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The Corruption of Science in America

J. Marvin Herndon, Ph.D
The Dot Connector Magazine/Sott.net
Tue, 30 Aug 2011 05:10 UTC
Image
Truth is the pillar of civilization. The word 'truth' occurs 224 times in the King James Version of the Holy Bible; witnesses testifying in American courts and before the United States Congress must swear to tell the truth; and, laws and civil codes require truth in advertising and in business practices, to list just a few examples.

The purpose of science is to discover the true nature of Earth and Universe and to convey that knowledge truthfully to people everywhere. Science gives birth to technology that makes our lives easier and better. Science improves our health and enables us to see our world in ways never before envisioned. It uplifts spirits and engenders optimism. And, science provides a truth-standard, securely anchored in the properties of matter, a means to expose and debunk the charlatans and science-barbarians who would lie, cheat, steal, and tyrannize under the guise of science.
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Smoking

The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking

J. R. Johnstone, PhD and P.D.Finch, PhD
Iinet.net.au
Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:07 UTC
Marlene Dietrich
© Unknown
Marlene Dietrich

Science is not always a neutral, disinterested search for knowledge, although it may often seem that way to the outsider. Sometimes the story can be very different.

Smoking and health have been the subject of argument since tobacco was introduced to Europe in the sixteenth century. King James I was a pioneer antismoker. In 1604 he declared that smoking was "a custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse." But like many a politician since, he decided that taxing tobacco was a more sensible option than banning it.

By the end of the century general opinion had changed. The Royal College of Physicians of London promoted smoking for its benefits to health and advised which brands were best. Smoking was compulsory in schools. An Eton schoolboy later recalled that "he was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoking". As recently as 1942 Price's textbook of medicine recommended smoking to relieve asthma.

These strong opinions for and against smoking were not supported by much evidence either way until 1950 when Richard Doll and Bradford Hill showed that smokers seemed more likely to develop lung cancer. A campaign was begun to limit smoking. But Sir Ronald Fisher, arguably the greatest statistician of the 20th century, had noticed a bizarre anomaly in their results. Doll and Hill had asked their subjects if they inhaled. Fisher showed that men who inhaled were significantly less likely to develop lung cancer than non-inhalers. As Fisher said, "even equality would be a fair knock-out for the theory that smoke in the lung causes cancer."

Comment: Let's All Light Up!

Aliens Don't Like to Eat People That Smoke!

Health Benefits of Smoking Tobacco

Brain cells work differently than previously thought: Nicotine helps to spark creativity

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Bad Guys

US: Pentagon Under Fire Over War Contracts

Dan De Luce
Agence France-Presse
Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Agence France-Presse
US soldiers gather near a destroyed vehicle and protect their faces from rotor wash, as their wounded comrades are airlifted by a Medevac helicopter in Kandahar on August 23. The Pentagon has wasted more than $30 billion on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan due to shoddy management and a lack of competition, an independent inquiry said Monday
The Pentagon has wasted more than $30 billion on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan due to shoddy management and a lack of competition, an independent inquiry said Monday.

In its final report to Congress due to be released Wednesday, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting warns that waste and fraud have undermined American diplomacy, fomented corruption in host countries and tarnished the US image abroad.

"Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted through poor planning, vague and shifting requirements, inadequate competition, substandard contract management and oversight, lax accountability, weak interagency coordination, and subpar performance or outright misconduct by some contractors and federal employees," the co-chairs of the panel, Christopher Shays and Michael Thibault, wrote in a commentary in the Washington Post.

"Both government and contractors need to do better," said the op-ed piece published on Monday.
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Gear

Sexing Up the Occupation: Israel's Image Won't Improve Without Policy Changes

Gary Wexler
Jewish Daily
Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:28 UTC
Image
© Kurt Hoffman
Sex Sells? Israel has tried a string of flashy ad campaigns. They won’t work if consumers have a negative impression of its policies.
Sexy Photo Shoots Amount to Marketing Mission Impossible

The thousands of scantily clothed bikers, skateboarders, walkers, hawkers, gawkers and performers were simply taking advantage of another breezy, crystal clear Southern California day. They had fought their way valiantly through relentless freeway traffic to participate in the year-round weekend ritual of parading down Los Angeles' bohemian thoroughfare, the Venice Beach boardwalk.

This was not a place you would think would inspire deep thoughts about Israel's increasingly desperate efforts to brand itself - and the wastefulness of all the dollars contributed by American Jewish organizations to mount a defense in the media of the Jewish state. But that's exactly where my mind went when I came upon a food truck dispensing thousands of little containers of hummus.

Along a stretch of Venice Beach, tables were set up, covered with colorful tablecloths and bowls of fresh limes, lemons, red peppers and other fruits and vegetables. Hundreds of young people were seated, giggling and diving into their free samples.

Signs were posted that this event was sponsored by Sabra Foods, the makers of "Mediterranean Dips."
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Bad Guys

Dick Cheney's Heart of Evil, Psychopathic Political Systems, And The Correct Uses of Social Stigma

Saman Mohammadi
The Excavator
Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:51 UTC
pathocrat graphic
© Hermes Press
"Ponerology was born in the crucible of attempts to understand, scientifically, a macro-social phenomenon of what can only be called extreme and excessive evil: Fascism and Soviet Communism." - Andrew M. Lobaczewski, a Polish psychiatrist and author of the book, Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes.

Definition of Pathocracy (from the website The Pathocracy Blog):
pathocracy (n). A system of government created by a small pathological minority that takes control over a society of normal people (from Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, by Andrew Lobaczewski).

From Greek pathos, "feeling, pain, suffering"; and kratos, "rule".

A totalitarian form of government in which absolute political power is held by a psychopathic elite, and their effect on the people is such that the entire society is ruled and motivated by purely pathological values.

A pathocracy can take many forms and can insinuate itself covertly into any seemingly just system or ideology. As such it can masquerade under the guise of a democracy or theocracy as well as more openly oppressive regimes.

"That is the nature of professional politics. Many are called, but few survive the nut-cutting hour--which appears to be coming down on our goofy Child President these days. . . . Ah, but it was ever thus, eh? Vicious thieves have always ruled the world. It is our wa. We are like pigs in the wilderness." - Hunter S. Thompson, from Kingdom of Fear.
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Evil Rays

Insulin pump maker ignores diabetic's hack warnings

Dan Goodin
The Register
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 02:41 UTC
Medtronic device susceptible to wireless tampering

The maker of an insulin pump that's susceptible to wireless hacking was identified for the first time on Thursday by a diabetic researcher who said the company repeatedly ignored his warnings.

A commercially available pump made by Medtronic, the world's biggest medical device manufacturer, is vulnerable to attacks that allow strangers to increase, decrease, or stop the flow of insulin being administered, the Associated Press reported. The article went on to say that hacker Jay Radcliffe outted the Minneapolis-based company after "he was ignored in repeated attempts to alert the company to the defects."

He has recently started relying on a new pump model made by Johnson & Johnson to treat his diabetic condition, according to The Minneapolis Star Tribune.
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Bad Guys

Firm at heart of biggest oil spill spews toxic web attack

Dan Goodin
The Register
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 03:39 UTC
Transocean's deepwater.com hosts malware exploits

Transocean, the offshore drilling contractor at the center of the world's biggest marine oil spill in the history of petroleum production, has been caught spewing a virtual sort of toxic sludge, according to a report released Thursday.

Researchers at web security firm Websense said deepwater.com, Transocean's official website, has been hosting malicious exploit code that attempts to install malware on the machines of people who visit the site. The researchers counted at least two separate attacks included in several deepwater.com pages that exploit known vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and Adobe's Flash media player.

Only 16 percent of the top 44 antivirus programs detected the latter exploit, the Websense report said, citing this analysis from Virustotal. The exploit code is stashed in invisible iframe tags planted on Transocean's site, the report said.
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Magnify

US judge: Warrant required to access mobile location data


The Register
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 03:49 UTC
'We're getting too close to Orwell's 1984 Oceania'

The US government should have to obtain a warrant before mobile phone providers have to hand over multiple geolocation data records about customers, a US judge has said.

In Europe, privacy watchdogs have called on geolocation data to be classed as personal data, information that can be used to identify someone. EU data protection laws set out special rules on how personal data can be used by organisations that hold it.

Mr Justice Garaufis said that an exception to privacy rights set out in the United States' Fourth Amendment should not apply to the collection of multiple records of mobile users' geolocation data.

The Fourth Amendment guarantees that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
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Stop

Manipulation Alert! Israel: Eight wounded, one seriously, in Tel Aviv terror attack

Eli Senyor
Ynet
Mon, 29 Aug 2011 01:21 UTC
Image
© Moti Kimchi
Stolen taxi used in attack
A Palestinian attacker wounded eight Israelis near a Tel Aviv nightclub early Monday, slamming into a police checkpoint with a stolen taxi and then stabbing others, police said.

The attacker was a Palestinian in his twenties from the city of Nablus, according to police spokeswoman Luba Samri.

Just before 2 a.m., the attacker stole a taxi in south Tel Aviv and then drove into a police checkpoint securing the street near a popular nightclub, she said.

He then got out of the car and stabbed passers-by, she said, while shouting "Allahu akbar" - Arabic for "God is great," a phrase often used as a battle-cry by Islamic terrorists.

Image
© Moti Kimchi
Police lift the terrorist to the ambulance
The wounded included four policemen and three civilians, Samri said.

One of the eight people hurt was listed in a serious condition in hospital and the others suffered light to moderate injuries, Samri said.

Comment: If you think it has nothing to do with the upcoming Palestinian Unilateral Declaration of Independence in September, then think again. Israelis will use every tactic, every dirty trick up their sleeve to stop the process and discredit Palestinians in order for the psychopathic state to continue with its murderous deeds.

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Light Saber

US: Colin Powell accuses former Vice-President Dick Cheney of taking 'cheap shots' in new book


The Associated Press
Sun, 28 Aug 2011 10:54 UTC
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© The Associated Press/Threshold Editions
This book cover image released by Threshold Editions shows In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, by Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney. The book is scheduled for release on Aug. 30, 2011.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is accusing former Vice-President Dick Cheney of taking "cheap shots" at him and others in a new book.

Powell was America's top diplomat during the first four years of President George W. Bush's administration. Cheney's book, In My Time, is set for release Tuesday.

Cheney writes that he thinks Powell tried to undermine Bush by criticizing administration policy to people outside the government.

Powell tells CBS' Face the Nation that he routinely gave his opinion and his best advice on issues to the president.

While Cheney writes that Powell's resignation was "for the best," Powell says he had always planned to leave the administration after the 2004 election.

Powell says Cheney is almost condescending in his remarks about Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice.
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