I don't want to say a word about this. I don't want to analyze it, or to even think about the implications of America's most recent horrid emotional shock. The profound grief and loss experienced by the families in Newtown CT is so overwhelming, so unthinkable, so achingly painful to contemplate that I really just want to be quiet for them - out of respect, out of profound empathy, I just want to be quiet and hold them in my mind and heart. For the last three days that's what I've done. But now it's time to speak, out of that same respect and profound empathy, because we, as a nation, are in a state of psychological shock and during such times, that shock makes us more easily moved, more easily influenced and more easily herded by the people who, by their very nature, do not have our best interests at heart.

From the beginning, the information coming out of Newtown was sketchy, which is not unusual in such situations, but when our national and personal emotions are being so worked, we must strive to pay attention to what is really going on, no matter how much our emotions pull us in the direction of feeling only and thinking not at all. This article goes into the preliminary details (there's more to come) of what doesn't quite fit about this event, so I'm not going to go into that right now. What I would like to do is take a look at how we are being moved to think and feel about this heart-wrenching slaughter by those in the position to change the future of our society. In very much the same way, our society was fundamentally changed on and in the days following September 11th 2001, when America was herded toward previously unimaginable control through emotional trauma and manipulation resulting in things like this being the "new normal".

The reason I feel it's now time to say something is that President Obama gave a brief speech last night from the Sandy Hook Interfaith Prayer Vigil in Newtown, CT and I'd like to go through it with the focus on the real message, not the illusion.

Yesterday December 14, 2012, another 'withdrawn', 'troubled', 'genius nerd' allegedly went on a rampage in the USA, killing dozens of people - this time, mostly small children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The U.S. government wasted no time in making subtle allusions to 'gun control': "We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics", said Obama in the wake of the massacre. Statements such as these threaten to give America's millions of 2nd amendment nut-jobs a collective aneurism.

Throughout the wide and emotionally charged media coverage, no one seems to care that there are many serious unanswered questions about the last major US domestic massacre, allegedly by another 'withdrawn', 'troubled', 'genius nerd' - James Holmes - in July 2012 in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater.

Starring the Aurora Police Chief and a smirking FBI special agent, the following 3-minute video poses some uncomfortable questions that take us beyond the 'lone nut and a nation in grief' storyline that gets dragged out to placate the population every time someone goes postal in the USA.

I'm sick and tired of the anti-smoking culture that has taken over the entire world. I have had enough of hearing "don't smoke, it's bad for you!!" The ignorance that betrays such remarks is utterly abysmal, especially coming from people who should know better. So for all those who have asked me why do I actually smoke, I'm going to explain my reasons in this article.

I have found anti-smoking activists to be intolerant, judgmental Authoritarian Follower types. They believe and parrot emotionally charged catchphrases taken straight from government anti-smoking propaganda. Doctors and non-smokers alike are guilty of this. They feel righteous when providing such 'advice' yet fail to take notice of how ill they themselves look, and forget that, in many cases, their own health issues went downhill when they stopped smoking. Thanks to some pretty convoluted thinking, if they are some day diagnosed with a serious disease, they will later blame their 'smoking years', while overlooking the real culprits of today's modern diseases: junk diets high in carbohydrates and the industrial-scale toxicity that has choked our environment.

Yes, the changes in our diet, particularly since the introduction of mechanised agriculture, the Industrial Revolution and arrival in the 'enlightened' Modern Age, have systemically destroyed our health. The mismatch between our ancient physiology - which thrived with little or no edible plant food - and our current diet, is at the root of many so-called diseases of civilization: coronary heart disease, obesity, hypertension, type-2 diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, etc. But I'm not here to talk about that. You can read more about it here. My aim here is to defend the rights of people who choose to smoke. It may surprise you to know that, while the percentage of the population that smokes has declined in recent years (due to government propaganda), the incidence of heart disease has not declined. The reason, shock! horror! is that smoking is not the real problem to begin with!

There is a disturbing pattern I'm seeing at work among the nursing staff and the nursing assistants - and these are the people who have the most direct interaction with patients and elderly residents at a healthcare facility.

What I'm noticing: there seem to be a growing number of people in these positions who are on psychiatric drugs. There isn't a day that goes by at work that some nurse or aide isn't discussing some new psychiatric pharmaceutical prescription she's just had filled. Today, one LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse) was telling me about how she is now taking Prozac. I asked her why (she knows how strongly I oppose the use of psychiatric drugs). Others are on more than one drug simultaneously. The result is that you can't even talk to these people. They're not in there, if you get my drift.

This LPN said she was opposed to taking the drugs for a long time, but a few days ago, she "raised a white flag".

Pretty vague response, but I know some background to this and so I also know that this has more to do with not wanting to 'cope' than with not being 'able' to cope. It has more to do with avoidable money problems and lack of self-control with spending than it does with not being able to 'cope' with life. It has more to do with poor choices and bad decisions and lousy judgement and overall laziness. It has to do with wanting to be high all the time, not just on the weekend.

It is true, all we need is love. But do we really know what love is? Love is a word that is sung about in songs, written in poems, talked about a lot and it is something many people long for one way or the other, mostly in the form of a partner. We hear it a lot these days: "Be heart-centered" and "Be love", "Love is the answer, because love always wins!", "Send Love and Light!" and so on. People use it casually in conversations in their every day lives. It is seen as the solution to all the world problems. All you need is Love!

If that's so easy, how come nothing has changed fundamentally on planet earth despite the obvious technological progress? 
We still see genocide, oppression and wars happening. Hundreds of thousands of children and civilians have died in the Middle East and around the world because of the war machine under the control of psychopathic leaders who couldn't care less about anyone who holds up a peace sign with a proclamation of love as the force for change. 
Looking at it more closely we can see that "Love" is one of the most abused and misunderstood words.

One of the first images that confronted me this morning was this one:
I stared at that photo and the headline for a long while, thinking about how it would feel to see one of my relatives splashed across the front cover of a major NYC newspaper in such a god-awful situation, and with the accompanying lurid headline. The sadness and anger that's welled up in me in response to this crime, compounded by the coldblooded, insensitive and brutal shock-jock-style publication of this man's final seconds of life ...has weighed heavily upon me this entire day.

I couldn't get the image and headline out of my mind all afternoon and evening at work. I talked to people about it. Not one person had anything to say.

One person did cover her mouth and managed a :gasp:.

Not one other person could even summon up a :gasp: in response to hearing this story.

The subject was promptly changed and I was left to sit there while my co-workers continued on with discussions of what they wanted for Christmas, who was getting what, etc.

I thought, too, about how this story could have had a very different ending if the photographer had put more of his energy and effort into trying to save this man's life, rather than into getting that career photo shot of a lifetime.

It would have been a big story, too. He could have been a hero and Ki Suk Han might have lived - if a different choice had been made.

I imagine I probably shot myself in the foot with the title of this piece. Over the years, health-related journalism has beaten the artificial sweetener horse so beyond dead that I doubt anyone even pays attention to the words anymore. I know that when I see the words 'Artificial Sweetener' in the title of an article, I'm thinking, "Oh good, another article about artificial sweeteners! I wonder if it will give me the exact same information as the last six articles I read about artificial sweeteners along with some sweet alternatives at the end like stevia and xylitol?" Sometimes I'll skim them to see if the author passes the acid test by not recommending honey or agave syrup (i.e., sugar and sugar).

Well this article is going to be a little different, and it's not because I'm going to annoyingly refer to sucralose by its chemical name 1,6-dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-BETA-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-alpha-D-galactopyranoside (does that sound delicious, or what?). What I'm more interested in exploring here is not whether these things are bad for you, since it's abundantly clear that they are, but the question of why. Why is it that, despite all the information about artificial sweeteners, the sheer number of 'health news' articles floating around the interwebs, and the total chemical shitstorm these abominations of nourishment inflict on your insides, people continue to guzzle this stuff like it's water?

Walking along the cracked sidewalk that charts my route home from college, my head was filled with thoughts of Gaza and the recent 'ceasefire' and the fact that 160 Gazans had been ruthlessly slaughtered in eight days. As I ambled along, constating how lucky I was not to have to fear the sound of F16's or a sudden missile strike or being burnt alive by white phosphorous, I was stopped dead in my tracks by an unusual sight. Scattered on the ground in front of me were many bloody feathers, and lying right in the middle of the sidewalk, as if placed there by someone, was the head of a pigeon. Blood still dripped from its severed spinal cord, right below the neck. Light still shined from its eye. I asked a girl who happened to be standing next to me if she'd ever seen a bad omen. She just shrugged and walked away.

The Debris of History

Over the past few days I've been thinking a lot about John Kennedy and what our world might have been like if he had lived. These thoughts didn't just come out of the blue, they are the result of the fact that I have just finished reading one of the saddest books ever written: Farewell America by the pseudonymous author, James Hepburn.

Farewell America is pretty well accepted to have been authored by the French equivalent of our CIA, and based on hard intelligence gathered from French, Russian, and even American sources. It was originally published in French in 1968, but it was unavailable in the United States for many years. With the coming of the worldwide web, it became available and I truly wish that every American citizen would read it.

With remarkable skill and insight, the book outlines the overall situation in America at the time, and describes the players and most probable conspirators involved in the horrific and brutal public execution of probably the best president America ever had. There are many reasons to think that George H.W. Bush was involved in the plot, and today, having placed his idiot son on the throne, the world is as far away from that world we could be living in had Kennedy lived, that it is like we all died back then, and now we have awakened in Hell.