"Control oil, and you control nations. Control food, and you control the people" - Henry Kissinger.

In 2008, Canadian conservatives introduced a wildly unpopular Bill C-51 - the Food and Drugs Act - legislation regulating foods, therapeutic products and cosmetics. Enraged vendors of herbs, supplements, and other natural remedies fought back hard. Conservatives didn't proceed with the Bill, but instead introduced C-36, the Consumer Product Safety Act, in 2010. C-36 is essentially a revised version of C-51 with the supplements marked as exempt.

Two weeks after the United States passed its most restrictive legislation yet against health freedoms (the Food Safety Modernization Act, S.510), its Canadian counterpart, Bill C-36, was passed into law in December 2010 and will soon go into effect.

Bill C-36 purports to protect the consumer, but what it actually does is abrogate the Rule of Law and grant police forces powers of invasion, arrest and confiscation on the mere suspicion that 'unsafe' consumer products are being sold, without the involvement of the courts. 'Violators' are to be assumed guilty until proven innocent. Additional provisions bypass Parliamentary procedure, thereby giving authority by decree to foreign organizations. Such unconstitutional legislation is no stranger in the Senate. Previous bills C-51, C-52, and C-6 (Anti-Terrorism Act) were all squashed, never reaching final reading status. Bill C-6 effectively died during the prorogation of Parliament early last year and was reincarnated as bill C-36 in the summer of 2010.

The exemption of natural supplements appears to have satisfied the natural health industry as C-36 has slid through with little complaint. According to Shawn Buckley, president of the Natural Health Products Protection Association, C-36 could however be a Trojan horse of sorts. All that needs to happen now is a reintroduction of C-51 and we're right back where we started - health freedoms reduced to zero. From Canada's Preventdisease.com, the salient features of the Bill are as follows:

Even though they'd be a great medium for it, comic books aren't known for tackling sensitive social, religious or cultural topics in an overt way. People who read comic books are looking for fantasy and escapism rather than intellectual stimulation - just like people who read men's magazines. Maybe that's why a new comic produced by Matthew Hess, the president of MGMBill, an organisation that has authored a bill that has been submitted to the US congress to ban Male Genital Mutilation (hence MGMBill), has made the headlines recently.

Unashamedly titled Foreskin man, the comic book series features a blonde superhero doing battle with the evil 'Mohel' (Mohel being the Hebrew word for a Jewish person trained in the practice of Brit milah or Bris (circumcision).

I have to admit that my first reaction on hearing about the comic was 'what a good idea!', but when I saw the comic and the reaction it had received from certain quarters, my reaction was more along the lines of 'this the best idea since anti-Vegetarian man!'

It seems a little weird to me that I would actually have to write this but, I'm not exactly a fan of genital mutilation, regardless of the justification, hence my appreciation of Foreskin Man.

So circumcision, what's it all about?

In the past few years the world and the U.S. in particular has seen no shortage of economic near-collapses, boondoggles, scandals, ponzi schemes, and 'bail outs'. But before we examine the next disaster fast approaching and experience the ensuing nausea that is likely to come from knowing about it, it would help us first to just review what the definition of hyperinflation is so that all else that follows goes down easier - so to speak.

Here's how Wikipedia defines it:

"In economics, hyperinflation is inflation that is very high or "out of control". While the real values of the specific economic items generally stay the same in terms of relatively stable foreign currencies, in hyperinflationary conditions the general price level within a specific economy increases rapidly as the functional or internal currency, as opposed to a foreign currency, loses its real value very quickly, normally at an accelerating rate.[1] Definitions used vary from one provided by the International Accounting Standards Board, which describes it as "a cumulative inflation rate over three years approaching 100% (26% per annum compounded for three years in a row)", to Cagan's (1956) "inflation exceeding 50% a month." [2] As a rule of thumb, normal monthly and annual low inflation and deflation are reported per month, while under hyperinflation the general price level could rise by 5 or 10% or even much more every day.

A vicious circle is created in which more and more inflation is created with each iteration of the ever increasing money printing cycle. Hyperinflation becomes visible when there is an unchecked increase in the money supply (see hyperinflation in Zimbabwe) usually accompanied by a widespread unwillingness on the part of the local population to hold the hyperinflationary money for more than the time needed to trade it for something non-monetary to avoid further loss of real value. Hyperinflation is often associated with wars (or their aftermath), currency meltdowns, political or social upheavals, or aggressive bidding on currency exchanges."

[This article originally appeared in Issue 13 of The Dot Connector Magazine]
As a species, you'd think we'd be able to tell the difference by now between image and reality. And yet, with all our acquired scientific knowledge, the gist of which is dutifully drilled into our minds during twelve to twenty years of public and 'higher' education, we still can't get it right. Well, perhaps that isn't fair. I know a few individuals who can sniff out a pair of imitation Nikes or a Britney Spears lip-synch in a heartbeat. So we're experts when it comes to the trivial, but with anything a tad meatier, where our very livelihoods may depend on it, our discernment in separating fact from fiction is deplorable. Why is that?

Growing up, I had the opportunity to sit in on more than a few 'polite' dinner conversations among adults. Not having much to say, I tended to listen. And, more often than not, as one topic led to another, as the pace of speech quickened and voices became slightly higher in pitch, that inevitable conversation stopper reared its head. "No religion or politics!" Such things are off limits, you see, and when discussed in 'polite' company, all rationality seems to fly out the window and a battle of wills ensues.

As I sit here now, I'm looking at this Ephemeris software showing the orbital positions of the planets. This has actually been a daily activity for me over the past several weeks, kind of like checking the weather in the morning. I can see that Jupiter and Saturn have just passed opposition (the actual date was April 28th). Speaking of planetary alignments, there's been a lot of talk of these in the news as of late. SOTT carried an article earlier this month describing an unusual planetary alignment that happened on May 11th. On this day Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter all lined up neatly in the sky. Interestingly, an earthquake was felt in Spain that same day. Just for clarification, this alignment in early May was actually a geocentric alignment, meaning that the Earth was lined up with these planets, or the Earth was the frame of reference as opposed to the Sun, for instance.

Astrologers typically speak of planetary positions from the geocentric perspective too. There may be some significance to these geocentric alignments (as the Spanish earthquake may indicate), but in this article I'm going to focus on heliocentric, or Sun centered, alignments. Now why are any of these planetary alignments important, you ask? Are we going to start giving astrology reports on SOTT? Well, no, but for this article it might seem like it. The thing is, these planetary alignments do cast light upon the changes taking place on the Big Blue Marble. Hopefully this article will elucidate some of how this process works; there's obviously a lot that we still don't understand.

[This article originally appeared in Issue 13 of Sott.net's The Dot Connector Magazine]

While examining the available literature on health and nutrition from an evolutionary standpoint, one comes to the inevitable conclusion that, as far as diet is concerned, human beings entered a blind alley thousands of years ago. Even if by some miracle humanity as whole was to completely reorganize its diet overnight, an important question remains - have we engineered our environment beyond the point of no return?

Contrary to the popular belief held by many anthropologists that agriculture is one of man's greatest achievements, there is an increasing body of evidence which suggests that the human race actually set out on the path of self-destruction when it embraced agrarian societies.

The picture now emerging is that the switch from hunting and gathering occurred suddenly and was followed by a sharp drop in life expectancy. Ancient human bones found in archaeological layers dated since the adoption of agriculture reveal increased prevalence of disease and lesser numbers of aged people. For centuries after the adoption of agriculture, these bones also tell the stories of greater numbers of violent deaths when compared with bone remains from pre-agrarian hunter-gatherer societies. There is an undeniable echo of the Garden of Eden story here. This is, in fact, one of the greatest puzzles of prehistory. Why did agriculture catch on so fast?

[This article originally appeared in Issue 13 of Sott.net's The Dot Connector Magazine]

"If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?" - Charles Fort

On the fateful evening of December 15th, 1967, the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, West Virginia collapsed from structural failures during full rush hour traffic. The incident killed 46 people, many of whom were holiday shoppers; most of these people died trapped in their cars under the weight of the iron bridge beams, submerged in the icy December waters. The tragedy made national headlines and put the little town of Point Pleasant on the map and in the minds of many that holiday season.

While the collapsed bridge was certainly the climactic event for the residents of Point Pleasant that year, there were many preternatural events leading up to this. UFO sightings and other high strangeness were endemic across the Ohio River region that year. These sightings and stories were later documented by John Keel in his book The Mothman Prophecies.

1967 was a pivotal year for UFOs and related phenomena. Reports of UFO sightings poured in from all across the United States; others were reported as far away as South America and Russia (adding a new dimension to those who believed that UFOs were of Communist origins). The very first publication of an alien abduction case (the infamous Hill abduction) was presented in the book Interrupted Journey by John Fuller just a year prior to this. Men-In-Black (MIB) reports came into focus for the first time, along with cases of animal mutilation. Sightings of humanoid-type beings associated with UFOs were popping up all over the world.

On the February 4, 2005 Signs page, we published the following article:

First Artificial Neon Sky Show Created

By Robert Roy Britt
Live Science Senior Writer

02 February 2005

By shooting intense radio beams into the night sky, researchers created a modest neon light show visible from the ground. The process is not well understood, but scientists speculate it could one day be employed to light a city or generate celestial advertisements.

Researchers with the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) project in Alaska tickled the upper atmosphere to the extent that it glowed with green speckles. The speckles were sprinkled amid a natural display known as the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights. [...]

The HAARP experiment involves acres of antennas and a 1 megawatt generator. The scientists sent radio pulses skyward every 7.5 seconds, explained team leader Todd Pederson of the Air Force Research Laboratory. "The radio waves travel up to the ionosphere, where they excite the electrons in the plasma," Pederson told LiveScience. "These electrons then collide with atmospheric gasses, which then give off light, as in a neon tube."

Pederson and his colleagues missed the show, but they snapped images. "We unfortunately were indoors watching the data on monitors during the experiment and were busy scrambling trying to make sure the effects were real and not some glitch with the equipment," he said. "We knew right away it was something extraordinary to show up in real time on the monitor against the natural aurora, but did not confirm that it would have been visible to the naked eye until a day or two later when we had a chance to calibrate the raw data."

The experiment is detailed in the Feb. 2 issue of the journal Nature. The research could improve understanding of the aurora and also help explain how the ionosphere adversely affects radio communications. It is not yet clear if the aurora must already be active before an artificial sky show can be induced, says Karl Ziemelis, chief physics editor at the journal. If no pre-existing aurora is required, Ziemelis said, "we are left with the tantalizing (some would say disconcerting) possibility that such radio- fuelled emissions could form the basis of a technology for urban lighting, celestial advertising, and more."

I have to say that I am quite skeptical about the stated "commercial" intentions of said experiment, considering that it is being carried out by the Air Force. When have they ever spent multiplied millions of dollars to research ways and means to promote Coca Cola? Get real! Frankly, if producing images in the sky is on their agenda, my guess would be that such images might be used for "military" purposes as in "how to scare the bejeebies out of everybody so we can control 'em!"

"I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?"

So asks Jon Ronson in his latest book, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. Ronson is probably best known for his book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, which was adapted for the big screen and starred George Clooney. It documented a slightly loony group of American Army men who were convinced they could walk through walls and kill goats by simply glaring at them menacingly (apparently they took the phrase "looking daggers" a tad too literally). He also wrote a book on fundamentalists, extremists and radicals, even tailing David Icke for a spell. For research, of course. Having already spent much of his career peering into the fringe boundaries of normality, The Psychopath Test pushes him further into the sphere of madness and the science that attempts to explain it. The result is entertaining, sometimes informative, yet a mixed-bag that never really answers the questions he set out to tackle.

I'm going to avoid giving a chapter-by-chapter rundown of the book. As I said above, it's an entertaining, and easy, read. I'm not a particularly fast reader but wolfed this one down in three sittings over two days. So if you've the time, cash, and/or inclination, check it out. Rather, I want to focus on what I'll call the good, the bad, and the so-so. Ronson gets a lot of things right. First of all, he's a great writer. The book is peppered with entertaining, funny, and somewhat disturbing accounts of his interviews with people he comes to believe are genuine psychopaths. Pitting a self-described neurotic, over-anxious journalist against some of the world's most dangerous criminals and manipulators is a recipe for a good story, and in this regard, Ronson delivers.

[Note: We're rerunning this 2009 article (with 2013 update below) for consideration in light of the missing Malaysian Airliner.]

Air France Flight 447 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared over the Mid-Atlantic (just north of the equator) at approximately 1.33UTC on June 1st 2009.

No mayday signal was received from the aircraft and almost two weeks later, aviation officials have yet to give a coherent explanation as to what could have caused the sudden demise of a high tech Airbus 330-200 passenger plane.

As usual, the media are missing (or concealing) some very obvious yet understandably disturbing data about the nature of the threats to life on planet earth, and as usual, it is left to Sott.net to spell out the details.