutions to problems that stem within yourself is the source of addictive behavior. And buying stuff you don´t need is the definition of looking outside your self for solutions.

But Penny realizes that not all stuff is stuff you don´t need. In fact, the largest part of the modern consumer´s debt in the United States and the source of her perpetual anxiety is necessary debt, “good debt.” The kind that she feels proud to own up to, the kind that she staggers under for the natural term of her adult life with the game smile of a Christian being escorted into the catacombs. All for a good cause, it says, before it sets into rigor mortis.

Now, anyone who has picked up a newspaper or even switched on his TV has surely absorbed every nuance of the first of the “good debt” traps lying in wait for the unwary—the great housing hustle of the early twenty-first century. Actually, in America today it would be hard to find even a borderline member of the human species who had not slapped up hard against the phenomenon of home-as-honey-pot. And we also haven’t lacked for warnings about the advanced state of deterioration of another “good debt” trap—our health care system—since überwench Hillary decided to play Nurse Ratched with it in the boisterous days of William Jefferson’s regnum.

But the third “good debt” trap—the gargantuan price tag of education, lower, higher, and all sizes in between—seems to have slipped through our fiscal early-warning system, no doubt because a mega-tsunami of debt suddenly becomes manageable, worthy, and indeed downright righteous when it’s driven not just by vulgar splurging on run-of-the-mill consumer junk but by the sweat-and-blood payments of the solid citizenry on something so rarefied (and thus obviously much too elevated for us plebes to debate) as education.

Well—time to debate.

First, college costs rise faster than inflation and have done so for the last ten years. According to the report, “Trends in College Pricing 2005,” of the College Board, a non-profit association of 4,500 schools, colleges and universities, tuition costs at four-year private colleges grew at about the same rate as in 2004—5.9 percent—to $21,235.

The rate fell at four-year public universities to 7.1 percent (from 10.5), but the actual costs still increased by $5,491.

Second, Kal Chaney, author of Paying for College Without Going Broke, forecasts that “For the foreseeable future, college cost increases are going to exceed inflation…”

Add room and board to tuition, and the cost of a private college averages out to $29,026 per year, and at a four-year public college to $12,127. Over four years, that works out to the price of a modest bungalow and condominium. At least in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

But of course, it’s completely worth delivering this samurai chop to the family piggy bank because when Junior grows up to be a hair-transplant surgeon, bankruptcy lawyer, used car salesman, or—better yet—beltway lobbyist, it pays off big time. That’s the theory, anyway. But what the theory overlooks is that counting on a professional in the family means doubling the bill to fit in professional school fees. Three years of education at one of the nation’s tonier law schools, for instance, and you rack up at least a hundred twenty grand on the ..er..bar tab. So now we’re looking at something over two hundred grand for the whole business.

But so what? Aren’t we all worth it? Don’t we all deserve the very best? Don’t we love us enough to do this for us?

Apparently, vast numbers of college-intoxicated adults think so. But Penny—who has eyeballed more ivy halls than she cares to admit to—is here to tell you otherwise. No. Don´t do it. Think again. Need to get a job? There are much quicker ways. Need to make more money? Take that college fund and buy an education franchise…or a gas station. Need to get an education? Just remember it was Mark Twain who said he never let his schooling get in the way of his education. And he wasn´t kidding. Twain, Jack London, Benjamin Franklin, George Gershwin, Galileo…just a few of the geniuses who never finished college…and never needed to.

There is no longer any need to accept debt—even respectable debt—as a badge of honor of your socio-economic aspirations. From now on, the highest mark for smarts will go to those who avoid any kind of debt.

And even if you insist on going, there is no reason whatsoever for contracting a terminal case of insolvency.. Penny knows several ways you can get yourself a college degree for substantially less than the going rate, and do it with a lot less effort.

The point is there is no longer any need to accept debt—even respectable debt—as a badge of honor of your socio-economic aspirations. From now on, the highest mark for smarts will go to those who avoid any kind of debt.

Next time: How to get an education without getting into debt….or even into your car.

Until then,
Penny, giving you the whys of thrift, not just the hows.

Penny Whys is a column of personal finance written by Lila Rajiva, a political journalist and writer for the Daily Reckoning, a libertarian financial magazine headquartered in Baltimore.

Farmwars.info discusses another unmentionable in political discourse – the nature and extent of biological “interventions” by the US government:

“Can the military simply experiment on the American public at will? It would seem so.

PUBLIC LAW 105—85—NOV. 18, 1997: USE OF HUMAN SUBJECTS FOR TESTING OF CHEMICAL OR BIOLOGICAL AGENTS

SEC. 1078. RESTRICTIONS ON THE USE OF HUMAN SUBJECTS FOR TESTING OF CHEMICAL OR BIOLOGICAL AGENTS.

(a) PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES.—The Secretary of Defense may not conduct (directly or by contract)

(1) any test or experiment involving the use of a chemical agent or biological agent on a civilian population; or

(2) any other testing of a chemical agent or biological agent on human subjects.

(b) EXCEPTIONS.—Subject to subsections (c), (d), and (e), the prohibition in subsection (a) does not apply to a test or experiment carried out for any of the following purposes:

(1) Any peaceful purpose that is related to a medical, therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, or research activity.

(2) Any purpose that is directly related to protection against toxic chemicals or biological weapons and agents.

(2) Any law enforcement purpose, including any purpose related to riot control.

Notice that the exceptions negate the prohibitions. If an act is for a purpose labeled “peaceful,” such as for supposed “defense” experimentation, medical (vaccines), therapeutic, pharmaceutical (drugs), agricultural (GMOs), industrial, or research activity (this encompasses just about everything else) or law enforcement purposes, the use of biological agents is allowed on the public most likely without their permission or consent.

More experiments HERE.

Monsanto and Atlas Venture

And now Monsanto has recently signed a deal with Atlas Venture for funding of, well, who knows? Monsanto does. And Monsanto isn’t telling. But we do know that it will most likely be some sort of “disruptive innovation” because that is Atlas Venture’s specialty. “Atlas Venture is an early stage investment firm dedicated to financing disruptive innovation in Life Sciences and Technology.”

Definition of disruptive innovation/technology:

A new technology that has a serious impact on the status quo and changes the way people have been dealing with something, perhaps for decades. Music CDs all but wiped out the phonograph industry within a few years, and digital cameras are destined to eliminate the film industry. The most disruptive technologies in history have been the telephone, the computer (and all of its offshoots) and the Internet.

BP, Synthetic Genomics, and Atlas Venture

Just where does BP and the Gulf fit into this picture? Well, it just so happens that BP has a long term research and development deal with Synthetic Genomics, who’s founder is Craig Venter, who created Synthia – the flesh eating bacteria in the Gulf.

For more information about the Gulf Blue Plague and Synthia, the synthetic organism created by Craig Venter, see “The BP/Synthetic Genomics Project: The Gulf Blue Plague” by Michael Edward.

Craig Venter of Synthetic Genomics co-founded Celera Genomics with Atlas Venture team member Peter Barrett. These men have a mutual history of partnership in sequencing the human genome.

Peter Barrett (co-founder of Celera Genomics with J. Craig Venter of Synthetic Genome) is a Partner in the Life Sciences group and joined Atlas Venture in 2002. He spent 20 years in operating roles before becoming passionate about genomics and co-founding the first company to sequence the human genome, Celera Genomics.

About Celera:

Celera was founded in 1998 with the mission to sequence the human genome and provide clients with early access to the resulting data. Using state-of-the art sequencing technology supplied by Applied Biosystems and sophisticated internally-developed informatics, Celera pioneered the application of “shotgun” sequencing. While this “shotgun” approach was widely criticized at the time, it has subsequently become a standard method for sequencing complex organisms that is now broadly accepted and routinely used by many of the same scientists who originally scorned the approach. Scores of organisms have now been sequenced using the Celera “shotgun” method.

Accidental Mayhem or Planned Genocide?

Is the ongoing BP incident an experiment gone wrong, or a planned genocidal maneuver? We have yet to find out. We do know that Peter Barrett, who was involved in sequencing the human genome with Craig Venter, the man who created Synthia, is a member of Atlas Venture, the company now funding Monsanto. And we know that past collaboration between Monsanto and the military industrial complex brought us Agent Orange live and in color. Should we be concerned?

It seems that certain organizations with a rather homicidal history of mayhem are working together. They say it’s for our good. But let me ask you this: Will these organizations, bonded together like flies on flypaper, suddenly change their course and use what they devise for good? Any technological breakthrough comes with the responsibility of determining just how it will be used. It is a two-edged sword. It can be used for good or bad, and it is up to the owners of that technology to make the right decisions. Have these organizations made the right decisions in the past? Are they making them now? And considering their past actions, can we really expect any good to come of this collaboration? If your answer is yes, then you are not one of the children who grew up playing on the toxic soil so graciously given to the residents of Anniston Alabama by Monsanto, or one of the Veterans who was poisoned by Agent Orange at Fort Detrick, or one of the people living in the Gulf who can’t breath and is having his/her flesh eaten by a synthetic organism unleashed for who knows what reason by BP and Synthetic Genomics.

Considering the long term and recent history of these agencies and their proclivity for destruction with no regard for human consequences, one has to wonder… what’s next? Just what is Fort Detrick’s conglomeration of ne’er do wells plotting this time? You can be sure that Monsanto and the rest of the gang aren’t telling. Keeping secrets is what they do best, besides wholesale destruction and mayhem, that is. I can hear the silent screams of nature being ripped apart by madmen, and all I can do is scream back – STOP IT!!! STOP IT NOW!!!

© 2011 Barbara H. Peterson

From Activist Post:

” Mainstream science has now fully recognized the ‘miracle’ powers of coconut oil to not only combat tooth decay and drastically improve overall mouth health, but also to specifically crush a yeast known as candida albicans that can lead to deadly infections. This ‘news’ likely comes as nothing more than further confirmation for many, as natural health practicioners have been recommending coconut oil for years.

The research comes from the Athlone Institute of Technology, where Ireland-based scientists examined the effects of natural and digested coconut oil on common strains of bacteria within the mouth. What they found was that not only did the coconut oil effectively inhibit a majority of the bacteria strains single-handedly, but it was also particularly harmful to candida albicans. This is important when considering the fact that an excessive amount of the yeast known as candida albicans can be brought upon by a poor diet consisting of processed foods and sugar.

Candida infection, also known as candida overgrowth or the ‘candy disease’, can be associated with symptoms like chronic tiredness, recurring yeast infections, and digestive issues. It can also lead to a mouth infection known as thrush — a condition typically ‘treated’ using anti-fungal medications preceeded by an x-ray of your esophagus. Now, researchers are highlighting how coconut oil intake can be an alternative solution with far less side effects and concerns.

In their report, the scientists state that coconut oil could be ‘an effective alternative to chemical additives’ in most dental hygiene products. This refers to the many sulfate chemicals linked to numerous conditions, added fluoride, and many others.”

Notice how, as usual, these scientists do not acknowledge that “coconut oil” has been used for thousands of years in India for its healthful and beautifying properties. Every Ayurvedic regime recommends “oil-pulling” (gargling) with virgin cold-pressed coconut oil; Indian women use it to condition their hair and skin; it is used to cook and is also drunk on its own.

Coconut, like turmeric,  cayenne, and dozens of other medicinal plants and herbs, has long been known in India as a curative for dental, skin, and hair problems.  It has been studied in India’s scientific institutions and recommended by its clinics and yoga centers for decades. It is a traditional oil familiar to the poorest people on the street.

But the ethnocentrism of Western science is such that none of this is even acknowledged, let alone appreciated, in mainstream reports, giving rise to the pervasive false history that ensures that even educated people in the West remain in a bubble of chauvinistic self-delusion.

This is a bubble central to the high levels of acceptance of empire in Western society.

After all, if everything has been discovered, invented, or created by the West, Western imperialism has to be good for the world.