As you probably know, a lot of conspiracy web sites and '2nd amendment' types in the USA are up in arms (literally?) right now about what they suspect is a covert attempt by the US government (or some section thereof) to rob them of their right to own guns.

The plot, according to the hard-line conspiracy theorists, is that the recent massacre in Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut was in some way 'staged' and was, essentially, a means to an end, the end being that the massacre provides plausible just cause for the government, congress, etc., to table legislation to abolish, or at least water down, the 2nd amendment right to bear arms.

Why would the government want to disarm the US population? Well, it's pretty obvious! The only thing stopping the US government from implementing an overt police state in the USA is the 100 million Americans that own guns. That's the theory anyway. Of course, probably very few gun lovers in the US are hardened conspiracy theorists who think that the government was behind the Sandy Hook school massacre, but you can bet that most of them are conspiratorially-minded enough to believe that the government may try to use the massacre to rob them of their favorite piece of cold hard steel.

My take on the Sandy Hook massacre is that there are enough surpassingly strange and as yet unexplained aspects of the shooting for me to, at the very least, question the veracity of the official 'lone nut' story. At the same time however, my take on the gun lovers' conspiracy theory is that it is bunk. That is to say, if the Sandy Hook massacre was some kind of government psy-op, it had nothing to do with any attempt to take guns out of American society so that the government could implement an overt police state. The reasons are as elementary as the classes that were being given to those beautiful children just before they were slaughtered.

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!

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.

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.

I am ashamed to be an Israeli. There, I said it. And yes, I know better than most that there are many good and kind people in Israel. But what is happening right now in Gaza in the name of those good people CANNOT be tolerated, because it goes against everything humane and decent.

Yes, there are deaths on the Israeli side as well, but despite the heartbreak and tragedy experienced by the families of the victims, it's important to understand that the amount of pain and suffering experienced by the Palestinians is infinitely greater, and it's the responsibility of all of us to speak out against it!

We forgot the lessons of the past, and because of that, because of our lack of responsibility, ignorance and inaction, we allowed psychopathic leaders and their twisted ideologies to take hold of our own perception of reality. But if we could just stop for a moment and think, we would clearly see that this situation is not about "who fired first" and "how many rockets" (although, research shows that Israel was the aggressor in most past cases, including this one), but about the basics, like human decency, conscience, and not having blood on one's hands after our government ("oops, again") is murdering children and calling it 'self-defense'.

And that's the bottom line, that I, as an Israeli, even if I didn't pull the trigger, will still have blood on my hands if I see what is happening and stay silent.

Yesterday, Wed. 14th Nov. 2012 Israel launched the latest in a long line of "Operations" that stretch back over 60 years aimed at terrorizing the people of Palestine. By naming the attack 'Operation 'pillar of cloud" the Israeli military was unambiguous about its intent: to blow up as much of Gaza and as many Palestinians as they saw fit.

Why do Palestinians fire rockets into Israel? The vast majority of them, and I mean the VAST majority either miss their target or make a small hole in the ground far from their intended target. The rocket attacks appear to serve only as justification for the Israeli military to attack Gaza and murder Palestinians. So what's the point?

The point is that the rocket attacks are the Palestinians ONLY way of protesting against the 60 year long occupation of their land responding to unprovoked Israeli attacks against and murder of Palestinian civilians. Think about that. The Palestinians have no option to appeal to the international community because no one listens. They have zero chance of the Western media applying pressure to halt Israeli aggression and redress Palestinian grievances because the Western media is unashamedly biased towards Israel.

The Palestinians have two choices: they can sit quietly by and allow the IDF to arbitrarily and summarily murder them, or they can fire primitive rockets at the closest targets inside Israel and hope that they make the Israeli government think twice. But even here the Palestinians have a problem: the Israeli government welcomes the firing of Palestinian rockets into Israel, and they periodically provoke it.

Nothing has changed for soldiers since World War II, only now we try to drug away the terror, or train it away with video games, propaganda and even more lies.

We are a nation that utilizes preemptive war to accomplish our financial and political objectives. This is fact. We are a nation run by people so bereft of conscience and normal human empathy that we most damage those willing to live and die in service of our current society, or more accurately, in service of what they think our current society is. I read this article on the drugging of soldiers recently and realized that the men they are writing about represent a few tiny drops in the ocean of suffering that we as a society have created through war and the aftermath, through inhuman designs and inhuman acts. This ocean of suffering is all but ignored by the people in positions of power who have the resources to address it, those who run the very government organizations that design the wars. Pathological individuals in positions of power send young men and women to war. Pathological individuals in positions of power abandon these same young men and women to the streets or psychotropic medication, or both, when they return.