Monthly Archives: October 2012

The Congress of Companies arrived in NY this morning

Chief executives of more than 80 big U.S. corporations, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Boeing, joined forces on Thursday to pressure Congress to reduce the federal deficit with tax reform and spending cuts.

Ahead of a gathering at the New York Stock Exchange, the U.S. corporate chiefs said it is urgent and essential to put in place a bipartisan plan to fix America’s debt.

You may already be familiar with large summits which involve corporations directly in world affairs, but this event happening right now in New York is not your usual lobbying or talk on globalization and international trade.. in my opinion, this is even bigger news..

Corporatocracy anyone?

Reference:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/25/us-congress-deficit-idUSBRE89O09U20121025

Rising tensions In Africa

Islamist radical groups are spreading faster and further than we’re being led to believe.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/24/us-france-burkina-planes-idUSBRE89N1N220121024

Think this is not true? Take a look at some evidence..
http://humanpurposemachine.com/2012/10/25/terrorist-attacks-are-increasing-not-decreasing%E2%80%8F/

People like to vote for the face and voice they are most familiar with

–2012 election–
Fundraising over time:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/weekly.php

PAC fronts:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/indexp.php?src=hp

another money breakdown, though it’s missing data:
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance

–2008 election–
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.php

–2004 election–
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres04/index.php?cycle=2004

The secret to winning an election? Money.

Maybe Gary Johnson was truly the best Republican candidate

Some key excepts from his wikipedia page:

Johnson announced his candidacy for President on April 21, 2011, as a Republican,[12] on a libertarian platform emphasizing the United States public debt and a balanced budget through a 43% reduction of all federal government spending, protection of civil liberties, an immediate end to the War in Afghanistan and his advocacy of the FairTax. On December 28, 2011, after being excluded from the majority of the Republican Party’s presidential debates and failing to gain traction while campaigning for the New Hampshire primary, he withdrew his candidacy for the Republican nomination and announced that he would continue his presidential campaign as a candidate for the nomination of the Libertarian Party.

In an interview in Reason magazine in January 2001, Johnson’s accomplishments in office were described as follows: “no tax increases in six years, a major road building program, shifting Medicaid to managed care, constructing two new private prisons, canning 1,200 state employees, and vetoing a record (state and federal record) number of bills”

According to one New Mexico paper, “Johnson left the state fiscally solid”, and was “arguably the most popular governor of the decade . . . leaving the state with a $1 billion budget surplus.”[37] The Washington Times has reported that when Johnson left office, “the size of state government had been substantially reduced and New Mexico was enjoying a large budget surplus.

In the 2008 presidential election campaign, Johnson endorsed Ron Paul for the Republican nomination.[40] Johnson serves on the Advisory Council of Students for Sensible Drug Policy,[41] a student nonprofit organization that believes that the war on drugs needs to be reevaluated. As of April 2011, he serves on the board of directors of Students For Liberty, a nonprofit libertarian organization.[42]

In 1999, Johnson became one of the highest-ranking elected officials in the United States to advocate the legalization of marijuana.[32] Saying the War on Drugs was “an expensive bust,” he advocated the decriminalization of marijuana use and concentration on harm reduction measures for all other illegal drugs. “He compared attempts to enforce the nation’s drug laws with the failed attempt at alcohol prohibition. Half of what government spends on police, courts and prisons is to deal with drug offenders.”[20] He suggested that drug abuse be treated as a health issue, not as a criminal issue. His approach to the issue garnered supportive notice from conservative icon William F. Buckley,[33] as well as the Cato Institute and Rolling Stone.[16]

My views might be best summarized by Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey. He is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and has written six books on the U.S. Constitution.

Obama is either a Marxist who doesn’t believe in personal freedom or private property, or a nihilist who doesn’t believe in anything except his own ability to exercise governmental power.

Romney sounds like another big-government Republican who wants to regulate part of the economy, fight wars on a credit card and let your grandchildren pay for it.

If you want a real debate — one that will explore the proper constitutional role of the federal government in our lives before it gets so big that we cannot safely challenge it — you will be disappointed, unless Gary Johnson is let in.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Johnson

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/10/11/let-gary-johnson-debate/

Pandemic Modeling for Viral Ideas – Thought Disease

Ideas

..are contagious. In the same manner that a host for an infection might be more susceptible to disease based on their physical health; an initiate for a radical group may be more susceptible to infectious ideas based on their mental health – a state of mind directly impacted by their government, economy, inherent and inherited beliefs and religion.

If this hypothesis is correct, then the same models that apply to viral pandemics also apply to terrorist growth and outbreaks.
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/mathematical-models/$File/pandemic-modelling.pdf

I believe this is a reality many governments have difficulty discussing, as they should. However, actions speak louder than words and our (Western world) responses to many situations indicate we likely already fear an outbreak of the wrong ideas. (research prolonged occupation of the middle east)

I imagine there may come a time in the future when people may be “quarantined” in the interest of national security for fear of their beliefs spreading. Some people believe this may already be occurring (alex jones). Irreligion may be the solution.. but also consider that widespread irreligion is in and of itself – a religion.

Are some beliefs a disease?

A quick google scholar search for “virus impact on evolution” will show you various information that biologists have speculated regarding viruses as catalysts for changes in hereditary traits.

You don’t have to believe in evolution to understand the concept. Simply understanding the nature of a virus and how your immune system defends against this virus (by ultimately combining with viral DNA) will illustrate how simple it is for you to pass down your modified DNA (and virus) to your children.

Ideas are similar. Upon inception, the idea has the ability to travel between many individuals rapidly. The nature of an idea, whether good or bad, suggests you will at some point in time discuss the idea. Your beliefs and understanding surrounding this may determine how likely you are to pass on what you have discovered with others. Ultimately, others will discover this same idea, whether stumbled upon independently or gathered from you. A pattern emerges as you follow the idea, and closely relates its movement to that of a virus.

In a broad definition of the word disease (wikipedia), it is “any condition that impairs normal function”. In medical terms, normal function can generally be identified by comparison with a group of individuals. i.e. If all persons can run then a person who cannot run is not normal.

Psychology is still comparatively a young science that in practice as a widely accepted profession is barely 50 years old (wikipedia). Considering this recent growth of psychology in the world, and the determination that certain persons may be diseased in their method of thinking, it is now commonplace for us to understand a disease not only as a physical ailment, but as a mental one as well.

With this in mind, and the notion that ideas travel with virus-like behavior, it would seem that some ideas and the beliefs that they carry can be regarded as diseases if they are against the norm.

Signs and Symptoms of Thought Disease

Since many ideas that have contributed to mankind were at some point in time not regarded as normal (Wright Brothers), to create a model for an idea pandemic, you must first identify what are the signs and symptoms of a “thought disease”.

This area is where things are difficult, as it seems nearly impossible to classify certain types of thought as “diseased” without disregarding core beliefs that may seem logical and consistent.

To understand this further, lets look at some of the origins of thought.

Origins of Thought: Survival of the Hunter and the Farmer

Consider the follow example:

A man hunts an animal that has done him no harm. He does not need to eat the animal, so necessity of sustenance is irrelevant. He simply hunts for pleasure.

Our core beliefs as human beings tell us that in some cases hunting may be necessary for survival, but our body of laws and beliefs governing our state may allow us to hunt irregardless of direct survival need, to hone our skills as hunters and potentially prevent us from lapsing as hunters.

So the idea that hunting without consuming your target game is as logically consistent as hunting and consuming your target game. However, if you disregard the core belief that we are hunters, or consider that we have mentally evolved from the original hunters that once defined us, then there is no longer a reason to hunt whatsoever, and you may instead focus on other tasks resulting in a completely different mindset, such as that of the farmer.

So who is diseased in this scenario? The hunter? Or the “farmer”? (simply someone who chooses not to hunt).

Logically both seem right and consistent, but philosophically there is a deeper inner conflict – the choice of violence versus peace.

Conclusion

My derived conclusion is that violent thinking is a source of what I would consider “thought disease”. If my hypothesis is correct, anywhere a pattern of violence is identified, a pandemic model illustrating chaos on systems in contact and in close proximity will exist.