If you love old movies, you've noticed that women back in the old days tended to have beautiful hour glass body shapes, a la Marilyn Monroe. Nowadays, such figures have become a rarity because women have become "boxy" in shape. Research suggests there are now five times as many "rectangular-shaped" women than those with the classic Marilyn Monroe hourglass shape. Almost one in two British women fall into the rectangle category, a boy-ish body shape where there is little difference between the bust, waist and hip measurements.

According to the CDC, about one-third of U.S. adults (33.8%) are obese and approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2 - 19 years are obese. In 2010, no state had less than 20% obesity prevalence. Another statistic tells us that over two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or obese.

Two thirds! In the country where the USDA food pyramid and low fat eating has guided food choices for at least two generations!

Worldwide, with the spread of Western lifestyle (including diet), obesity has more than doubled since 1980. In 2008, 1.5 billion adults, 20 and older, were overweight and nearly 43 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2010.

According to MyPyramid.gov, you should be consuming at least 3 oz. of whole grain cereals, breads, crackers, rice, cereal or pasta; ideally 6 oz. A lot of people consuming exactly the recommended amounts see no weight loss at all and might actually see their weight go up.
Could there be a relationship between this dietary advice and the obesity epidemic? Could it be that the root of the obesity problem is due to our health advisers who believe that animal fat causes heart disease and high cholesterol, and that carbohydrates in grains and vegetables are The Healthy Solution? Based on this, it follows that a diet restricted in carbohydrates and rich in fat is going to be discouraged by them. We are supposed to be consuming at least 45% of our calories as carbohydrates where most of it should come from vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. This diet philosophy is dominant in our world today despite the facts cited above, despite the fact that the obesity epidemic has come upon us in lock-step with this dietary philosophy.

Since we launched our fundraiser several days ago, we've received generally positive responses from most of our readers. There are, however, a significant number of people who appear not to have grasped precisely WHAT it is that SOTT.net is and does, what goes on behind the scenes, and what the main point to our research is. While SOTT.net is, on the face of it, a news and commentary website, readers need to be aware that it this is merely the public face of our research organization: Quantum Future Group, Inc. The true role that Sott.net plays is as the vehicle via which the results of our main projects research are distilled down and presented to our readers in the form of a daily picture of the world as it is and where it, and we as a species, are headed. This takes the form of the arrangement of articles, editorials and commentary that we publish every day, 365 days a year. There is also our forum where all the topics you see on SOTT.net are discussed and researched in much greater detail. In short, when you read an article or editorial or commentary on SOTT.net, you can be sure that the viewpoint or angle put forward is the result of rigorous research by highly qualified individuals and groups who hold the Truth above all other considerations.

So here we are, 2012, the year when it all comes to an end... or so a lot of people have been led to believe. The idea that a specific day, December 21st 2012, has been ear-marked by fate or god or whoever as the 'end of the world' not only seems implausible in a universe with even a modicum of free will, it also smacks of a set up. The fact that so many people are aware of this 'prophecy', seems to be part of the same set-up.

After all, 'you're all going to die on December 21st' doesn't leave much room for self-determination, and, depending on the nature of a person's gullibility, serves to spread fear of an impending apocalypse or to ridicule the idea that serious earth changes are afoot. From an esoteric point of view, nearly all traditions say something along the line of "you will know neither the day nor the hour." That reflects the fact that, even though there ARE cycles of time, history, cataclysms, the Universe is still OPEN and human beings - the observers in the micro and macro quantum dynamic - do have some input into the outcome.

From a practical point of view, there are very few known factors that could wipe out all or most of life on earth in a single day. Oh, yes, there are factors that we have documented here on SOTT that can bring civilization to its knees, but the geological record shows that events that can take out almost every living thing at once are very rare. Rare, but not impossible.

You may have noticed that one of the main reasons for all of the war-mongering and posturing over the last 11 years is to keep the masses occupied and in a state of fear and distracted from this very real and much more potent threat to ALL life on planet earth. This constant fear and stress can destroy the mind and body and it seems that this is exactly what it is intended to do. As Ivan Pavlov proved, transmarginally inhibited dogs are much easier to program and control.

So, needless to say, it is crucial that we all pay attention and learn what is real and what is not, and more than that, what to DO! This is where SOTT.net can be an invaluable resource for all of those who sense that something 'big' really is on the horizon for our planet and every living thing on it. SOTT.net is, and always has been, dedicated to figuring out, as far in advance as possible, the precise nature of our reality and the future that awaits us, and making the results FREELY available to ALL.

The objective is to keep our finger on the pulse of our reality so that we - and all of our readers - can have some idea of what is coming down in order to be prepared. After all, knowledge protects, being forewarned is being forearmed.

SOTT.net was the first alternative news aggregator/commentary site that pointed out the obvious: that psychopaths rule our world. Today, it is common knowledge in the alt-news/truth communities. SOTT was the first to research and write about Ethnic Specific Weapons after we pulled on a loose thread we found in the David Kelly murder. SOTT was the first alt-news website to come right out and say that Israel dunnit vis a vis 9-11. And, of course, against the most unbelievable resistance, we have been researching cometary disasters that have occurred repeatedly on our planet and may be in the cards in the near future.

So, we see ourselves as a lighthouse that constantly scans and illuminates the darkness. And we do it absolutely with no obligation to anyone or any organization; it's all about Truth that we want to know for ourselves and to share as far and wide as possible. We have turned down many requests from advertisers and groups and individuals who have offered to buy us out in one way or another.

But the lighthouse that is SOTT.net is in serious danger of going out, and we need your help...

A few days ago, unexpectedly, I received an email from a young high school student from the little town of Wolbrom, near Krakow - the ancient capital of Poland. Her name is Dominika, and she explained that even though she plans to study architecture, she is participating in a national physics competition. One of the projects available to choose from is to conduct an interview with a physicist. Since she had been reading my Polish science blog, she selected me and asked if I would agree. I said, "why not?" So she sent me her fourteen questions. I think her questions are, perhaps, even more interesting than my answers, so here is the whole interview.

1. Why physics? Was it one of your childhood dreams?

There were many childhood dreams. They went in various directions, overlapped each other; in some areas they positively strengthened each other while in others, they neutralized like waves on water originating from multiple sources. I dreamed of being a firefighter, a detective; I wanted to fight together with good Indians, or to be an electronics engineer like my older brother. Eventually, I became a physicist, you could say, by chance. I did so well in a national Physics Olympiad, that I was allowed to begin studies at the physics department of the university without having to take the entrance examination. Otherwise, I would probably have chosen the University of Technology.

I wrote "probably by chance," but I admit, I use the word "chance" reluctantly. We often describe events as "accidental", while at their roots lie unclear, obscure, or unknown causal chains. We are, perhaps, cutting corners this way. So maybe it was not a coincidence, maybe it was not just chance, perhaps it was 'destiny'? As a physicist, I'm a little bit of a firefighter because I am always putting out fires to uphold the truth. I am also a detective, because I follow Nature and seek to discover its secrets. I'm fighting at the side of the good Indians when I expose the scams in Science. The least thing I do is likely the work of an engineer, though even here there is a link, because as a physicist, I am interested in the world we live in, not just in a philosophical imaginary reality.

While the mainstream media is going to great lengths to convince the world that events in Syria are the result of yet another 'people's revolution', the facts point clearly to yet another US government-sponsored bloody 'regime change'. Given that the US has been a de facto global empire for at least 60 years, with all of the power, infrastructure and influence that entails, how difficult do we think it would be for agents of the empire to manufacture a 'revolution' in any given country? The answer, surprisingly, is 'not so easily'. But it is doable, as long as the empire is willing to murder innocent civilians to create the impression of a brutal regime in need of removal. And the USA has never balked at murdering a few hundred, a few thousand, or even a few million civilians to ensure it gets its geo-political way, to the delight of psychopaths in power everywhere.

My husband and I had a conversation in bed last night that I'm going to share with you. Don't be shocked! You should have figured out by now that pillow-talk between a mathematical physicist and a historian is probably not what you would call a racy conversation! But I guess that depends on what you think is "racy." Anyway, I was telling him about some things that were weighing on my mind as a result of the book I am currently reading: The Origin of Comets by Clube, Bailey and Napier. The topics covered in the book include the more-than-dismal record of science in the fields of astronomy and cosmology. I was bemoaning how incredibly backwards our Science of today truly is because of all the great ideas that have been quashed by governments and religions in the interests of control of the masses and that has led to the dire state of our world and so-called 'civilization'.

As I wrote in "Dark Ages and Inquisitions":

Science took a serious wrong turn in the middle of the nineteenth century, about the time Darwin published his Origin of Species and that is why we do, indeed, live in a Dark Age as a consequence. It wasn't that Natural Selection was wrong, per se, but the way the principles have been applied has been disastrous. Natural Selection was seized upon as the one and only underlying law of the Universe - and this seizing was done by individuals with a very particular psychological make-up as we will see. The same kinds of people that become uber-religious and kill people in the name of their god, can - and often do - become adherents of the religion of science. [...]

[I]n the nineteenth century, certain discoveries led to economic and political considerations, and that is when Science took the wrong turn because those folks who tend to black and white thinking also have other character traits that include a need to dominate others, as well as a strong tendency to greed. The pursuit of science became a career rather than a hobby, and an army of scientific workers was sought to serve the agendas of what was to become known as the Military-Industrial Complex.

My husband, as some of you know, is currently working on a book about the corruption of science in modern times, (to be released in late Spring/early Summer) and he had a story to tell me during our bedtime chat. Apparently, back in the 1930s, a man named Fritz Zwicky, a Swiss astronomer working at CalTech, came up with the idea of Dark Matter. Zwicky used mathematics to infer the average mass of galaxies and obtained a value about 160 times greater than expected from their luminosity, and proposed that most of the matter was dark. So, what's my point? Zwicky was correct, but nobody believed him since he had a reputation of being "eccentric".

Now, what is wrong with that last sentence? Did you catch it? Nobody BELIEVED Zwicky. What that means is, BELIEF blocked all of the scientific community from doing one, simple, scientific thing: check the math! And so, for over 30 years, science was ignorant of Dark Matter and all the work - entire careers - of hundreds, if not thousands or millions, of individuals, was lacking a key piece of data.

Because nobody believed Zwicky.

They didn't bother to check his math because he was "eccentric." That is to say, he was not an authoritarian follower.

Authoritarian followers have the psychological characteristic known as right-wing authoritarianism. This personality trait consists of authoritarian submission, a high degree of submission to the established authorities in one's society; authoritarian aggression, aggression directed against various persons in the name of those authorities; and conventionalism, a strong adherence to the social conventions endorsed by those authorities. Why do psychologists call authoritarian followers "right-wing" authoritarians? Are they all members of a conservative political party? No. Right-wing is used here in a psychological sense, meaning wanting to please established authority. One of the original meanings of the adjective right (riht in Old English) was "lawful, proper, correct," which in those long ago days meant doing what your local lord and the king wanted.

- Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology

Over and over again it is seen, in retrospect, of course, that irrational beliefs that are promulgated by authorities who desire to maintain control, and believed by the followers who want to be 'good', trump True Science; and here I mean the mode of Scientific Cognition, not just 'science' since the so-called Enlightenment. Over and over again, throughout history, going back even to ancient times, you can note that there were a few really intelligent free thinkers who made observations, drew useful inferences from those observations, and suggested solutions that were ignored, ridiculed, reviled, buried; and often, the thinker who dared to voice his ideas was destroyed by one means or another because Authoritarian Followers are also aggressive against anything that is not pronounced to be 'okay' by their leaders. Most often this destruction was - and is even today - due to power considerations: the individual has an idea that, in some way, threatens the political/social power structure.

Why is it, one has to ask, that truth is so threatening to power?

For those who are paying strict attention left and right, 2010 will be remembered as the year in which a major threshold was crossed and the door closed behind it. It is the humble opinion of the editors that the dice have been thrown and the destiny of the planet sealed.

The signs were there:

• The absolute disregard of governments for the rights of air travelers and citizens and the open arrogance of the imposition of Orwellian measures
• The continuation of ever more absurd fake-terror tricks to scare the people into compliance
• The increasingly violent anger of the masses on the streets as a result of the economic pressure and other forms of abuse from the top
• The great ease with which the global media took over, diluted and distorted the aspirations of political truth seekers via the Wikileaks show, and the obvious omission of Israel from such 'leaks'
• The all too timid opposition of the world to such crimes against humanity as the genocide aboard the Mavi Marmara
• And the ongoing imperial campaigns of western powers in the Middle East and Asia

Particularly disastrous was the chain reaction ignited by BP's ecocide in the Gulf of Mexico - courtesy of corporate psychopathy and the complicity of our governments - this festering wound might yet contribute significantly to tipping the global climate into an Ice Age by disrupting ocean currents and, in turn, wind currents. The Gulf Loop current is reportedly already broken, disrupting the northern Jet Stream and bringing yet another harsh winter to most of the northern hemisphere.

It is admittedly speculative to blame the meters of snowfall in the US and Europe this winter on the Gulf oil spill, but if you're looking for concrete in-your-face evidence of the unprecedented scale of the disaster, just ask the thousands of local residents and oil spill workers living along the coast of the Gulf from Texas to Florida.

But the oil in the Gulf of Mexico is only one factor. We believe we are witnessing the beginning of a dramatic episode of human history linked to climate change within the solar system. We see it in signs ignored by most: comets, fireballs and changes in the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, somewhat symbolically, the Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean is trembling violently, setting off so many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that we've lost count. The potential for disaster is horrific, as events in Japan have recently shown. Human infrastructure is fragile and a direct hit on a key facility - like the Fukushima nuclear power plant - can effectively erase all prospects of normal human life across whole areas. Indeed, Fukushima is turning out to be 2011's 'oil spill', one which at this point looks even darker than the one in the Gulf of Mexico.

But as we ponder the present and what remains of our future, let's back up and recapitulate 2010... Connecting the Dots has been dormant for a while and there's much to catch up on!

In February 2004, The UK Observer reported that a study commissioned by the Pentagon predicted that food riots would result from abrupt climate change. The grim document described how the planet would reach the edge of anarchy and countries would threaten each other with nuclear weapons to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life," the analysis concluded. "Once again, warfare would define human life."

The Pentagon paper is remarkable for several reasons. Through it we see how the United States establishment understands that the real threat we are facing is climate change, not the manufactured threat of 'terrorism'. But a more frank admission is that 'climate change' is an abrupt phenomenon - not relatively gradual as most proponents of man-made global warming insist when they refer to computer models that chart rises in temperatures over a time-frame of several decades. The report specifically states that Britain will plunge into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020.

The real threat of a sudden transition to an ice age took on new urgency last summer when a study published by the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics suggested that BP's greed in the Gulf of Mexico may have caused the Gulf Loop current's complete separation from the Gulf Stream in mid-June 2010. This critical oceanic artery is a significant factor holding back a thick layer of snow and ice from descending upon the northern hemisphere. Should the Gulf Stream significantly weaken or cease to flow northwards altogether, Britain - along with whole swathes of northern America and Europe - would indeed be plunged into a 'Siberian' winter.

Reading "Columnist Calls for Internet "Quality Control" to Quash Dissent sent absolute shivers up my spine. As I posted on my Facebook Wall: "Is it just me noticing the increasing lock-down, the increasing propaganda FOR lockdown and abrogation of human rights, and the masses seem to be sleep-walking through it all?"

But what is happening has happened before in many times and places; it's just that now it seems to be spread over the entire globe. Just so you know, I'm not one of those who is taken in by the saber-rattling war propaganda. That too, has happened before and before and before. It's a ruse, a drama played out between ostensible adversaries to keep the masses afraid and loaded with stress so that they will welcome draconian controls everywhere.

Another thing that has happened before is the end result of such dramas: mass death and destruction AKA "collateral damage". A few comments on my FB wall indicate that I am not alone in what I see. One poster wrote: "Not just sleep-walking, but sycophantically justifying their own abuse and mindlessly trying the same failed methods to "solve" it over and over. It's been said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to come out different." (HB)

That's it, exactly. Psychopaths in power never seem to be able to get it that the end result is always and ever the same: the germs do not realize that they will be burned alive in the fire to which the body they have infected and killed will be consigned.

Another comment was: "This is the long-planned and meticulously coordinated recrudescence, on a global scale, of Nazism." (DST)

Exactly. And that is why I am resurrecting this topic which I wrote about back in 2008, back when Bush - remember Bush, the guy who was the puppet who got all this mess started? - was still president of the U.S. The article was focused mainly on Bush and the U.S., but since then, so many other world leaders and nations have gotten on the Totalitarian/Fascist/Nazi bandwagon that I have done a little re-working of the piece to bring it up to date.

Back then I wrote: Reading Robert Parry's When a Great Power Goes Mad gave me the shivers especially when I read:

With the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War and the grim milestone of 4,000 US dead, the nation has been awash with news retrospectives on the war and speeches by politicians, mostly offering sanitized versions of what's transpired. [...]

In the news media, there were specials, including a much-touted PBS "Frontline" two-parter on "Bush's War" which followed the mainstream line of mostly accepting the Bush administration's good intentions while blaming the disaster on policy execution - a lack of planning, bureaucratic rivalries, rash decisions and wishful thinking. [...]

Remaining outside the frame of mainstream U.S. debate was any serious examination of the [Iraq] war's fundamental illegality.

During the post-World War II trials at Nuremberg, the United States led the world in decrying aggressive war as "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Yet, "Frontline" and other mainstream U.S. news outlets shy away from this central fact of the Iraq War: by invading Iraq without the approval of the U.N. Security Council and under false pretenses, the Bush administration released upon the Iraqi people "the accumulated evil of the whole" - and committed the "supreme" war crime.

An obvious reason why the mainstream U.S. press can't handle this truth is that to do so would mean that President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, a host of other U.S. officials and even some prominent journalists could be regarded as war criminals.

To accept that reality would, in turn, create a moral imperative to take action. And that would require a great disruption in the existing U.S. power structure, which hasn't changed much since Bush won authorization from Congress in October 2002 to use force and then invaded Iraq in March 2003.

Not only are Bush and Cheney still in office - and two of the three remaining presidential candidates, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, voted for the war - but the roster of top Washington journalists remains remarkably intact from five years ago.

We realize, of course, since the above was written, that even Barack Obama - supposed to be the NKOTB who was not part of the insiders was, in fact, very much an insider and selected to carry on the Bush/Neocon/Fascist legacy. The only "change" that Obama has brought has been more of the same and worse.

It is obvious to many, though certainly not to everyone, that the World Body Social, following the Pied Pipers of the Body Politic have increasingly lost their ability to think rationally and perceive psychological reality with even a modicum of common sense. Almost the whole planet has descended into half-wittedness with its growing intellectual deficiencies and moral failings. Any group of people that can sit down and discuss the Iraq War as though it were anything other than a War Crime of the highest order, or debate whether or not waterboarding is torture, or whether or not torture is acceptable in this or that situation, has lost not only their moral compass, but their qualification as sentient beings on the evolutionary scale.

From as far back as 2008, video recordings of strange and disturbing noises that seem to come from the sky have been appearing on the internet. In the last 12 months, many more of these 'strange noise' videos have been recorded and uploaded by people from many different parts of the globe.

The precise origin and meaning of this phenomenon is, as yet, unknown. Are we dealing with a cosmic version of the 'bell tolling' for life on planet earth, or is there a more mundane explanation?

The Sott Report investigates.